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Europe to Join Russia Building Next Space Shuttle
An anonymous reader writes "Development agreement takes shape during the Paris Air Show
It's all but official--Russia and Europe will soon embark on a cooperative effort to build a next-generation manned space shuttle. Speaking at the Paris Air Show, in Le Bourget, France, in June, Russian space officials confirmed earlier reports from Moscow that their partners at the European Space Agency would join the Russian effort to build a new reusable orbiter, dubbed Kliper."
the EU and not this! ha.
How many of you drive old cars, trucks, vans, or SUV's that say they are a joy to drive and run like the day they were brand new? No one would say that. Why NASA is using a shuttle that is 20 years old is beyond me. When I was 16 my parents gave me the old family '81 Datsun 310. I was grateful and even a bit excited to have it. I even thought I was "the man" because I had a car and most of my friends didn't, but it was a 13 year old car by the time I got it and had plenty of quirks. It had more than 300K miles on it when I got it. It ran pretty well and didn't cause me any major malfunctions, (Other than a clutch) but as soon as I could afford it I got a newer car! The car made it a year or two for my brother before giving up. I think it finally died in '97 with well over 400K miles on it. Those Damn shuttles have TONS more miles on them than that stupid car. Plus they are in a tad more hostile condition than the local freeways and roads. It baffles me that they are still willing to send astronauts up in them? Beyond that, I'm just as perplexed by the fact that there are astronauts blinded by the "I'm going to be in a text book one day" mentality that they are willing to ride up in the damn thing! Just plain stupidity if you asked me. It's time to produce something new with new seals, gaskets, and gap filler, and maybe a satelite dish. (Weather shouldn't affect their picture up there being so close to the satelites themselves.) If they plan on putting a man on Mars they've got a long way to go with those shitty shuttles they're still nursing along.
/. on at this moment? I mean c'mon, be honest with yourself!
I mean, how many of you would really rather be sitting at say a 20 year old computer right now versus the one you're on reading
Heck, maybe I got it wrong, but it's Friday evening and I'm almost done with my 12pack. *hic*
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I know those guys up north built the space arm and some drilling equipment that will be sent to mars in the near future, seems like those guys have a knack for tiny/specialised space projects.. hope they get a contract or two. Unfortunately they may be too politically tied in & stuck with our our crumbling space program :-(
Is this just another revival of the MAKS programme, or an entirely different thing?
Another thing is that the Korolev site mentions nothing of this.
I found the "Any" key.
If this goes like other discussions on this and similar topics about advanced technologies appearing in various parts of the world, it will split into two camps. One camp that thinks it will be cool because new tech is always cool. The other camp will lament that North America is falling behind. To the latter I say that it is not North America falling behind, but rather the rest of the world is catching up. That's inevitable and that's good. Don't doubt that we don't have a new shuttle on the board somewhere too. The the other camp. I say this new shuttle will be cool. It will be interesting to see what approach they take in designing it based on years of observing the North American program.
Why? Because the USA seems to think it's penis will be considered too small if some other countries do something better than we can. This will give the budget-makers incentive to make sure that NASA gets on the ball and develops a shuttle replacement quicker. We can't let other countries do anything better than we can, it's just not allowed.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
That thing looks ugly.
You'd have thought that they would have learned enough not to deploy a reusable shuttle based on the bad experience of NASA with these things. It's just not a cost effective way to run a space program.
Hasn't it been proven that a Shuttle type transport is not the most cost effective way of lifting heavy loads and even for things like simple manned space flight? Could this be a case of trying to copy the USA, just because, or is it viable. I seem to remember reading that making a temporary space station for experents say out of Apollo parts like skylab, when done today with other space parts we have lying around would be cheaper than a schuttle. Feel free to prove me wrong, but the one size fits all seems to be what NASA is getting away from, and specialization is the way to go.
Welcome to the Entropy Bar, may I take your order?
How many of you re-post yesterday's posts and say they are a joy to read and as informative as the day they were brand new?
/. at this moment? I mean c'mon, be honest with yourself! ...
I mean, how many of you would really rather be sitting and reading, say, a 24 hour old post right now versus the one you're reading on
Ass.
The original post is found here.
1 &cid=13352361
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15944
Life is not for the lazy.
I don't see how anyone can think the US is falling behind when a couple guys in a garage in Mojave are pretty much doing the same thing as this EU/Russian partnership.
