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T-43 Hours and Counting
An anonymous reader submits "As seen on NASA TV, for the first time in over two years, the countdown clock has started at 6:00 PM EDT for the Wednesday 3:51 PM EDT launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on the first of the return to flight test flights. The launch is not for certain due to weather issues associated with hurricane Dennis. Currently it is estimated for a 70% chance of launch on Wednesday, with the chances lowering later in the week. If you are confused on how T-43 hours equals almost 3 days, perhaps you should read Countdown 101."
NASA TV certainly has come a long way since the days of CUSeeMe rooms. Anyone remember those?
Where you have short periods of time that somehow extend to 2-5x as long as they're 'supposed to', because of all the time stoppage in the middle!
Maybe NASA is leasing their timer from the NFL where the last several minutes really takes a half hour.
I am NOT putting my signature in this stupid little box! How do I know you won't steal my identity???
Worlds grow old and suns grow cold
And death we never can doubt.
Time's cold wind, wailing down the past,
Reminds us that all flesh is grass
And history's lamps blow out.
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
Cycles turn while the far stars burn,
And people and planets age.
Life's crown passes to younger lands,
Time brushes dust of hope from his hands
And turns another page.
Yet the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
But we who feel the weight of the wheel
When winter falls over our world
Can hope for tomorrow and raise our eyes
To a silver moon in the opened skies
And a single flag unfurled.
For the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
We know well what Life can tell:
If you would not perish, then grow.
And today our fragile flesh and steel
Have laid our hands on a vaster wheel
With all of the stars to know
That the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
From all who tried out of history's tide,
Salute for the team that won.
And the old Earth smiles at her children's reach,
The wave that carried us up the beach
To reach for the shining sun.
And the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Currently it is estimated for a 70% chance of launch on Wednesday, with the chances lowering later in the week. Is that a fact or prediction?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Since we've got a Shuttle launch post here on slashdot, i think its time to show you the Cheshire Catalyst's Space/Launch stuff that pertains to this. FAQ: http://space.launch.info/faq.html Launch Schedule: http://space.launch.info/launch.html He also has a page about "How to become an astronaut" Enjoy The Info! 73 DE KI4GMB
What the "T" in "T Minus bla bla" means? Not knowing has always bugged me.
What the hell is wrong with your priorities? It's ok if people die if it causes an increase in a budget item?
Why don't you just start advocating killing seniors? All that saved medicare money might buy anther probe!
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
I'll be watching the launch live. ANyone else around here?
kensavage knows more than god
And, um, let's see.
Exactly how much did the NASA budget for unmanned probes increase by after the columbia disaster?
Hmm.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
People die every day. Lots of them. If 7 more deaths means that *real* science can get more money, then I'm all for it.
Especially if that *real* science can do things like find other planets sutable for humanity.
Face it, we need to get to the planets and other stars. This "circle the earth" shit just isn't cutting it.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
I do give a shit.
If the shuttle fails there are two options.
The first is that we close NASA. Divert that money into feeding homeless. Lives would be saved. Hell, even new armor for Humvees would save more lives than NASA.
The second is that we do more unmanned stuff. You know, real science. Going to other planets and stuff. Might even save the human race.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
And this is why people like you, dont run the country.
"If 7 more deaths means that *real* science can get more money, then I'm all for it."
I'm a "real" scientist (chemist), and I never should want anyone to have to die because of my work.
Excuse me, were you one of the Challenger managers who told the engineers to quit whining and launch or how do you justify saying such crap? Getting an increase in the budget for unmanned probes is not worth the loss of human life. Yes, the unmanned missions should get more funding, but the argument ends there. Don't go tossing in the "it would serve NASA right" garbage. I could almost accept if you said something along the lines of "I wish NASA would look at what they had to go through to get this far and realize what a waste the shuttle is," except for the fact that they already have looked at it and realized it. That's why the shuttle is being retired as soon as the ISS is done. It would be sooner, but too much has been invested in the ISS to have it's completion pushed back another 5-10 years while the remaining launches get redesigned or repackaged to fit on Delta or Atlas rockets.
Frankly, I feel the manned portion of the program could use more funding, too, but only after it has a clearer sense of direction than "let's go to the moon again." Human beings in space create a much fuller sense of purpose and accomplishment than robots, as well as some unique scientific opportunities.
Linkeh.
Information about tuning in to NASA TV can be found here as well.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Is no one else surprised that they are possibly launching this mission on a 13th? I know that there is no real reason to the bad luck that NASA has had with that number, but I wonder about the possible affects of people on the project worrying about bad luck, and that causing a problem?
A self-fulfilling bad luck prophecy, something going wrong because they are worried about bad luck?
