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NASA Engineers Work On Alternative Moon Rocket
Gibson writes "A team of 57 engineers at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight center feel that the Ares rocket is not the best solution for launching the new CEV. They are currently working on their own time developing an alternative launch system known as Jupiter. The 131 page proposal, along with other information, is available on the project website. Proponents of the project say that it is 'simpler, safer, and sooner' than the Ares project, predicting the ability for a return to the moon in 2017, two years before the current goal. Ares management has so far dismissed the proposal as a 'napkin drawing.'"
That a "napkin drawing" by engineers never amount to anything.
How can anyone whose project is in the design stage, scoff at another that is in the conceptual stage? Neither of them EXIST yet!
Where is Ares? Oh, it's in AUTOCAD! Well, that makes ALL the difference!
Meanwhile, their brilliant project isn't expected to get anyone to the moon before, what, twenty years?
Sheesh.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
The 131 page proposal
That's a hell of a lot of napkins...
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
From the project website:
$35 Billion in savings? How much is that in napkins?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
After reading the summary the only thing that went through my head was memories of Matt Le Blanc, and the urge to cry: "Danger, Will Robinson!"
I could probably do with a rest...
it still uses solids for a human launch vehicle. That is a really stupid thing, which was known before Congress limited the Shuttle design, forcing the move to SRBs, and which caused the Challenger accident and loss of 7 crew.
Why build one when you can build two for twice the price?
I scoffed a bit at their description of the excess payload capacity of the crew-launch configuration as "free." I mean, you still pay for that capacity in fuel and delivery. You're not getting something for nothing. The Ares CLV has far less capacity but it should be far less expensive as well. And I'm not entirely persuaded that the costs of operating two launch systems will be that much greater than one combined system. We currently launch a wide variety of rockets for different purposes without it being cost-prohibitive. On the other hand, the Ares CLV really seems to be cutting to the bone, to the point where they've cut land-based recovery. If your goal is efficiency, reducing your CLV capacity to the point that you can only ever do expensive seaborne recovery seems like a false savings.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
You got to love it: By day, they are mild mannered engineers. By night, they are undercover rocket scientists who are building a rocket to go to the moon! It sounds like a pulp sci-fi story.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It's the old engineers vs management debate on who gets to make the decision. Seeing as both cost and speed are on the engineer's side I don't see why management would be against.
oh wait I know
Because it will make them look like they have been wasting time and money and they would rather waste even more money while looking like they are not.
Am I the only one who thinks naming rockets after planets totally unrelated to their mission is stupid? Not that naming them after planets they are going to would be better...
Maybe they could, you know, not name them after planets at all?
If NASA is unwilling to consider Jupiter as an alternative to Ares, then would there be private corporations willing to invest in what appears to be a good heavy-lift flight system? You might even find Russia or the ESA willing to purchase flights, either to service the ISS in the pre-Ares years, or to service an ISS v2, if and when. Pie in the Sky, perhaps, but I'm finding this to be an intriquing proposal, and it'd be a shame if it didn't end up flying.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
Can anyone explain why so little technology is recycled from current and previous generation spacecraft in designing the new generation craft.
It makes sense to use as much shuttle technology and durable facilities in constructing the next heavy lifting vehicle as the Jupiter people are proposing, so why wasn't that a goal from the start? The proven technology is well tested, and is well known by the folks who work on it, so why is there such a desire to change it?
Also, why are the scaled composites tier 1b and tier 2 vehicles not being considered for delivering crew to orbit, to the ISS, or to a separately launched craft for lunar expeditions?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Read about the argument for this chumpy:
# Delete all risks associated with a second new launch vehicle
# Delete all costs associated with a second new launch vehicle
# Optimum use of the existing NASA & contractor experience
# Enable multiple upgrade paths
Basically, "hey, we're NASA, we're too stupid to design a new rocket, and let's just use the shuttle that, um, we already have."
I thought the whole point of Constellation was that the shuttle sucks. If the engineers had gotten the shuttle off the ground correctly to begin with, we wouldn't be having this conversation now, would we?
This is my sig.