It is official -- Netcraft confirms: NASA is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered NASA community when the EU confirmed that NASA space share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all space. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that NASA has lost more space share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. NASA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Space Admin comprehensive launching test.
You don't need to be a Putin to predict NASA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: NASA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for NASA because NASA is dying. Things are looking very bad for NASA. As many of us are already aware, NASA continues to lose space share. Red, blue and white ink flows like a river of blood.
The shutte department is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core scientists. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time NASA scientists Brooke "Deep Throat" Miller and Jose Maria "The American Adolf" Sanchez only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: NASA is dying.
All major surveys show that NASA has steadily declined in space share. NASA is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If NASA is to survive at all it will be among Open Source Spacecrafting dilettante dabblers. NASA continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, NASA is dead.
Fact: NASA is dying
A one-shot jet is what we need. Build it cheaply, fly it across the Atlantic once and then dump it. Smaller, faster, cheaper is the answer. We might lose the occasional load of passengers, but it's gotta be cheaper overall.
One-shot cars, too - I mean, look at all the rust buckets you see on the road these days, it's just begging for trouble. How many of all those annual road deaths could have been avoided if every car was brand new for its one & only trip? Ford & GM agree - buy a new car each day, fully guaranteed for its designed lifetime, then melt it down into scrap & recycle responsibly.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It's the US that's broke: it's borrowing half a trillion dollars per year abroad to finance its lifestyle and military.
As for following through, the EU has completed several Mars missions and the Galileo satellites are being readied for launch at the end of 2005. Europe also has a commercial space program with considerable lift capacity.
Hasn't it been proven that a Shuttle type transport is not the most cost effective way of lifting heavy loads and even for things like simple manned space flight?
It has only been demonstrated that the Shuttle, in it's half completed "still a prototype" design, is not an overly cost effective way of putting up payloads.
A number of additional steps in the program, cut by congress, would have significantly helped.
Rod Taylor
I don't think the EU and Russia would be doing this if it weren't practical. Just because the US shuttle was built by a committee with a bunch of retarded congressmen looking over their shoulders doesn't mean someone else can't do it right.
"Hasn't it been proven...?"
Now there's an intelligent and informed remark. Feel free to get your head out of your posterior and do your own research.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Despite the title, it's doesn't look like a replication of the NASA shuttle. The phrase "reuseable orbiter" used in the article seems closer. It looks more like a capsule to which they've added some semblance of "wings" to allow a little bit of maneuvarbility and more landing options. Hell some of the designs for the CEV look not dissimilar, and that is supposed to be NASAs next generation that they are seriously banking on.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
It is interesting that the US is looking to revert to a capsule kind of design after all these years.
Wonder why the Europeans and Russians prefer the shuttle design.
Tor
My memory could be (no, certainly is) shot these days, but I seem to remember the USSR launching an unmanned craft that looked almost identical to the space shuttle. I think they abandonded the entire program.
Anyone care to elaborate?
Although government funded/designed/managed/operated space project have a place, I argue that the future is in private hands. What will make space cheap is competition and mass production. In that regard, I, personally, have more faith in Scaled Composites or Blue Origin than in hand-wringing risk-averse bureaucratic organizations. As much as I love NASA, it's high cost structure breeds risk aversion and that risk aversion breeds higher costs in a very vicious cycle. Moreover, the constant political pressure to cut costs perversely raises the per-unit cost of space travel. Unless we can break that cycle, space will only become more and more expensive and launches less and less frequent.
One key is mass production -- amortizing all that costly engineering over a greater number of vehicles. Current commercial ventures may only be suborbital today, but competition to reach orbit and provide tourist services will probably lead to the development of ever more capable private launch systems.
Uless we can drammatically reduce the cost of access to space,
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It's looking like there should be quite a bit of competition soon in human orbital spaceflight. Here are the various competitors I can think of off-hand:
* USA: Shuttle-derived system, probably with a CEV capsule on top. There's several downsides to a shuttle-derived system, but it keeps the constituencies happy and should have enough government momentum to keep on going.
* Russia and Europe: Kliper's been searching around for financial support for a while, and it looks like they finally got at least -some- funding from Europe.
* China: various iterations of Shenzhou spacecraft
In the private sector:
* t/Space: The (Rutan-affiliated?) company just completed a parachute drop test and water landing of a full-scale model of their proposed CXV space capsule. It's uncertain if they'll get more funding from NASA, but their concept seems sound and may get private investment. Oh, and their web page has some really spiffy videos.