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Is anybody else having a problem with the Real Media stream? I get:
However the Windows Media Player stream works just fine, but crappy quality (thought maybe the "Real" one might be better.
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
Anyone know what the policy is for watching a shuttle launch? I wouldn't mind making a trip out there to see it before the shuttles get the axe in the future. It might be 80s technology but it was definitely a first and a workhorse. A lot of things were done with the shuttles and their crews.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Tell you what then, kill yourself and I will donate a thousand dollars to the science project of your choice. I bet we could get some more people on here to kick in too. Could be a real windfall for some deserving program- think about it - and it only requires one death, not seven!
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Yeah! Stop wasting time posting on Slashdot, build a robot army, overthrow the government, conquer europe and start a socialist paradise! What the hell is taking you so long! Go do it now!
How we know is more important than what we know.
One of those suggestions was an intelligent, well reasoned, well thought out proposal for improving humanity. The other was just silly! Where is he going to find a job?
I'll get started on the robots.
T-19 hours and holding This built-in hold typically lasts four hours. * Demate the orbiter's midbody umbilical unit I don't have any idea what this means, but it sounds really sexy. yb.
drink beer, and let the water run the mill
Assistant: Sir, the TV ratings for the launch are the highest in ten years.
Everyone: Yay!
Controller: And how's the spacecraft doing?
Assistant: I dunno. All this equipment is just used to measure TV ratings.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Strange, at nasa's nasatv page they list links for flash, realplayer, wmp, and quicktime. I can't see any use for the quicktime, as the nasatv appears to only be on realplayer and wmp. Is there really a quicktime link buried somewhere, or is that quicktime download link irrelevent?
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You sir, have set a new low.
Wait, so, T minus 43 hours is NOT in fact 43 hours before the launch. May I ask WTF? Dude, I've got this crazy idea, I know it's radical, just follow me here!
Let's have a countdown. Right? Only it shows the actual time until countdown. Crazy right? A timer that gives useful information?
And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be bannana-shaped.
"Clear the blast danger area of all nonessential personnel" What kind of flight plan is that? Shouldn't they leave the nonessential people in the blast danger area, and the essential people get to spare their lives???
Uh, huh. Even a hurricane has trouble getting front row seats to a shuttle launch and has to sneak in through the back way. I don't think anyone will notice...
Tom: It's a lovely day for a launch, here, live at Cape Canaveral, at the lower end of the Florida Peninsula, and the purpose of today's mission is truly, really electrifying.
Man 2: That's correct, Tom. The lion's share of this flight will be devoted to the study of the effects of weightlessness on tiny screws.
Tom: Unbelievable, and just imagine the logistics of weightlessness. And of course, this could have literally millions of applications here on Earth -- everything from watchmaking to watch repair.
Homer: Boring.
[tries to switch channels, but the batteries fall from the remote control]
Homer: No! The batteries!
Tom: Now let's look at the crew a little.
Man 2: They're a colorful bunch. They've been dubbed "the Three Musketeers". Heh heh heh --
Tom: And we laugh legitimately. There's a mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and a statistician.
Homer: Make it stop! [panics]
Bart: Oh no, not another boring space launch. Change the channel. Change the channel!
Homer: I can't! I can't!
[Bart dives for the plug and tears it from the wall]
[He and Homer both sigh]
Meanwhile, at Mission Control...
Assistant: Sir, we've run into a serious problem with the mission. These Nielsen ratings are the lowest ever.
[holds a piece of paper]
Scientist: Oh my God...we've been beaten by "A Connie Chung Christmas!"
Well in a lot of ways NASA's manned space program is a jobs program and without it there might a lot of homeless aerospace engineers(all the ones not willing to get a top secret clearance and work for the DOD on antimissile defense). The only problem with it as a jobs program for the potentially homeless is the efficiency of the charity is horrendous.
You know its a jobs program because in a recent article on the new adminstrator and his attempts to get NASA redirected towards something that isn't a dead end like the Shuttle and the ISS, there were several blurbs about how Congressman wouldn't stand for any budget cutting during the transition to CEV that meant lost jobs in any of their states/districts. The implication being NASA has to keep both its civil servant and Boeing/Lockheed contractor army at the same levels from now to eternity. That means NASA will continue to pour billions of dollars a year in to supporting this jobs program, whether there is real work or not, and it will drain funding away from actually building new launch vehicles. Also if you keep the staffing levels the same as now when CEV starts launching the launch costs are going to astronomical too.
Unfortunately since the beginning, NASA and its contractor horde were spread across the nation so congressman would give them money and political support because it resulted in jobs in their states and districts. It was OK during the Apollo era because funding was vast and they had a purpose. Over the years the funding dwindled, and the sense of purpose disappeared. It became a jobs program instead of an organization pushing back frontiers. It resulted in the ISS in particular, a 100 billion dollar hole in space which has no useful purpose other than it created high tech jobs, kept aerospace engineers in the U.S and Russia employed, and made Boeing, Lockheed etc. a lot of money for very little.
