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NASA Ares Rocket Specs to Be Open Source
Bruce writes "As a step toward returning to the moon, NASA announced last week that Boeing will be the lead contractor for the Ares I rocket. Interestingly, Popular Mechanics reports that the system's specifications will be 'open-source and non-proprietary' to encourage competition on future contracts."
CAPCOM: Good morning Persues, how are you today?
PERSUES: 5 by 5 Houston, what's the plan for today? We're only halfway to the moon.
CAPCOM: Persues, we need you to run a few 'patch' commands, we're uploading the diffs now...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Not the same as open source for software. They will make the data available only to future bidders and only when it benefits the government. You're not going to download rocket technology off of NASA's website.
Iraq billions
But will the wrist strap on the rocket be strong enough? I don't want my Ares Rocket messing up my flat screen TV
-nick
In theory anything developed with public funds is supposed to go into the public domain. But that seems to have died even faster than the Bill of Rights.
Think Deeply.
If nano-technology reaches the point where we can program assemblers to take local materials and build structures from electronic plans, what are the implications to space travel?
Imagine, for instance, if someone could take a box of Rocketbuilders out to an island somewhere and deploy it, then sit back as the nanocites build a metal extraction plant, extracted the materials it could get from the sand/ground, built pipes into the sea to process metals that are there, etc. It'd build a gantry, then assemble a rocket from specs and finally fuel it from hydrogen and oxygen cracked from the water.
An open source rocket would be a neat, easy way to get a good start for a project to create the instructions for these assemblers. I figured the big open source project when this technology came onto the scene would be digitizing and CAM'ing the specs for, say, the Saturn V (moon rocket). Make it easy enough to grow these launchers, and folks could launch prefabbed housing and supplies no problem. Just find the right spot, maybe rent an acre of seafront property with no downrange population, and go for it.
Sure, it's fantasy at this point, but who knows? This is a shot across the bow for folks that are inevitably going to say "This is a stupid idea. What use is an open source rocket if you aren't a huge government or company with a bajillion dollars/euros/rubles to spend?".
Sure, maybe the reward isn't obvious now, but what about sometime in the near future?
For mass-produced products, which is what we'd like rockets to become, the cost of the design the parts is relatively minor. So giving away the design does give away that much. Instead, it's the design of the manufacturing systems that determines how cheap and reliably we can make the thing. Cars are cheap because they have almost no labor (most cars take less than 40 labor-hours to build). And what make a Pentium so valuable is not the design layout of the transistors, but the $1 billion fab that can reliably etch all those transistors on a wafer of silicon.
More than a new rocket design, we need a new rocket manufacturing technology that cranks out high quality rockets for very little per each additional rocket.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
ITAR restricts technology related to satellites and launch vehicles to a select group of individuals and prevents export to other countries without a lot of hassle. If it is open source, how are they going to prevent other nations from getting the plans to these "weapons"?
Further reading about ITAR can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations
["bubble-headed total agreement mode" on]
...because, you know, everyone and their dog can get hold of the requisite titanium, rocket fuel, high-precision valves, thermal shielding, Internal Nav Units, and electronics required... You know, all the stuff that makes a delicate and complex-all-to-hell vehicle like, you know, a rocket... fly just fine without exploding in mid-air, or, like, simply catching fire on the launch pad. All we need are, like, you know, these here plans and some duct tape, you know?
[BHTAM off]
Cripes - let's stretch things a bit more to turn promising international cooperation into yet another simple-minded Bush-hating screed, shall we? For once... for once in a great-assed while, the gov (no matter which party) does something right, and you gotta go and hose it up with some purile "OMGz0rs DA BOOSH IZ S0 st00pid!" line.
Don't you have somewhere better to go, like DU, Daily Kos, Townhall-dot-com, or some such political playpen? This is supposed to be geek pr0n here, not the communal partisan drool bucket.
(and yes, I'd really like to see those plans published "open source" style, thanks much - if for no other reason than we geeks out here can avoid having them get obliterated by stupid government officials, as the Saturn V plans were in the 70's).
(and yeah, fuggit - I got karma to burn by the supertanker-load, so all you oh-so-offended 24/7 partisan shitheads w/ points out there can Mod the post down until your dick hurts for all I care.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
What seems cool about "open source" relative to this project is that it may make the specifications much more solid in all areas (any interested engineer can spot problems or suggest enhancements, not just NASA paid engineers, but at the same time I doubt that all of the rocket specs CAN be fully open sourced, because if you can put a rocket into space with sufficient accuracy to put a manned craft into lunar orbit, you can also put a warhead on that same rocket and plop it with decent accuracy anywhere in the world.
Which, given the rogue elements in our world and a number of fairly rich folks willing to fund the rogues, is, as you might surmise, NOT A GOOD THING.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Translation:"We need more people to blame"
The part that NASA is (purportedly, I haven't seen the contracts / specs yet) making open is the avionics architecture, the control computers, attitude and position sensors (GPS, Inertial navigation gyros, etc), and the software and physical network interconnects.
This isn't the rocket motors or physical stages. They want people to be able to propose upgraded computer systems, gyros, GPS units, etc. without having to rebuild the whole guidance system from scratch. So you make it modular, you use a technology like Avionics Full-Duplex Ethernet as the networking PHY and Datalink layers, you specify a realtime IP stack and the higher level protocols to use for transmitting status and position and control codes, etc.
Having to maintain 40-year-old computer and navigation equipment designs for the Space Shuttle has made everyone open to the idea of modular, upgradable, scalable, etc...
The link in the parent is a forwarding link. It's a completely off-topic link he only added in order to increase click rates, and used the forwarding link to prevent others recognizing the link target (it's a "minicity"). Clicking it would promote his antisocial behaviour, so don't do it.
OT-note: If you really want to learn about myminicity, don't click his link anyway, but go to the myminicity main page instead. (And no, I'm not involved in the minicity web site [I do have my own minicity though, but I won't link to it here], I just want to prevent people to click on his link).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The summary also says that Boeing will be the prime contractor for the Ares 1. This is not true. The article is about Boeing being the prime contractor for the avionics. Incidentally, Boeing is also the prime contractor for the second stage structure. However, the first stage is being built by Alliant Techsystems (who also makes the nearly identical shuttle SRB's...that part of the contract was a shoe-in), the 2nd stage engine is being built by Pratt and Whitney, and the Orion spacecraft that the Ares is being designed to launch is contracted to Lockheed Martin.
Yes they can, and just like any PC based thruster, it will be more efficient, more stable, and you won't have to recycle the power every few days of bug free operation. As a matter of fact, net craft has confirmed that installing slackware and removing the windowing OS that came with it will allow for longer trips in space and even maned trips to Pluto.com and back. Long live the really hot air coming from slackware powered thrusters.