* SpaceX: They've already announced their intent to compete for Bigelow's orbital prize, and their upcoming man-rated Falcon V will be large enough to carry a Gemini-style capsule.
Now what about destinations? Besides the ISS, we've got Robert Bigelow's inflatable space station modules, which should be up and operational by 2010, with several prototype launches before then. He's planning on selling these modules to various groups and countries, so hopefully we'll have several different space stations up there.
Between Shenzhou 8 and 9 China is planning on launching a small orbital laboratory, which Shenzhou 9 will be docking with. Various members of the Chinese space program have also been visiting Bigelow's facility, so perhaps we'll see them doing something with his modules.
The future should be interesting.
Europe's joining Russia?
I thought that Russia was part of Europe! For a while, the Soviet part of Europe, but still part of Europe! Well, at least part of Russia is part of Europe. So is Russia joining itself? Partly? If you're in the European part of Russia, do you join Russia? Are Asian Russians getting joined by European Russians? Oh wait. I've got it.
In Soviet Europe, Russia joins you!
To call it a shuttle is almost a misgnomer... it's not a shuttle like a space shuttle: there's no cargo bay. It's not a space truck like the US Shuttle was. It's basically a reusable one piece Soyuz. Yes, it's re-engineered and it can take seven to station with minimal payload, but it launches like a capsule - on the front of the rocket - and it should reenter like a capsule, unless they opt for the wings and thermal tile TPS. That part isn't clear at this point.
-everphilski-
Turgidson:
Is that the Russian Ambassador you're talking about?
Muffley:
Yes, it is, General.
Turgidson:
Ahh, am I to understand the Russian Ambassador is to be admitted entrance to the War Room?
Muffley:
That is correct. He is here on my orders.
Turgidson:
I... I don't know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean... begins closing his notebooks he'll see everything. He'll see the big board!
Muffley:
That is precisely the idea, General. That is precisely the idea. Stains, get Premier Kissov on the Hotline.
Apologies to George C Scott and Peter Sellers.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It isn't really a shuttle. If your definition of "shuttle" is reusable then OK it's a shuttle. But the reason the US space shuttle was called "the shuttle" is because of the payload bay. The space shuttle was to be used to routinely shuttle stuff to and from space.
The Kliper can't do that.
The Kliper is basically an upgraded resuable Soyuz that can host 7 people (good for station) and a basic amount of payload. A Soyuz is a three part contraption of which only 1 module returns to earth and none is resued. The Kliper is just a single piece reusable capsule that's stretched. It launches like a capsule - on the tip of a rocket. It reenters like a capsule (unless they opt for wings... the judges are still out on that one). It's not a shuttle.
-everphilski-
I know that this will be considered to be flame bait, but in my opinion it is the truth. The Russians and Europeans collaborating without the US is a direct response to the Bush administrations contempt of international cooperation. The Bush administration has make it clear in every possible way that that the only correct position on any subject is the US position. When the rest of the world disagrees the response is a mix of anger, contempt and disdain.
This is true from the war in Iraq to the Koyoto treaty to appointing Bolton to the UN. After that kind of treatment it is only natural that everyone else will decide that they don't need the US and will go about building the future without US involvement.
This is a very bad development for everyone. The big problems like space, global warming and war need cooperation from all the international community, and splitting into competing factions will only lead to failure.
I'm very upset over this, because we all loose.
I'd like to add that the 25,000 ground crew personnel positions required to keep the shuttle operations going... rain or shine, lanuch or no launch, certainly add a huge portion of the cost to launch a single shuttle mission. If an airplace going to Europe from America would require 25,000 people to get it there and only flew once every six months, with safety reports and equipment tests that the paperwork alone would make a pile of debris in a landfill larger than the plane + "launch system" on each flight, those flights to Europe would cost about $20-$100 million each as well and would only be done as a congressional junket.
Most private initives are to try and cut the ground crew for launches down to a very manageable number, like 5-10, and to try and increase the number of launches to keep that ground crew busy. Assuming the rest of the cost of manufacturing is kept the same for private launches, that savings alone makes a huge difference. The CEV (and other designs at NASA) mainly try to keep that same 25,000 support personnel in their jobs.