You want to fix NASA's manned space program can everyon civil servant and contractor and start over and implement Kelly Johnson's 14 rules(he built the SR-71 and U2 and the Skunkworks) in particular:
Rule No. 3
The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10 percent to 25 percent compared to the so-called normal systems).
Basicly fire all the civil servants and all the contractors and start over. Put everyone in one place, and put someone in charge that can do more with less instead of less with more. Burt Rutan would be a great counterpart for Kelly Johnson though he would have to be completely freed of all the politics and bureaucracy that is strangling NASA. There are lots of people in the Russian Space Agency who would also be great for the nucleus of an all new manned space program. Of course they are already doing Kliper and it sounds like there is a chance Europe will team with them on it and kiss NASA off. The RSA is already building mockups of Kliper, while NASA is just pushing piles of paper from point A to point B on CEV.
You know the manned space program is fixed when Johnson is closed. It was insane to put a 1000 miles between the launch site and mission control just because LBJ wanted to give his home state jobs, see, a jobs program again. The bad communication between Johnson and Kennedy was a leading contributor to both shuttle disasters.
@de_machina
"we're at T-20 minutes and holding, we'll be back after these messages"
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Here's a quick nitpick about the linked Countdown 101 from the summary - the clock in the picture reads +00:00:05, yet the caption says it was taken "before a Space Shuttle launch."
:)
I enjoy bloopers, and hopefully somebody else will too.
What does T- stand for anyway?
Sheesh, no wonder every time you guys get something from a foreign provider you always screw up the conversion... it's bad enough you have feet instead of meters, gallons instead of liters..... but, come on man, you guys just have to have your own special, unique number of hours in 3 days?!? It was all fine and good that you started spelling things differently after the War of Independance, but that's just wrong!
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I live in Tampa and the wife and I are thinking of taking our baby to see the launch. How early do you need to arrive?
Oh, and yes, some of us here at slashdot have spouses and even (gasp) offspring!
(sarcastic comment overload)
Finally, someone not drunk or stoned on slashdot.
It is supposed to be Time minus 43 hours, but it comes out to be roughly sixty-five hours until launch.
So if we really want to be honest about the count-down, we should say T-65 and then only hold when there is a real delay rather than having four or twelve hour holds which aren't counted.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Trust me, anyone that thinks Kliper is real is fundamentaly clueless. And anyone that thinks building a space transportation infrastructure by Kelly Johnson's "rules" is even more so. Firing all the civil servants and contractors and starting over would be a horrendous mistake. All of our space flight knowledge would be lost. Handing it over to a hobbiest like Rutan would be just as silly. And calling the Russians a nucleus is a joke -- they haven't even left LEO. And why in the world does proximity to the launch site make a hill of beans difference to the design effort? Jobs program? None of the companies you mention or allude to could really care less about the tiny amount of contract dollars they get from NASA -- their NASA business represents a drop in the bucket to their other lines of business and at much lower margins. Your solutions (I'm being generous here) are neither appropriate or practical.
Maybe it collapses on the top of your head and then you'll be happy, who knows...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
You know that someone has either done too much cociane, is stupid, or has read too much Rand when they try to apply a theory made up in an ideal situation to a real world on going issue. Challenger was caused by an Senile republican, and Columbia was caused by multiple failures and basic design flaws. Neither of these were distance related.
First, we do not live in a world where distance matters. Even in 1960 distance did not matter that much. Yes JSC is in houston becuase of LBJ, but if it weren't in houston, it would be somewhere else nearly equally far away.
I can generally tell that people are clueless about spaceflight, and real world events in general, when they complain about the locations of the space centers. KSC is where it is because it is the most southern part of the US. This allows us to save a bit of fuel on launch. It is not a good location for many other things due it exposure to threats, both natural and man made. If everything was in one place, a single bomb could take out everything. JSC is stout set of buidling that can work even in dangerous weather.
Furthermore, no practical politician is going to build that much money into one location. It would make the economy too dependent on the government teat. Just look at the communities that have dependencies on the dole created by the military bases.
And, as mentioned, distance is not that much of an issues. Even in the 60's we had these high tech things called telephones and aeroplanes. This allowed us to have the launch facilities in a very good location, and mission control in much more protected locations, and other centers in other locations to maximize the availablity of resources.
It is not the ideal solution, but no real world solution is. It is better than some commercial solutions, which carry the launch vehicle to sea, or launch from the texas desert, which means that we are going to have a fully fueled aircraft exploding, dropping burning peices and combustables from Dallas to Atlanta, instead of over the ocean.