A handful of engineers and a stenographer cooped up in a hotel room over a weekend, designed and developed the B52. And its still going strong 50 years later.
After all, it not rocket surgery.
The only reason to go to the Moon is to construct a base to launch further into space. Do we honestly need more rock?
The reason for the Moon base is so these giant rockets don't use all there fuel just escaping Earth's atmosphere and gravity. Launching from the Moon would reduce the fuel use and make us that much closer to Mars and such. But I guess they need to agree on a shuttle first.
Relative to the Ares I and V system, the proposed alternative "Jupiter" lacks the small lifter. Every launch, therefore, is a costly heavy lift.
I suppose that's an improvement if your only goal is the Moon. NASA, however, has other obligations. They need a small, cheap lifter to crew and service ISS and perform other LEO only missions.
So, yeah, you chop out half the program and save billions...
Doesn't matter in the end. Obama will gut Ares; Ares I will be built for ISS use and Ares V will never get beyond drawings.
We already have a man-rated safe moon rocket. It's called Saturn V.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They need to be careful that it doesn't get lost in space.
Some of our best innovations come from engineers that are driven to do something different. It usually doesn't come from a corporate cog. I just hope this Jupiter isn't lost in the space between NASA directors ears.
It will probably crash into the moon. Notice the units in the presentation are a mix of english (pounds per square foot) and metric (kilograms). Last time they did this they crashed a probe into Mars.
... and stick NERVA or DUMBO on it? Let's get rid of the excessive propellant to cargo ratios.
The beauty of this proposal is that even if it is never used, it will pressure the ares developers to do even better. Competing designs tend to improve end products.
I don't understand why they don't upgrade an existing and proven system like Delta IV for a crew launch vehicle... why design a new launcher at all?
If you look at the overviews of their ideas, you can tell right away that this launch system would have several advantages over Aries. It does not require a modification of the boosters, which is one of the more significant design challenges that Aries, especially the crew lift system, is facing. Additionally they don't call for a significantly different vehicle to lift the crew. While they do propose a few different systems for lifting cargo vs lifting cargo and people, the base vehicle engineering is the same, unlike the Aries system. In short, it really looks like this Jupiter system is more flexible, maybe cheaper, and certainly easier than Aries is turning out to be. I also think that Jupiter could be built, tested, and launched quicker than Aries.
This group's ideas are not new though, they proposed them a few years back, but NASA seemed to be set on Aries from almost the very start for some odd reason.
After getting most prized "first post" position, I have one more...
I would trust a set of napkin drawings from dedicated engineers more than I'd trust a polished proposal from a committee of military contractors and NASA administrators.
Think of it this way, the latter said the O rings were safe, the former tried to warn everyone of the danger.
Worked for "Lost In Space"
Basically as I understand it, this Jupiter thing is essentially the same rocket as the Ares V... Both would be heavy lift boosters in the Saturn V/Energia class... So while NASA wants to build an additional simplified Ares 1 that only lifts the crew module, the Jupiter people want to essentially put the crew module on top of the EDS and put it up in one shot - ala Saturn V... But what is so different from Ares V and Jupiter? They both seem to use both SRB and Liquid rockets... Basically it seems that they are against Ares 1 - for whatever reason, they don't like having the CEV on top of a modified SRB... But lets face it, the SRB's have essentially been flawless... (Okay, I'll get modded down and pounced on by the "Don't you know that the SRB caused the Challenger to explode!" crowd. But if you think about that failure, the SRB was only the match. It cooked off the liquid propellent tank after gasses escaped through the o-ring... but Ares 1 won't have anything hooked up to its side... an o-ring leak would not be catastrophic... the cause of Challenger's problem was having an SRB NEXT TO the liquid propellent external tank... Isn't that what both Jupiter and Ares V are set up for? And if so, do you want the PEOPLE riding on that, or just the machine to take them to the moon???)
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
I *am* a rocket scientist, BTW. I read the Jupiter concept doc a few months ago, and I find it reasonably persuasive. The thing that makes the Jupiter concept "simpler" is that it reuses existing designs (specifically, main engine systems and fuel tanks) that have already been fully developed and put into use, rather than designing new ones that employ untested techniques.