I know this is slightly OT, but years and years ago there was a sci-fi book that has always stuck with me. The book was about a guy who was essentially the first EMT in space. But, the really interesting part was the simple space-station technology. basically, they stuck a really simple box-car sized tube on the top of a booster and shot it up there. The astronauts came back in some kind of capsule (lifting body?, reusable?) but left the big tube (sort of like a tank) up there. These tanks had basic standard life support systems and standard airlocks on each end and on two sides. Each launch put a new one up there, they'd strap 'em together and eventually they had a space station. Need more solar power? send one up with a bunch of panels inside it. Deploy them over the surface of existing modules already in orbit. Need more computers? life-support? water treatment? whatever, just send another one up with the gear crammed in and depoy it as needed throughout the standardized compartments. neat concept. love to see it. prolly never happen. ho hum.
man, I feel like mold.
Do not put capsule on the side of the rocket where things can fall on it from above. Gosh. This is so wrong. I think they did it just because to make it in non-Russian way. Just that it has different profile from Russian style rocket of historic 1957 and 1961.
... must be KDE.
thank you, thank you. please tip the waitresses
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times"
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Now, back on topic, I thought it interesting that one of the bonuses for Russia here was the fact that they could launch from closer to the equator. I feel like I should know this, but I don't:
Can someone explain to me why that is so vital? I mean, why can't they launch straight up in the air and assume a tilted orbit? Why does it make such a difference when they launch closer to the equator?
I feel like the answer should be obvious to me, but it isn't. What am I overlooking?
Okay, never mind. I just looked it up. It really amazes me that the Earth's spin makes that much of a difference.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
I hope the cars of the future can fly... they've been promising it for years.... ;)
Klippy: I see you are building a space shuttle. Would you like me to overrun the budget?
There is truth in humor.
and why is it in use 20 years beyond its real useful life. Simple, politics. This isn't about aerospace frames being used for long periods, that was just an excuse.
It was politics. Politics inside and outside of NASA. Face it, they went to the moon and promptly got lost in Earth orbit.
When you get first prize your first time out in a major it kinda gets boring to play the regular games. In other words, we made the moon and then went back to playing in orbit.
The Shuttle was a fancy trap. Straight out of science fiction it looked cool and caught the public's imagination. The trouble was that once we caught the golden goose it turned out to be a spruce goose. Pride then got in the way and politics were there to keep it all hidden.
The space station was justification of the shuttle program. It had no other real use. What was the point of spending even more time in Earth orbit. We did it with Skylab and the Russians did it very well with their program. We should have went to the moon and stayed there. Instead we had to justify this spruce goose all because of pride and politics.
At least we know its gone in a few years, perhaps the best thing that could happen to NASA is the kick upside their head.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
orbits decay. what happens when those dead objects bang into each other or come back down over LA???
See also the Wikipedia entry for very extensive additional information about the Kliper project.
It should be clear why NASA doesn't use new technology. Take for example warships. With have 30-40 year old ships that are still in condition (with a short amount of prep time) to go into combat. These cost $100 million when they were built (30-40 years ago). With that kind of investment you can't afford to only get 10 years use out of it. The same goes for the space shuttles, but they're only much, much, more expensive!
Holy good fuck, did you just walk through a cow's stomach tripped out on acid and fritos?
"God is dead." - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead." - God
Introduction
------------
This FAQ presents some of the truths about human life that
are most frequently denied for social reasons and reasons of
cognitive dissonance. Our theory is that by getting these
out of the way, we have the rest of our lives to enjoy without
having to constantly reinforce illusions.
1. Death is real.
There is absolutely no evidence or even indicators that suggest
there is a "world beyond the material," and there is no necessary
connection between that world and human beings after death. When
we remove the anthropomorphic concerns from religion, we can see
that the religious process is shaped around the human fear of death
and need for a "reason" to live.
Our staff suggests that the "reason" for existence is tautological
to the process of existence.
2. Social behavior is insincere.
People seem to think that in a society where we must use each
other in order to make enough "profit" to survive, that social
behavior is sincere and honest. This is not so. Whether at a
subconscious or conscious level, human beings need each other
as business partners, employees, customers and leaders. Their
behavior is as a consequence involves first protecting themselves
from possible social repercussions, and then assuring themselves
protection in material dealings through friendship, alliance and
dependency.
We are blinded by anthropomorphism here also, where a normal
couple of man and wife appears to us as a sensible, loving
relationship; none of us think to question whether or not it is
simply a friendly business partnership to raise a child, a
process which benefits both individuals.