As I have mentioned before, the private commercial sector has done little more that the Soviets did over 40 years ago. While your points are somewhat valid, they hav not produced an infrasture to send people to space, merely LEO, which can really be done with a hot air ballon.
I believe that the private sector can do, and will do it, in the next 10 years. But look at the ineffeciencies and waste in any large corporations. It matches or exceed governments. The same will be true for space travel.
And, btw, without government handouts we would have very little industry. Some of these handouts lasted a long time. The government funding of the taking of land from the native americans, and the giving of land to the new immigrants. The government handout of land to the railroads. The government handout of spectrum. The government support of the early airlines through the air mail. NASA is a government handout, one that is going to pay off when the private sector gets off it's ass and startes investing. Now, thanks to the dot com bubble, there is enough money to so do.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"Trust me, anyone that thinks Kliper is real is fundamentaly clueless."
:)
Like CEV is real, its an RFP from NASA that was a gigantic exercise in bureaucracy and killing trees to which Boeing and Lockheed responded with half baked artists conceptions, and Lockheed wants to build a mini-me shuttle. Why bother with a competition when you know in advance Boeing and Lockheed would be the two competitors, coin toss over which one wins at which point they partner to insure any pretense of competition disappears. All the people working on Shuttle transfer to CEV and the astronomical launch costs stay exactly the same if not more. Only thing going in NASA's favor is Griffin is way better than O'Keefe, maybe he will turn it around but I wager the politburo there will suck the life out of him.
As I recall in our last thread on the Russian Space agency you made this some fine statement about it being funded by Russian prostitutes, in one sentance you managed sexist, racist, petty and immature. You seem to have some bias against the Russians therefor deserve to be ignored on the subject. Most objective observers would realize they DO have a lot of talent there, they just don't have NASA's budget unfortunately. As you recall they built the core of the ISS because they had more than a decade experience of operating a continuosly manned space station on a budget far smaller than ISS. That leads to my point about doing more with less (Rutan and the RSA) versus doing less with more(NASA).
"starting over would be a horrendous mistake."
For you maybe because I'm guessing you are one of the beneficiaries of the jobs program and you would be out on your ass and homeless without out it. I'm guessing you work there and from your past posts the space program would be better off without you. Score one for my plan because it would ax you
"All of our space flight knowledge would be lost."
It wouldn't be lost, you would immediately hire back all the people that had a clue. The goal is to get rid of all the paper pushing bureaucrats and deadbeats that have NO useful knowledge. You would be replacing a soviet ministry and a bureaucracy with a meritocracy. If you have the experience, the knowledge and more importantly the right attitude and the enthusiasm you would get hired and get a fresh start in an organization that wouldn't slowly suck the life out of you.
There is some useful knowledge left at NASA in specific disciplines but most of the Apollo expertise is long gone and the expertise in the shuttle and ISS is expertise in failure. Unless they learned well from their massive mistakes they aren't necessarily useful. They've also turned in to teams that fail more than they succeed. You would need to break their losing streak to salvage them.
"they haven't even left LEO"
Neither has anyone at NASA. At this point all the people that knew how to leave LEO have retired or died, Von Braun principle among them, he died in 1977. Probably best he did't live to see what happened to his dream after he died, it would have killed him.
"And why in the world does proximity to the launch site make a hill of beans difference to the design effort?"
Because eventually you are going to launch the thing and you want all the people that designed and built it there to make sure it doesn't BLOW UP, dumbass. Its total insanity to have mission control and launch 1000 miles apart, and having teams discussing complex engineering issues handicapped by telecons, videocons, or 1000 mile trips to get together and figure out whats important and whats not, what is going to blow up the vehicle and what don't matter and should be ignored so it doesn't kill the launch schedule for no reason.
"None of the companies you mention or allude to could really care less about the tiny amount of contract dollars they get from NASA"
Bullshit. NASA contracts are billions of dollars to Lockheed and Boeing, plus there is massive dual use application with all the
@de_machina
I've got to try and get Helix Player working on my FC2 box...I want to watch this launch, at least from T-9:00 up through MECO. (And, of course, I'll still be holding my breath from "Go at throttle up" through SRB SEP.)
Be who you are...and be it in style!
"You know that someone has either done too much cociane, is stupid, or has read too much Rand"
Nice slam dude. Hate to point this out to you but the rest of your post is rambling and barely coherent.
"I can generally tell that people are clueless about spaceflight, and real world events in general, when they complain about the locations of the space centers."
If you read the accident reports on Challenger and Columbia you find they are chocked full of examples of bad communications going on between teams split between Johnson and Kennedy and that bad communication directly contributed to them making bad decisions, or failing to make good ones. I'm willing to bet if they had all been in the same room some of them wouldn't have happened.