What makes a design safer isn't necessarily lowest component count; in the space business, proven designs count for a LOT in risk mitigation. Consider the Russian Proton rocket: not modern, not the most efficient, but a very reliable system that gets its job done at low cost (assuming that the recent Soyuz QA problems don't mean that their whole production infrastructure has gone rotten from lack of funds). Incremental changes are almost always faster, better, and cheaper than radical design departures (at least until the radical tech is fully worked out, which takes time).
Indeed, a big part of the argument here is that Ares junks an existing manufacturing infrastructure THAT WORKS, just like NASA did after the Apollo program. Jupiter, on the other hand, maintains the current Shuttle-related tech base and builds on it. Having a functional tech infrastructure to build on, with suppliers who've been designing and delivering product based on the same design for many years, is an immense advantage in terms of cost, lead time, and reliability. Folks who've made the same system dozens of times make fewer mistakes than those building something brand-new with no comparable predecessor product.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Why don't they just outsource it to Burt Rutan and get out of his way. I don't trust NASA to manage its back to the moon. Their track record hasn't been that good as of the last 20 years.
But there are other small lifters, if launching something the size of the shuttle is wasteful. Some aren't even Russian!
Of course launching something the size of the shuttle is the only current option, isn't it?
...wrote his project for humanity on a napkin?
20 years ago we had a shitload of cars that could do better than 40 mpg, now they say they can't do it without studies and mumbling hydrogen and saying maybe in 10 years or something and the price will be triple.
I had a Jupiter plan for putting stuff in space on a napkin too, but mine was just throwing a rope out around the planet Jupiter, and using it as a pulley to hoist the stuff into space.
stuff |
The Jupiter 2.
Make love, not reality television.
Is this alternative moon rocket going to aimed at an alternative moon?
The US can't afford a manned space program any more. The Iraq war has cost $3 trillion, we're headed into a recession, and it's going to take years to unwind the housing bubble. The next administration is going to have to focus on digging out of the hole left by the Bush administration.
And, face it, sending a few more people to the Moon on chemical rockets doesn't really get us anywhere. Been there, done that, know what the Lunar surface is like.
If fusion power ever works, space is worth revisiting, but with chemical rockets, we hit the limits a long time ago.
Which means less pork to ladle out in key congressional districts, and a smaller effort required, which means NASA bureaucrats can't hike their status using Parkinson's Law.
All TFA says is:
I also want to know if the skid they plan to use to maintain Hubble is reusable, or does it burn up on reentry?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Is that like faster, cheaper, better? Yeah, companies always get all three at the same time...
The Lunar module was also a "napkin drawing."
The best science comes from napkins. If we started publishing our scientific papers in napkin-form, then we'd have the cure for cancer, AIDS and the solution to the grand unified field theory inside a week. As well as the complete abolishment of greasy fingers at the Nobel ceremony fried chicken and chili cook-off after party.
Wasn't the Apollo system shaped by a similar event? As I remember it, the original plan was to travel and land directly on the moon. However, a handfull of engineers felt that the launching rocket could be simpler and smaller if there was an orbital undock/docking stage. The problem was that orbital rendezvous docking was untried and required technology that didn't exist yet. The docking group eventually won out after heated discussion.
In the end, everyone was happy except Michael Collins, who had to wait in orbit while his buddies danced on the moon for the first time. (Although perhaps felt safer being that this was all new stuff.)
Table-ized A.I.
NASA has evaluated the DIRECT proposal, and found it lacking compared to the Ares I/V vehicles:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/256922main_Direct_vs_%20Ares%20_FINAL_62508.pdf
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
There will never be manned moon mission sponsored or engineered by the USA through the end of this century. NASA will be converted to a satellite only facility for the weaponization of near earth orbit space. All these big boosters will wind up being used to loft space weapons as a replacement for ICBM build downs per treaties.
Weren't those cigarette packages? I think they were.