3. No one has your "best interests" in mind.
Individuals have their own best interests in mind. They know
you only as someone through whom they function to achieve
their own goals. Otherwise, they would have to be specifically
created and lying in wait to anticipate your needs.
4. Society is inefficient and expensive.
Every business must make at least 100% return on every item
sold (meaning: double the wholesale cost of an item to find
its price on the shelf) and in most cases charge even more.
The scary fact is that it has already been sold through
at least one middle business, meaning that at every level
of transaction, the price is being doubled at a minimum.
More conventionally, the cost was a tenth of what is being
charged to the next level in the system.
5. Genetics determines most of your personality.
Despite mountains of research and soul-searching public .
displays of emotion to the contrary, most scientific evidence
still suggests that the largest part (80%) or more of
personality and abilities in the individual is derived from
the abilities, characteristics and traits of the parents
of that individual. While we like to think about how on
a social level, we are all "equal" and basically the same,
it is easy to see that people have different abilities
by the nature of specialization. The "equality" myth exists
only as a social convenience to make the individual feel
accepted for his or her contribution, no matter how menial
it may be, and while "equality" is given lip service by
nearly every public figure, it cannot matter to them as they
are acting upon their own impulse and self-interest. Thus
no one is "equal" to the individual and, as the individual
seeks the more proficient specialized business partners and
friends/associates, there is clearly no expectation of
"equality" in ability, or those associates, friends and
business collaborators
6. Evolutionary differences do exist between populations.
In our world of social acceptability, things like racism and
ethnic pride are not considered safe or "fair." The reason is
that someone, somewhere, in the crowd, might feel that they are
less "equal" and therefore less appreciated by
Apparantly, the Kliper will run on KDE (that's why its got a silly name) and thus be more user friendly than the USA's GNU/Shuttle. The developers hope that will reduce the number of crashes, and that the more solid frontend won't break into bits and damage the wings. Whilst it will be based on a Linux(R) kernel, it will not use the name "Linux(R)" as Russia can't afford a license to use the word.
Linux(R) is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, and its use has now been restricted to those with money and editorial comment - even the non-profits and private individuals have to have money to spare.
I don't think most people realise just how low the ISS flies. It flies at an altitude of up to 354.1 km. As a comparison, the diameter of the earth is about 12700 km. Look at those numbers again. It so low that you'd be hard-pressed to even call it "space".
The reason for this very low orbit is that the space shuttle is unable to travel any further out. It a rocket-boosted aircraft that just happens to be able to reach orbit altitude. Well, orbit altitude as long as you boost the altitude once in a while. Remember that the ISS loses 100 metres of altitude every day.
The OP's idea sounds a bit wild, but I just needed to correct you on the orbit decay thing.
PENIS GOURD!
like the dudes from the tribes in those hot countries
We need PENIS GOURDS!
Take a look at this link:
:(
:)
http://infoanimation.com/node/33
some fellas modelled Kilper in 3D and made video on it. It is not directly accessible though
As for previsous comment - Shuttles are really old... But Kliper is, actually, a heavily-reingeneered version of 2-yrs old Soviet crew vehicle... and the launch vehicle will be more than 25 years old but still EXTREMELY reliable Soyuz rocket. So, old != unreliable. you need just to upgrade it
Talking about France when you're actually talking about Europe is not quite unlike talking about California, when you're actually talking about th US. Except of course in the latter case the miscomparison comes out favourably for the US, where the former case certainly is not favourable for Europe.
It's still not official until the December 2005 European ministers meeting that will decide about the Kliper project and the Aurora programme for the exploration of the solar system (yes: it's the European equivalent of the "Moon, Mars and beyond").
And yeah: the Kliper is supposed to be even cheaper than the Soyuz, per seat.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Sorry, I forgot to include a link for the solar system exploration programme, Aurora.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
"Yeah, it was cooperation and not competition that put a man on the moon!"
Y'know, I'm gonna burn some karma here. But there are times I really hate this attitude.
When I was a kid, say, early 1970s, I picked up an old book on the planets and the "future" of space flight. This book was written probably around 1959 or 1960. It talked about Sputnik and Explorer I. And it talked about how man would get into space. The book started with the "space plane" (what I learned in later years would be considered the X-20). It sat at the top of a rocket, was launched into orbit, and landed again like a normal airplane. The book then talked about the next big step--a space station constructed in orbit. This looked remarkably like the space station shown in 2001. The book ended with what would be the next big step--probably sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s--of an expedition to explore the moon.