Having worked on teams that are geographicly distributed and spanning time zones, I KNOW how bad communication can be, and worse when you have groups split up like that they tend to grow apart and start fighting with each other. Its an invitation to turf wars as each center fights for power and money, and it ends up in massive duplications, accounting, facilities, security, cafeterias, etc. Not a problem if you have lots of money to waste, stupid if you want to spend money on building spacecraft. You can do distributed developement for some things especially if EVERYONE is in a different place because you are less likely to get cliques and turf wars. You can do software with a distributed model because the product can travel through wires. You can do distributed development if people are working on things that are logically very compartmentalized. Kennedy and Johnson are massively intertwined with each other and its really stupid to not have them in the same place.
If you are building complex machinery you will be way ahead of the game if everyone is in one place. Your efficiency will be better, you will be less likely to make mistakes or have a miscommunication that results in a fatal error.
Not sure I'm really argueing that everyone should end up at Kennedy. All I'm argueing for is that the team be as small as possible, per Kelly's Rule #3 and that it all be in one place most of the time. From experience, increasing the size of teams makes them more inefficient, makes the schedule worse not better, and obviously makes the project vastly more expensive.
The bottomline best part about consolidation is it would totally disrupt and break up a largely disfunctional organization and hopefully break it out of a rut that is leading it to failure time after time.
At this point I give up even trying to rebutt your post. You ramble so much its hard to spot a coherent point to argue with.
@de_machina
Yes sir. that is VERY true. get there early, and unless you're walking, dont think about going anywhere. If you make it to spaceview park, look for people in green shirts with white letters on them.. The acne ridden fat guy will be me, i'd be very happy to meet you! 73 DE KI4GMB
You've obviously never worked on explosives then.
Currently it is estimated for a 70% chance of launch on Wednesday, with the chances lowering later in the week
Yeah, this makes no sense at all. Eighty percent of the time, it's guaranteed to work every time.
Actually I worked with a bunch of meteorologists.
Anytime you see "70% chance of rain" it means that of all the noted times that similar weather conditions occurred, 70% of those times the weather conditions resulted in rain.
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
I'd LOVE to have planned hold-times in my software development schedule!
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
D-Day was the fourth date available for the British sojourn to France in 1944.
Before it were A-Day, B-Day and C-Day, all of which were cancelled due to bad weather.
Do you Americans no nothing about WWII except the big bomb bit?
No sharp objects, I'm a programmer!
D-Day was the fourth date available for the British sojourn to France in 1944. Before it were A-Day, B-Day and C-Day, all of which were cancelled due to bad weather.
Do you Americans no nothing about WWII except the big bomb bit?
Well, WWII aside, I'm pretty sure some of us under-educated ignorant redneck Americans have learned how to spell know .
It is the destiny of the US to lead the exploration of space. Whether you like it or not, Congress will see to it that this is always true. If China, Japan, ESA, etc. ever appear to be surpassing us in space technology, there will be a boost to NASA's budget so that we don't loose national prestige. Accept it. Robotic spacecraft will supplement human spaceflight, but never replace it.
Heh heh, perhaps the supporter of the mighty empire should learn to spell 'lose' : ) Perhaps the US will lead space exploration in the next few centuries, but all the evidence points to China, India and an expanded EU being the economic growth areas in the next century, and thus the technological leaders. To be blunt though, who cares? Why all the jingoism? Personally I hope we get over personal rivalries and all contribute a little more together to complementary efforts (not using the ISS as an example : ).
Re Robotic versus human space-flight, while you are correct to point out that humans *prefer* to see other humans exploring, it may be that robots are our first emissaries to the stars for more practical reasons.
They are after all eminently suited to the long periods of boredom and repetitive tasks such trips would entail. The only problem they currently have is reproduction/repairs, but we probably will create robots who can create copies of themselves given the right workshops to do it, at which point they're just as useful as humans, and more reliable, though not as flexible in unforseen situations.
The shuttle is really just a drain on NASA's resources now and is clearly not the future of space-flight, however it's impossible to cancel because of national pride. It's just helping to contribute to the huge US deficit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-day
-Reid
While I agree that NASA should only launch if they feel it is safe to proceed, I think it would be pathetic if they stalled this launch yet again. They have had more than enough time to ensure the security of the shuttle, but that blundering bureaucracy just can't seem to get anything done these days.
I totally agree with you. The shuttle is pretty much as ready to launch as it can get. I'd even argue it's safer now than when it was brand new. My disagreement was with the argument that it would be good for science/NASA/anything if the Discovery had an accident.
Like CEV is real
Let's make a simple bet -- I say CEV will launch before Klipper. Payoff -- an apology here. I'll even simplify it: any new launch vehicle by either country counts.