How would you feel if I said "So easy, even a slashdotter could do it"?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The cold reality is that we're probably not going to send a manned mission to the moon. The cost of robotic probes drops by the day, at the same time their capabilities increase. By the time we're ready to send up more astronauts, we'll be able to send up probes that can stay longer and perform more tasks than a human in a rubber suit who has to live in a little tin can. This whole moon-shot thing was basically a PR stunt by the Bush administration - McCaine or Obama will probably kill it, as it's wasteful and frivolous.
Humans will only return when it's time to construct something permanent there, like a telescope or automated mining equipment. (Even then, it would probably be cheaper to send unmanned probes to small asteroids, directing them to fall in the middle of the desert for harvesting.
The realities of space exploration have changed - going just to go isn't a useful aim anymore, unless you're paying on your own hyper-rich dime for a vacation to orbit.
Proportionally, the Viet Nam War cost more far more: 9.4% of GDP vs. the Iraq War @ 1% of GDP. The entire military budget is 4.4% of GDP, and that's including spending on Corp of Engineer projects and other non-combat related spending. (BTW: The Department of Defense estimates a presence in Iraq through 2017 at $1.7 trillion. $3 trillion is a number came up with by some people with some VERY vested interests.) We WERE in a recession in 1957-1958 (when NASA was founded) and the housing bubble, while bad, is no where NEAR as bad a Black Monday or The Crash or perhaps even the .Com bubble. The only reason why people are bemoaning it (and rightly so!) is because people lost homes. That many of them were homes they never should have bought is another discussion.
And we've gone nowhere NEAR the limits. We could easily to manned missions to Mars, set up a real scientific lab on the Moon, even have missions to asteroids all on chemical rockets and boosters.
By some logic, it's never a good time to do anything. But human advancement depends on it. And NASA's budget is a mere 0.6% of the US GDP.
Call me a kook, but if I wanted to save money, let's ax something really worthless like The Department of Education. It gets [b]3.3 TIMES[/b] NASA's budget, but the kids are dumber today than they were when Carter formed the DoEd thirty odd years ago!
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
It *never* comes from a corporate cog. Cog: Zune. Motivated genius: iPod.
Ask Jonathan Ives if he considers himself a 'corporate cog', or Richard Stallman, or... any of the garage dwelling innovators.
Skunkworks always were where it's at. :)
you had me at #!
With the apparent tone of an insider. Thats one heckuva' job Mikey.
you had me at #!
Hi. I am an outer space fanboy. Since I was a small child I repeatedly copied maps of the solar system, drew them by hand, red the five or six pages about NASA in my World Book encyclopedia until the pages were tattered, manually typed (using a manual typewriter) out those pages out on paper because I was worried I'd lose them.
In 8th grade, weeks before the challenger exploded we were taught how to write resumes and were supposed to write one 30 years from now. I had references that lived on Mars, all sorts of stupid shit.
I wanted to be an astronaut as a child, things changed as I got older and I became a computer geek and server admin/solution designer instead.
But deep down inside that space geek is still alive, still wanting to be out there.
However the dream keeps dying, all you have to do is watch anything about the manned missions. This last round of stuff from Discovery Channel, you watch Mercury, Gemini, Apollo.
They certainly glamorize it, at least listening to the interviews of the actual astronauts who are looking back at it compared to the shuttle missions which look like political fighting run amok where instead of someone dying because you were rushing they were dying because no one wanted to look bad (Challenger, Columbia)
This just seems like another example of NASA going from the thing every little boy and girl dreams of doing to another example of the decay of base education in the states.
So yeah I'm having a crappy day anyway so I'm pretty pessimistic at the moment, but after reading several different versions of articles on this it seems to me that what you have here is a revolt going on where the smart guys are saying do it this way and look we can build on what we've been doing for decades vs. someone wanting to build a legacy of something all new and shiny.
To me the 5 years between the shuttle retiring and this new projecting moving forward this is a travesty to me. but that's the 'i want to live in space' fanboy talking, not the pessimistic mid thirties person talking.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
The O-ring failure was IN the srb. The O-ring sealed the gaps between each section of the srb, and when it failed to do so, hot gasses escaped and burned through the external tank and boom. Of course if lobbying and politics hadn't forced the boosters to be made in utah which required them to be made in sections to make the trip to the east coast, we would have never had the o-ring problem in the first place.