Well, of course, we beat that by 20 years! We landed on the moon in 1969! But what did we get out of it? Are we on the moon now? Could we do more with the moon now, if we were to land on it again, than plant some flags and play some golf?
Your vaunted "competition" to get us to the moon gained us very little in the long run. Yeah, we made it and we developed some pretty impressive technology to do it, which had all sorts of commercial benefits. But we didn't go to the moon to explore. We didn't go to the moon to expand humanity. We went to the moon to beat the Commies. And once that was accomplished, we were done.
I liken it to a 240,000 mile race. We're all excited at the approach of the race. We discuss, debate, and argue about who we think will win. When the race starts, we are glued to our seats. Whoever wins, we cheer, we applaud, slap them on the back and say what a great job they did. But a week after the race, it's business as usual. The winner's name is written in the history books and that's it.
The American Public wasn't behind the Apollo program in order to broaden mankind's knowledge of the universe. We were behind it to whoop some Commie butt and show the world how great the U.S. of A was. And so, when the race was won, the banners were taken down, the streets swept clear of the ticker tape from the parades, and people went back to their own business secure in the knowledge that their country was #1.
That, to me, is what our "competition" to get to the moon got us. Getting to the moon was sold to the people as a race which we had to win. The money spent on Apollo was taken from programs like the X-20. It short-circuited plans for a permanent space station. It put all our resources behind one big "show"--get to the moon. We're only now starting catch up to where we might have been in the late 1970s, if only we had hadn't gotten distracted by beating the commies to the moon.
Consider the concept of "competition": You have an objective--a thing you have to accomplish. If you reach the objective before the others, you win. If you don't, you lose. I'm not interested in that. I'd like to see colonies on the moon. I'd like to see manned exploration of Mars. But these are long-term things--there is no "competition." And if we waste the money on "flags and footprints" kinds of missions so we can thrust our collective index fingers in the air and yell "We're #1!", the long term goal of having my children or my children's children live and work on the moon will never be realized.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Apollo wasn't an amazing achievement. But everyone complains about the fact that we didn't follow-up Apollo with more and better trips to the moon. But as I said, this wasn't how Apollo was sold to the people. It was sold as a competition. And competitions are over when somebody wins. I want the follow-up. And the only way we'll get it is to stop thinking about "beating" other countries and start thinking about how we can do this "for all mankind."
Isn't that what the plaque says it's all about?
Just FYI: the Europeans have already flight-tested a prototype of another winged spacecraft, but this is a launcher: the Hopper.
It will probably succeed the Ariane 5 and launch both manned and unmanned upper stages, so maybe it can also be used to launch the Kliper.
The prototype is called the Phoenix and has completed several unpowered landing tests. Here's a link to a torrent of the spectacular video of the third flight from an onboard camera!
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
[I'm not knocking the French- but it is history.]
And off-topic.
Here's a clue: just because another country has made mistakes at some point in the history, doesn't mean Bush is making a better job now.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
the design of the shuttle seems like for public relations to me, there are actually dots on the side of it that look like windows (these arent really windows i think). the whole thing is intented to look a bit like a airplane. reusability is a mayor part of making it look like an airplane, now reusing parts of the rockets jetisoned at lower attitudes may be usefull. but reusing the whole shuttle sounds a bit like putting a lot of efford in putting a satelite into orbit (and not a smal one either), and then again a lot of effort to get it back down. i cant imagine why they wouldnt start developing a new system for this when they realised the public relations thing isnt that important anymore.
5-10 is not a reasonable number for a space flight: a racing team has more peple than that.
But cutting the earth/orbit personnel ratio from 1000 to 100 should be possible.
Europe's bureaucracies will not hesitate to forcibly acquire the necessary intellectual property needed get things done for large projects. That's how the European airline industry managed to get the Concord, Euro-fighter and even the latest Airbus built.
Europe's parliaments will also not hesitate to adopt more liberal intellectual property structures if you demonstrate that doing so will better benefit their economies as a whole, instead of just a few major corporations.
Here's a clue: just because another country has made mistakes at some point in the history, doesn't mean Bush is making a better job now.
Here's a clue for you: The French government has collapsed twelve times in the last two hundred years. I'm not talking about elections or impeachments or whatever, I'm talking about dispensing with democracy entirely and installing a king. Or vice versa.