As you recall they built the core of the ISS because they had more than a decade experience of operating a continuosly manned space station on a budget far smaller than ISS. That leads to my point about doing more with less (Rutan and the RSA) versus doing less with more(NASA).
I think you are stretching it to say the FGB, a leftover, unlaunched Mir part, is the "core" of the ISS. It was simply the first (and delivered late) part of the ISS -- paid for by the US. There were several other US modules ready to go -- in fact, an interim control module was ready as a replacement. As far as Rutan, you know that his accomplishment isn't anywhere near orbital technology.
Score one for my plan because it would ax you
Trust me, I am not dependent on NASA funding -- or my parent's allowance like you...
Neither has anyone at NASA.
Actually, there are several Apollo-era scientists/engineers working at NASA and NASA's contractors. Moreover, the Shuttle was designed by them. Your critique of their design is simply monday morning quarterbacking and ignorance of the constraints they had to work within.
Its total insanity to have mission control and launch 1000 miles apart
How would you suggest returning from the moon? Should we send up the engineering team first? Lots of industries have non-collocated teams and do just fine. Moreover, the designs aren't exclusively done at JSC anyway -- they are done in California, Texas, Kansas, etc. In fact, only Mission Operations are anything close to being exclusively done at JSC. So what was your point?
NASA contracts are billions of dollars to Lockheed and Boeing
Yes, but these contracts are cost plus with razor thin margins (often less than 10%). Go look at Boeing's and LockMart's income statement and tell me that $100M is "massive" to them. NASA business pales in comparison to their DoD businesses.
Education is the cure to ignorance -- go to class.
Parent is high, Grandparent is spot on.
Apollo did just fine without collocation and with Kennedy and the Manned Space Flight Center (now JSC). What the Parent forgets is that we live in the real world and like it or not, politics are real (and good actually). Putting JSC in Texas guaranteed funding.
Remember, politics are not bad -- it is how large groups of people in a democracy make decisions. What the parent suggests is, at best, a benevolent dictatorship and, at worst, is simply tyranny.
Kelly Johnson's "rules" are fine and dandy for single vehicle development efforts -- in fact they are fantastic. But the systems we are discussing are far beyond even the remarkable SR-71 and U-2. They are systems of systems and require deep thoughts about systems architectures that go way beyond what any list of "rules" prescribe. It's simply not enough to say "get a few good people together in a single place and throw pizza under the door until they are done."
Finally, any successful team requires mutual respect. Calling someone a "fucktard" or "barely coherent" probably explains why the parent hasn't been on any successful, non-collacted teams...
"Let's make a simple bet -- I say CEV will launch before Klipper."
... that if you read the accident reports on Challenger and Columbia there is a recurring theme that NASA failed to recogize danger and to deal with fatal flaws, because their team communication was terrible, and it was especially bad between the launch team at Kennedy and all the teams at Johnson. You can scatter your team all over the U.S. its just going to cost a fortune and you are dramaticly increasing the chance for mistakes, and in this case those mistakes cost billions and kill people.
Hell yea I'll take that bet as long as its a MANNED launch to LEO, safe up and back. I'm willing to accept the big handicap that NASA has way more money to throw at it. Even if I lose I wont have to apologize until 2015 at the earliest. I'm sure they will throw some tin cans in to LEO before then but they have to be MANNED in to orbit and thats gonna take NASA forever after they get done pushing paper and wringing their hands. I really hope the Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, Indians throw money behind Kliper. I bet they will, some ESA people are already talking like it, because I think they all know NASA is a joke at this point, and nobody wants to partner with Bush's arrogant America on anything at this point(excepting the UK).
"a leftover, unlaunched Mir part, is the "core" of the ISS."
Not even gonna start this stupid arguement again, Zarya and Zveda are the core of the station, everyone knows it except you. I think you know it too but refuse to admit it to yourself. It was manned as soon as they were operational. Only major module the U.S. has there at the moment is Destiny a lab module, it isn't the core.
Stop dissing Mir. While the U.S. spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars on artist conceptions of a space station, none of which flew, the Russians had a permenent manned presence in space for a tiny fraction of the cost. If the Russian hadn't built the core for the ISS I wager it would still be sitting on an arists table. NASA saves face acting like it was charity bringing in the Russians. In fact they had NO knowledge about building a long duration space station. Skylab was cool but it was brief, LONG ago, and done by Apollo veterans most of whom have retired or died.
"Your critique of their design is simply monday morning quarterbacking and ignorance of the constraints they had to work within."