I think there are factions on Congress having issues with the Uranus Rocket.
One person with 50 years more experience than all of you still isn't nearly as smart as 57 of you that came to the same conclusion!
Support my political activism on Patreon.
A couple of the guys are mormon, so they are use to using to that many at a meal with the little ones.
It will be powered by the newly reported "fuel" Vetrolium and be subject to faith-based physical laws.
Eh, I disagree on the housing bubble. First, your stock market crashes are out of order. The Crash of 1929 was by far the worst US stock market crash ever. Black Monday wasn't significant in the long run aside from increasing regulation on computer trading. And the dotcom bubble was pretty signficant in size, but not that much effect compared to other US recessions after the Second World War. The housing bubble is signficant for two reasons. First, most people have substantial assets tied up in their home and the "wealth effect" from this tends to be larger than for stocks. Second, the housing market is a bit bigger than the public stock market and with long standing expectations of growth going back probably 60 years. If that changes, we'll see a correction that might take many years to settle out. Given that the decline in the housing market and the instability in mortgage companies is still ongoing, I think it's premature to say that the housing bubble will be less significant than a minor recession. We'll just have to see what happens.
this is being driven by those that want to do the SAME thing. They are NOT wanting to do something different. The X-33 was different. The Ares I/IX are somewhat different. The direct is designed to use all of our current guts in a new configuration. The big difference is the list of manufactures change. Lo and behold, the guys who are pushing direct happen to currently work on the space shuttle. The ones pushing constellation are from the winners of the contract.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ahhmmm, I seem to be mistaken. I seem to believe Burt Rutan had Designed and built a Publicly Manned Space Vehicle (with his reputation on the line) in the last 20 year. What about Nasa?
So the score is:
Rutan 1 (low earth orbit vehicle on a shoe string budget), NASA 0 (with infinite resources upon a serious request).
Give Rutan $20 billion and see what he can come up with. At least if he screws up, he will probability have change left over. Nasa has NEVER had change left over on a manned mission.
Brought to you by letter "J" and NASA the "NON AERO SPACE ASSOCIATION".
You don't get positive karma for Funny mods. I sometimes mod particularly funny things with insightful instead, because good humor is a kind of insight, and I'd like to issue a little extra reward for the joke.
The problem with Ares is the "pogo problem"-- pretty serious (as in life-threatening) vibrations caused by some interesting harmonics. The SRBs were never meant to fly alone, see.....
Quite a hell of a lot of ballast as such will need to be flown with Ares to compensate for this. Not much has been said about it, but it's a Very Big Deal within NASA and the principle contractors.
Rutan 1 (low earth orbit vehicle on a shoe string budget)
He has not put a vehicle into orbit. He launched a flimsy rocketplane into a little parabola with only about 1% of the energy required to reach orbit. Nor will his next design achieve orbit.
Get back to me when you get your basic facts straight.
The data recovered after the crash suggest the crew were killed by impact with the water. I don't believe it's known how badly (if at all) the crew were injured by the orbiter's breakup. Several of the suits' emergency air supplies had been activated, however, which tends to support the idea that at least some crew members were still functional after the cabin lost pressure due to hull breach. The guys at NASA who studied the crash didn't think the forces on the cabin would have hurt anyone strapped in, but the altitude was sufficient to knock people out from lack of oxygen.
This is dredged up from memory, so it may have been superseded by now. I was working for Morton-Thiokol when it happened, and it was not a fun time for myself or my cow-orkers.
This is like a dead candle which keeps getting gas thrown over it. It'll fizzle out again & next month the same thing will be on all the headlines. The debate has already been had. Lots of people build robots in their spare time. Does it mean Google & Silicon Valley are all wrong & venture capitalists should all invest in robots instead of web 2.0?
Ok! If you can only think in terms of negativity. Rutan has lost 0 space vehicles in which people died, Nasa has lost 2 that we know of. How many School Teachers, Pilots, and Scientists has NASA lost in the last 20 years again? How many has Rutan lost?