Whatever job President Bush is doing, it's clear that America is doing a hell of a lot better than France.
The Russians already had a clone of the Shuttle - the "Buran" - which successfully took off, orbited the earth, and landed without losing a single heat tile.. all unmanned. The project was then scrapped due to lack of further funding.
c e/energia-buran/page_01.htm
0 153.shtml
If they are copying anything here it's not the shuttle, but the next-gen NASA design which is back to a "lauched on the tip of a rocket" type design... but the timing, if anything, more suggests NASA copying Russia rather than vice versa.
http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/space/russia/rs
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/q
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/rsa/pics.html
Indeed, France is to Europe what Texas is to the U.S. (IMHO)
Well, as far as I know, France is not the country where 35% of parents want their children taught Creationism in school. I suppose that having your government "collapse" twelve times in two hundred years does give a people a measure of realism.
Actually, I seem to recall reading in Av Week that some of the EU folks were rather miffed because it looked like Russia was just recycling an earlier French design from the 80s (i.e., Hermes). In a previous life, I talked to folks from Aerospatiale about 15-20 years ago regarding materials for their Hermes project, which looks remarkably similar to Kliper (or vice-versa). See http://www.astronautix.com/craft/hermes.htm
When this crap about TU-144 is being Concorde knockoff is going to stop. TU-144 started flying BEFORE Concorde and in fact a very different aircraft.
>>Well, as far as I know, France is not the country where 35% of parents want their children taught Creationism in school. I suppose that having your government "collapse" twelve times in two hundred years does give a people a measure of realism
No France is a place were at one time you are tortured and killed for not believing one religion then a few years later tortured and killed for believing in religion.
At least in America we can have opposing views (well at least you use to but you seem to have forgotten that...)
it can take as much or more delta-v to move between two different orbits as a ground launch takes
and by the time you reach orbit in the first place you have used most of your delta-v attemtping to double your crafts delta-v will almost certainly more than double the size of its fuel tanks etc for a given payload.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
* Why to air forces the world round rely on C130 Hercules aircraft for transport?
;)
Mostly because we aren't loosing them to mechanical failures and they seem to last. It's not that it takes time to develop them it's just there isn't a need. If we were at war with another power (say China who would also have designed a similar but maybe one uped version of the C130) and we lost them on a daily basis we'd most likley come up with a new design. Take the M1Abrahms tank... The thing was designed in the 70's and works great. It beats Soviet models hands down, but on the same token it has never been face to face with the German Leopard II models and possibly the new Chinese ones being modeled. If we had a threat from a nation that had a superior model of tank we'd toss the M1Abrahms design in a heart beat, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
* Why do we communicate with a 30 year old communication protocol?
Good question. I'm assuming you are talking about IPv4? Well again... Not because the design is that great, but because it works and we aren't hitting the limit that we needed IPv6 for because NAT is tiding us over. Doesn't mean we need to upgrade eventually.
* Why do I drive a car which is 10 years old but for which the basic design is more than 20 years old?
Well... That's a personal preference. Personally, I like my cars old and my computer hardware new.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I see your blinders are firmly epoxied in place. KKK lynchings, abortion clinic bombings, anti-homosexual violence, etc, etc. I'd suggest you rethink your position on the USA's levels of tolerence given the rising din of agitprop labeling people terrorists or traitors. Appeals to emotion to take up arms against the enemy!!!! Who is the enemy? Maybe it's your brother again. Oh...that's never happened in the grand ole USA before.
Idiot.
Before I had a chance to thank you for posting your postscript example with fractional page counter the article went into archive mode. Thanks! It is a very handy script.
As I've babbled on before, this is an inevitability. Europe and the Soviet Union are making things. They are flush with cash. Canada has a national budget surplus because they take in more taxes than they spend. China and Taiwan are so fat with money from actually making things that they are floating the financial mess that is the U.S. under Bushism.
We've cut taxes, evaporated our job base, let corporations like Haliburton move offshore to the Caymans and cease to pay taxes, and spent like a man charging up his credit cards before he declares bankruptcy. And I don't think that is much of a stretch as a metaphor for what is happening now in the U.S.
The Treasury of the U.S. has been looted. We are broke and busted. The connected corporations are wheeling cash away in trucks as quickly as they may before the crash comes.
To put it as simply, but not quite accurately as I can, China is floating the US by loaning it about two billion dollars a day.