Their "design" failed in every respect. Granted a political quagmire between Presidents, Congress, NASA and the DOD helped it fail but they still failed and that is all that matters in the end. They failed to succeed. It was supposed to be cheap, it was the antithesis of cheap. It was supposed to have a high launch rate, it instead has been unlaunchable for years, and the launch rate goes down every year (and by the way the Russians had to step up and keep the ISS going for the last 2 1/2 years, and put NASA astronauts and supplies though NASA hasn't paid them a cent due to an embargo over Iran). It was supposed to do evertyhing in space. After Challenger it was largely abandoned and relegated to doing incredibly expensive physiology experiments. After Columbia its now good for nothing other than faking an expensive expendable launch vehicle to finish a $100 billion dollar hole in space.
Sorry man the Shuttle was a failure no matter how you slice it. Its sad, I wish it wasn't but it is. People need to come to grips with two failures in a row(Shuttle and ISS) and do whatever it take to stop failing.
There are some great technical achievements in the Shuttle but that doesn't change the fact that as a launch vehicle it was a failure.
"How would you suggest returning from the moon?"
Huh? Think you need to get there first and I don't think NASA has any chance to get there before 2020 if ever.
"So what was your point?"
"Moreover, the designs aren't exclusively done at JSC anyway -- they are done in California, Texas, Kansas, etc."
@de_machina
Hell yea I'll take that bet... because I think they all know NASA is a joke at this point, and nobody wants to partner with Bush's arrogant America on anything at this point(excepting the UK).
Look's like we have a bet. Being right doesn't equate to being arrogant, and I for one am happy to keep foreigners out of the critical path and out of the militarily strategic high ground.
Stop dissing Mir.
It's hard not dissing the definition of a deathtrap. Between fires, progress collisions, and fritzy systems, Mir wasn't up to ISS' reliability. Plus, Skylab was better, bigger, and before its time.
Zarya and Zveda are the core of the station
They'd be lifeless, dark, and cold without the US contribution.
Speaking of dissing, you should lay of the Shuttle. It's humanity's best and most reliable (both in absolute and statistically significant) manned vehicle to LEO. Yeah, it's expensive. So what -- we can afford it.
"Apollo did just fine without collocation and with Kennedy and the Manned Space Flight Center"
Apollo had VAST funding and could spend its way through any problem and any excess. Apollo had a precisely defined mission and schedule, thank you JFK, and uninterrupted funding to achieve it. Apollo happened before NASA had a chance to fully atrophy and bureaucratize. It was young then, the people were all the best, and they were there because they wanted to do the impossible. It was a set of teams a lot more like Skunkworks teams. None of that is true of today's NASA soviet ministry of space. Also note that scattered Apollo team built some pretty crappy hardware in the beginning. As you recall they killed 3 astronauts in a fire because their first attempt at a capsule was a badly designed death trap.
I'm not saying you can't do distributed space craft development, I'm just saying its a great way to waste money, blow schedules, and cripple the project with communication problems. Just because its the only way NASA has done development doesn't prove its right and its obviously gotten less right with the passage of each new decade.
"Remember, politics are not bad -- it is how large groups of people in a democracy make decisions."
In your post of five minutes ago you were pointing out what a great job the Shuttle team and that you had to give them allowances due to "the constraints they had to work within." Most of thost constraints were politically induced, between Presidents Congress, NASA, and the Air Force. To win DOD funding and support they had to make design changes that made the vehicle vastly more expensive and dangerous. As soon as Challenger blew up the DOD dropped the Shuttle like a rock, even though they were key contributors to making it the overpriced mess it is.
ISS was nothing but an exercise in politics and it is a complete disaster as a result. Politics doesn't belong anywhere near successful engineering. Good engineers do things becuase they are right not because they are politically correct.
If you are going to develop successful, complex spacecraft for a reasonable price, the politicians or corprate executives need to set the objective, insure an adequate funding steam, and then get out of the way and let engineers like Von Braun, Kelly Johnson or Burt Rutan figure out how. JFK mostly did that with Apollo. It hasn't been done that way since and NASA hasn't succeeded since.
"Kelly Johnson's "rules" are fine and dandy for single vehicle development efforts -- in fact they are fantastic. But the systems we are discussing are far beyond even the remarkable SR-71 and U-2."
Bullshit. The team is going to be bigger than the original skunkworks but his approach would work just as well for CEV as it did for SR-71. The key point is hiring a team half or a quarter the size of the one NASA would hire, and to be selective so you don't hire the worst fraction of the people.
Its not really about rules, its about an approach that is obviously superior to NASA's, unless you like bureaucracies, and no one in their right mind does.
"Finally, any successful team requires mutual respect."
Respect is something you earn. If you give it to people who don't deserve it it isn't respect, its pandering. Dude I don't know either of you, I haven't read any posts you've written that command respect. If you ever write one I'll consider it. Your concept of mutual respect sounds like modern NASA kind of politically correct mutual respect you practive during consenus building. Hire a bunch of people and "mutually respect" each other even if they're losers, and end up with a losing team with one failure after another. Respect is earned and the best way to earn it is to succeed.