The sad part about it is that Nasa has not developed any New Manned Kind of Vehicle in the last 20 plus years. That's not Rutan's fault so don't blame him, but it is one reason he has decided to go it alone. And in doing so has proved that National Aero Space Programs from the US, Russia, China, and the EU are not the only way to go and may not be the best. In turn, That mean their budges can go too. Lets cut there(NASA) first and save the tax payers a fortune. Only someone on the payroll of the Nasa and/or its croon knee subcontractors can't see this.
By the way how long do we have ignore private sector, private inventors, and projects like "The X Prize's" so solve the major issues of the day, because the Politicians and the Bureaucrats are beholding to the special interests that feed the originations? (Who can compete with the government(s) and unlimited monies?)
One more thing, do you remember name of the "Candy" the that was free floating in space on the "X Prize" Winning mission that you would like to ignore, that didn't make low earth obit? Hmmm, I suddenly have a sweat tooth...
Brought to you by letter "J" and NASA the "NON AERO SPACE ASSOCIATION".
That's your right of course, but *most* of the folks that lost houses didn't put in much equity to begin with, nor make many payments. So while it's bad, it's not *that* bad. I didn't say they were in any particular order, but yeah, otherwise I agree with you. I'm certainly not saying that the bubble won't be hurtful, but it's more of the secondary in the 1-2 punch with high/rising energy prices and non-core inflation for the first time in decades.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
You haven't upgraded to VISTA yet??
you had me at #!
Then I say, No Penalty!
you had me at #!
-1, I'm Very Upset
you had me at #!
How many School Teachers, Pilots, and Scientists has NASA lost in the last 20 years again?
Fourteen, after having achieved several man-years in orbit
How many has Rutan lost?
Three, after having achieved about 5 man-minutes in a parabola
Look, NASA has been stupid, bloated and has wasted hundreds of $billions of our money on the ISS and shuttle, which both should have been scrapped a decade ago. However, that doesn't mean that Rutan has done anything useful either. Compared to *real* space activities, he is just puttering around. By the time he builds anything that could safely get humans in and out of orbit (which would require 100X his current fuel capacity, heat shields, life support systems, etc.), his "shoestring budgets" would be totally busted.
I hope everyone's looking forward to digital obsolescence as it really starts to bite. Let me guess at how much data is locked behind Microsoft or other proprietary formats at NASA... Mathematica, anyone?*
You think those "license servers" are going to stay up for the next 50 years? (Let alone the next 500.)
(*Yes I know the notebooks were traditionally text. But the calculations themselves are behind a proprietary gatekeeper.)
you had me at #!
the Viet Nam War cost more far more: 9.4% of GDP vs. the Iraq War @ 1% of GDP.
Here I was thinking "that there's never a good time to start an unnecessary war of aggression on false premises costing $3-6 trillion..." How silly of me. Say, maybe the Vietnam war was bad for the US as well? Read Hersh's The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House sometime.
you had me at #!
Why don't you give him (Rutan) the $20 billion (There by saving $15 billion) as I suggested earlier and see what he and his engineers can come up with. He doesn't seem to operate on the principle that "The jobs not done till the monies all gone". Maybe a little clear vision (instead of the Clearlake view of the world) can make a difference.
After having personally worked for Nasa (sub contracted) and watched one of it birds drop out of the sky so hard only the worms survived(because of some 35 plus year old design flaw). I have very little faith in the organization. My guess is that too much of their work is/was directed at the "Black Programs"/money sink, and the lack of success in the "Manned Missions" for last 20 years proof enough for me.
Brought to you by letter "J" and NASA the "NON AERO SPACE ASSOCIATION".
Nasa=freekin old tech, not needed any more. TR3 and B. google it
they need to end the tech embargo
I would be inclined to name a rocket for moon missions "Moon" instead of "Jupiter."
I agreed with up until you latched onto this right-wing propaganda point...