$2,000,000,000US a day.
And China just decoupled from the US dollar, instead pegging the yuan to a breadbasket of world currencies, thus signaling the end of the party.
China and all the other debt holders are both in a dillema and the catbird's seat. If they call us out on a busted hand by simultaneously cutting off the allowance and asking for repayment, the world economy collapses. No one wants that: the US debt is in dollars, and a collapsed dollar means a collapsed outstanding debt -- which may be what the neocons are planning all along, considering how much debt they are piling up. China et al take a bath when the dollar collapses. On the other hand, the world WILL have a whip hand to use against the U.S. if they have to. If a U.S. world currency crisis is inevitable, the world might as well make pie out of rotten apples by reining in the U.S. by simply refusing to lend it any more money to fund its empire-building and simultaneous taxpayers' holiday.
This is all relevant to this discussion in the most important way. A broke U.S. will not be participating in a vigorous expansion into space. The reason we've not finished the ISS, built a next-gen manned space launcher or even patched the existing fleet of shuttles is all the same. We can't afford it. We won't tax ourselves, even for "wartime". We won't pay our bills. We are letting the oil companies raise prices unregulated by our representatives who damn well should be doing their job and capping their price rape.
I dreamed a dream of L5 colonies as a young man, building solarsats to beam back power to a hungry world. Of mining asteroids and the moon to obtain megatonnage of metals to build space habitats at L5 and other orbits as a lasting insurance policy against a singular disaster wiping out humanity. And not to mention making lots of new wealth in gigawattage sold, aluminum, steel, and new places for people to emmigrate.
These things may still happen, but I sadly, so sadly see that the U.S. will not be the primary agent.
Personally, I'd like to see much more collaboration between space agencies like this.
Pushing out into space should be something we humans do as a species and should be less and less about countries and stupid monkies banging their chests about just how much bigger and more impressive their stick is, then the other monkey's stick
It would be far more productive, if the ESA, JAXA, NASA and the RFSA, simply collaborated to pool resources and design the closest thing to a silver bullet that humans can come up with right now in terms of space flight, instead of continually re-inventing the wheel.
Scientists and smart people generally recognise this as being 'self evident'. Unfortunately, if life was that simple there'd be no war, or poverty.
I remember reading somewhere that congress would not give a penny for shuttle construction until the blueprints for the saturn 5 were destroyed so that there was no chance of going back to the saturn 5.
Sounds like a really brain dead concept, the russians and the chinese or japan would have not done such a crazy thing, but what do you expect from what is, and still is a throw-away society?
We have whole generations of people driving big SUV's and large motor bikes and fighting wars over oil, that surely says a lot about the stupidity of human nature. I can't wait for the rest of the world to want gaint SUV's too.
You must be a Troll
France is a democracy. People have diverging views. It's next to unbelievable how little many Americans know about France (and Europe in general). And it's even more unbelievable that they are proud of it, too.
Well, well
Want economic space travel? Why don't we just copy the aliens who sent us the thing that crashed in Roswell? We've been studying it for years... I saw independance day, and THEY said we had! Plus that thing worked great. No rockets of anything! Ok, I'm going to go put on my tinfoil hat now and see if "Pi" is really an alien signal which is just a countdown sequence.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
the Final KEEEOOOOWWWNNNTT-DEEEOOOOWNNN! / Europe - "The Final Countdown" is teh awesome!11!!
But an airline (often cited as a typical example) often does have a crew that size () will have only a very small ground crew of about 50-100 for each launch, and they don't anticipate being too much larger for the Falcon V launches which are supposed to be man-rated. Manned launches may be slightly larger, but not much more than about 200. And they do have a goal to trim that number down over time.
The Saturn V was built with an attitude of "built at whatever cost... we need to go now!" That attitude also carried over into the current Shuttle program, and has affected the economics of the whole thing, even though it was sold to congress as a cost-cutting project. Breaking free of the mindset at NASA has proved to be very difficult, even to the best administrators. Also, Presidential oversight has been lacking in part because NASA is by nature a very technical agency and trying to fix NASA requires somebody who is both very politically astute as well as technically brilliant. Usually those two qualities are not shared by the same person. I don't have them as I tend to piss people off, particularly over technical matters that I happen to know something about. I'm not even sure if you can mix engineering and politics effectively (at least in the larger realm of general politics, not politics within engineering of which there is plenty as well).