Rutan commands respect because he's done two hard things no one else has done, Voyager and SpaceShipOne, on tiny budgets and with tiny teams, teams so small that teammebers can said I made that happen, versus NASA where the team is so large half of them can do nothing useful and you wont notice.
@de_machina
Your concept of mutual respect sounds like modern NASA kind of politically correct mutual respect you practive during consenus building. Hire a bunch of people and "mutually respect" each other even if they're losers, and end up with a losing team with one failure after another.
You obviously don't know anyone at NASA.
"Being right doesn't equate to being arrogant, and I for one am happy to keep foreigners out of the critical path and out of the militarily strategic high ground."
Well all you are is arrogant, and a xenophobe. Me I judge and respect people based on their ability and accomplishment and not on blind nationalism. The increasingly xenophobic American approach to the world creates a high probability of isolation. I have high hopes the ESA will partner with Russia on Kliper, give them much needed cash and the result is ESA and Russia will have a good man rated vehicle and the ESA will be free of NASA's petty tyrannies.
"Speaking of dissing, you should lay of the Shuttle. "
Stick it. The shuttle deserves a heavy dose of reality and the truth. Its managed to avoid it for way to long.
"It's humanity's best and most reliable (both in absolute and statistically significant) manned vehicle to LEO."
Bullshit again. Soyuz is by any definiton more reliable. The Shuttle has killed more astronauts than any space vehicle in history. Like I said the Soyuz kept the ISS going for the last 2 1/2 years. Don't think Soyuz has ever been ground for 2 1/2 years. That is not realiable especially when you have a space station that REQUIRES regular launches.
If the Shuttle were reliable it wouldn't be flying with the massive safety constraints its now flying with it.
"Yeah, it's expensive. So what -- we can afford it."
As for affording it that is OBVIOUSLY untrue. Griffin is struggling to scrape together the money for CEV because the Shuttle and ISS are bleeding NASA white. They've been draining NASA white for decades. You need to judge the cost based on lost opportunity. How many cool things could NASA have done that would have had real long term benefit but couldn't because they were pouring billions in to two vert dead ends.
Oh and again if you face reality in both budget deficit and current account deficit the U.S. can't afford it any more, for the most part your dreaded foreigners are paying for it.
Interesting irony you are so keen on "keep foreigners out of the critical path" but you are totally dependent on borrowing money from them to keep the U.S. afloat and to squander their money on NASA.
@de_machina
"You obviously don't know anyone at NASA."
I developed this fine attitude towards NASA because I've known way to many people at NASA. There are some great people at NASA but they are shining stars in a bureaucratic wasteland. There is a sea of mediocre civil servants there building little empires and who can't be fired no matter how bad they are, like all government agencies. The true conservatives are right, the ever exanding and ever incompetent civil service is sucking the life out of America. And there is an army of contractors there who are looking for a paycheck, not to push back any frontiers, though its so cool to brag about working at NASA, ooooo. The number 1 priority for all of them is to maximize the quanity of our tax dollars they gain control over so they can squander them.
NASA took a nation of young people who in 1969 reveled in Star Trek and Apollo dreams about space exploration, and pushing back frontiers, me included, and they completely crushed every one of those dreams. When I was younger I marvelled at Apollo and now it will be a miracle if anyone manages to get back to the Moon before I die. I have zero chance of ever making it out of Earth's gravity well now unless its on a Rutan spaceship. Back in 1969 me and Von Braun figured we would be on Mars by now, and pushing even further.
I had a roommate in college who worked at JPL and I kick myself for not having done anything to get my foot in there. They are one of the few places still living the dream, there and Scaled Composites.
Please stop being a whiny apologist for NASA's manned space ministry. Just face it, it hasn't worked in 30 years, anyone with a clue can see and state the obvious.
@de_machina
I bet they each have a copy ready for 12:01 time on Saturday. They're just shy about the news getting out.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Yay. It appears the Russian government has green lighted Kliper and hopefully other countries, especially ESA might chip in. My horse is off and running. Meanwhile NASA let some multimillion dollar contracts to Boeing and Lockheed to provide paper for a committee meeting.
I notice your current horse, the Shuttle, the one you said was so reliable, such a success and achievement, is for all practical purposes grounded indefinitely. Apparently there was yet another one of long running intermittent failures, this time in the ET fuel sensor they never fixed, one that could have either caused premature engine cut off or failure to cut off the engine when the tank empties and threatened another catastrophic failure.
We should have confidence that it will be fixed because now they have TWELVE, thats right TWELVE, different teams trying to fix it. I guess you can do TWELVE teams when you have 6,000 people working at your jobs program.
GO TEAM GO.
@de_machina