Adjusted for inflation, public school districts are getting slightly less money than they did 30 years ago, while at the same time, the population of school-children has increased by something like 30% (varies depending on area). K-12 Public education is in a terrible state, but it very likely has a lot to do with the fact that politicians are only too happy to squeeze money from school budgets, rather than raise taxes, or cut from anywhere else that it would be more immediately noticed (rather than 20 years later).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That's your right of course, but *most* of the folks that lost houses didn't put in much equity to begin with, nor make many payments.
There are two other effects. First, this is a big hit for lenders and anyone who invested in mortgage securities since there were a lot of people who had recent mortgages. Second, it depresses house prices, a combination of increasing supply and reducing demand.
(1) Occasionally someone will see a funny post but want to give props to the author instead of just the comment. IIRC, Funny mod points increase the score of the comment, but Insightful mod points increase both the score of the comment and the user's Karma.
(2) On rare occasions, moderating a ridiculous, comical, sarcastic, or satirical comment as informative is in itself a funny thing.
(3) Maybe the mod in question just really needs to kill superman.
crunch. I believe it is a HUGE problem because housing was our last hope (in the USA.) So much of our mfg and tech job base has gone overseas that the last thing keeping our economy going was people borrowing against the rising value of their homes. Now that that's gone, what is going to bail us out/start a recovery?
The really cynical side of me says we can start another war or there is a conspiracy to try to sell CO2/alternative energy tech, but I doubt that our leaders are really that evil.
...Viet Nam War cost more far more: 9.4% of GDP vs. the Iraq War @ 1% of GDP
Where DID you get that 9.4% of GDP. You ARE the people with some VERY vested interests.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4201812.stm
GP don't cite reference for his numbers where as at least one can argue with the numbers in the BBC article. Vietname war cost 111 billions the GDP of the US was roughly 3500+ over the years of the war so 111 billion total cost is NOWHERE near 9.4% it is at most 3% of any given year. Furthermore inflation adjusted dollar this is roughly 450 billion of today (see same GDP page as before). today gdp is 11000 billion so an estimated Irak total war cost of 500 billion is higher in percent of GDP (5% today compared to aforementionned 3%) and higher inflation adjusted.
;).
Anyway there is a cost which is not really counted or accountable in vietnam war : the cost of the dead and veteran (human cost) the same for the Irak war. Ples the resulting international terrorism for vietnam war was zero (or at least I am not aware of it) whereas one can certainly argue this is relatively open for Irak war and could certainly rise. Finally I am not certain comparing TOTAL cost over many years to GDP is really that useful a comparison anyway. It should be comapred to say, day to day cost of education to day to day cost of the war in both case and see what comes out. I am too lazy to do it
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
That's total dollar amount, not % GDP, you anonymous genius you!! Or is the 2008 American economy the same size as the 1968 American economy? :-p
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Um... that was sarcasm. I apologize for not putting in a [/sarcasm] at the end.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
I have wondered about this. The H2 and O2 are stored in seperate tanks. Wouldn't they have to be well-mixed before an explosion could take place?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I don't know if there are any O-rings in the design, but if so they'd be made of materials that do not exhibit the well-known shortcomings of the ones used on Challenger. There haven't been any other O-ring related failures in space vehicles AFAIK. There's no need for them in a non-segmented design, of course.
Without knowing the composition of the case, the propellant, and the O-rings in question, you can't really say. For example, some solid propellants operate within a fairly narrow pressure range, and having a hole open up in the case could drop the internal pressure enough to stop the burn. The effect on navigation is also impossible to predict without getting into ridiculous detail - is it a 3 mm hole on the port side six inches from bolt, or a 5 mm hole facing in towards the vehicle? Either way your combustion chamber will deform and the effect on surface area of the burn will cause a variation in impulse from that rocket which will mess you up, but you also might get some spin or side thrust. There are just too many variables to make a prediction... consider this analogy - what will happen to your car if a capacitor fails? Maybe you'll die, maybe you will just have to pull off the road.
In the cause of Challenger, I'll WAG that the leak wouldn't have caused any unresolveable problems if the whole vehicle hadn't been designed like two bottle rockets strapped to a zip-lock bag of gasoline.