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Setbacks Cast Doubt On NASA's Ares Project
stoolpigeon writes with this excerpt from an Orlando Sentinel article about the Ares program, which paints a bleak picture of the program's future: "Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone. First was the discovery that it lacked sufficient power to lift astronauts in a state-of-the-art capsule into orbit. Then engineers found out that it might vibrate like a giant tuning fork, shaking its crew to death. Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff. "
Experts say its problems stem from changes to the original design. These modifications, such as changing the engines and making the solid rocket boosters longer, created unexpected problems, including excessive shaking and the launch drift.
Changing design too late in the game, not enough time to review what consequences those changes might create? Too many requirements squeezed into too tight a schedule?
Hmm, sounds familiar to us who are doing large software projects.
Looking around and seeing the tons of greedy and incompetent managers I have no doubt that Dilber law (it states that incompetent people will get promoted to managment) has taken over the old rule that managers where people that may have been lacking "social" skills but at least they knew what they where doing.
I have no problem to believe that suggestions and faults report of engineers where just ignored by some manager that decided that by doing so he will be in charge to build two projects (the faulty one and the possibly working one)
I suggest that we go back to the old school, managers must be taken from successful engineers that have worked on the field ! They may lack some "social" skill but at least they know what they are doing
The Saturn V is (was) built from what is now antiquated technology. I'd rather see then implement Jupiter.
Common guys, this isn't rocket science!
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Please, this is not a troll.
So what are the alternatives? I understand that not only is the shuttle getting very old (and presumably less safe with already a 1:100 chance of failure per launch) but is extremely expensive in terms of dollars/lb. to orbit.
Are there any reasonable alternatives that are available in say, 5 years? Such as using a man-rated Delta (very reliable commercial launcher) for the relatively small Orion crew capsule and perhaps some sort of Shuttle tank + Shuttle engines + 2 current boosters as a heavy lift vehicle? Or will the U.S. be without manned space flight capabilities in a few years (ceding it to the Russians and Chinese!).
Any NASA/ex-NASA/space experts out there? (By the way, really disappointed that the SSTO efforts like the Delta Clipper and X-34(?) didn't work out. Also, no, the Japanese space elevator will not be available for at least 20 years and probably not within our lifetimes).
An even more bleak picture comes from this blog/editorial:
http://rocketsandsuch.blogspot.com/2008/10/getting-specific.html
It seems as though NASA hasn't learned about what went wrong with the development of the Space Shuttle and are bound and determined to repeat those mistakes of the past and make new ones on top of that. This is a rocket being designed by committee, with some of the top management folks who don't want to compromise on the basic premise: to "reuse" as many of the Shuttle parts as possible.
I hate to break the word to anybody still ignorant on this, but so little is being re-used from the Shuttle design that they might as well have gone back to the Saturn V design instead, or even made something completely from a blank piece of paper and rebuilt the supply chains from scratch.
There are also so many engineers who are working for NASA that are complaining about this design that at the very least somebody in political leadership (aka congressmen & senators) ought to be starting to listen to the grumblings going on here. The lines of communication between Griffin and the engineers doing the actual number crunching and the basic design of this vehicle are completely broken.
Of course, NASA has a wonderful reputation for listenting to its engineers that you can put full confidence in the NASA administration being able to listen to what needs to be fixed.
Anyway, I'd rather they found these errors now, rather than later...
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
As the Chinese already have a working man-rated launch vehicle, I suspect that the US will have to make the Areas work no matter what, or else you'll be seeing the Chinese on the moon first (and at this rate even the Russians and the Europeans too, since the Europeans are currently looking at man-rating the Ariane and launching astronauts with a modified ATV).
There, my contribution to the Slashdot US vs. the rest of the world slanging match.
... that engineers at NASA have formed a group to develop an alternative to "Ares", because of the perception that it was too little for too much effort. And the fact that NASA has so far rejected their plan without having looked at it seriously.
I have been saying this for years now: NASA has been dropping the ball when it comes to man in space. It has been doing great with robotics, but otherwise has been dropping the ball.
You want to see another man on the moon from the United States? Make it a $10 Billion dollar prize. NASA blows that (or pretty close) on a single Shuttle launch. I bet private industry would do it in under 10 years.
NASA has been losing it, big time. Can they make a comeback? I would be the happiest person if they did. But I have my doubts.
Despite what people will say about the environmental side-effects, I still feel that Project Orion is the best possible way for us to get back to space fast, and actually travel useful distances with a live crew.
I remember, as a kid, being very excited about reports that the reusable 'Space Shuttle' was going to be like a 'space pickup truck' and reduce launch costs to $50/lb. It was still expensive, but I remember calculating the price for a kid my size. ($4500. Wow!) Then the cost went up to $100/lb. Not great, but still cheaper than what we had. Then $500/lb. Tolerable, I guess. Then they quit talking about it at all.
NASA has done a lot of amazing things in the last 30 years, no doubt. But their manned program is a complete fuck-story. Just once, I'd like to see senior NASA management acknowledge a problem in the manned program, own up to causing it, and taking the action necessary to fix it. I like it that they've split cargo and humans (after 30 years of agonizingly expensive lessons that have greatly diminished American space capability) and are going back to mostly disposable systems (again, after 30 years of expensive lessons). But, why--Oh, why!?--can't they get this right?
It looks like they're going to drive this thing into the ground, just like the shuttle. The public secret is that the NASA manned program shows all the signs of a dysfunctional organization, and has for 30 years. The next president, senate, and congress need to seriously look at scrapping NASA's manned program and building a new one from scratch, possibly outside of the auspices of NASA. For the good of the country and of humankind, I hope that they do.
There are going to be setbacks. Mistakes will be made. For the most part these rocket surgeons do the job, on time.
Personally, I'd like to see them re-engineer the Saturn V. Didn't it run linux?
Why should we worry about setbacks? The Delta IV Heavy is launching just fine and could have easily done the job. All that they would have had to do would be the man-rating of the spacecraft and the redesign of the fairing. Additionally, the Delta IV Heavy has a lot of upgrade potential. Cross feeding propellant and adding additional strap-on boosters could easily double its capacity. And should I also mention that you can shut off the engines on the Delta IV if you have a problem (which might be convenient when you are transporting humans who don't like to explode when malfunctions occur).
You also have a conceptual error. The problem is with the Ares I, not the Ares V. The Ares I is a crappy 25 tonne rocket that is being built because it will provide pork to Utah. The Ares V, which also supplies pork to Utah, is the 130 tonne ultra heavy lift rocket that is in the same class as the Saturn V.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
How have our standards of failure become so high that we freak out because there could be flaws in simulations? This is the POINT of these projects, to push ourselves forward
Nobody wants to have to scrap their work to fix a problem, but it's going to happen. If it's not, we're not pushing ourselves hard enough. Probes are going to crash, projects are going to overrun, people are going to make mistakes. If we keep at it, however, thats when we reap the rewards.
No doubt we need to eliminate needless risk and move what other risks we can away from the loss of life and property, but lets not confuse that with eliminating any risk at all. To remove all risk is to end all progress and change.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we had a series of really nice, multi-stage rockets... what, forty years ago? Just off the top of my head, we had... Vanguard, Atlas, Saturn, Delta, Titan.. And they all worked pretty well.
We seem to have made them in the "dark ages" of technology, too, relatively speaking.
What's the problem now? Are our engineers less smart? Do we have fewer materials? Are we under a budget that's too strict? There has to be something that's keeping us from being able to do this. I mean, we made a fricking space plane twenty years ago to build up public opinion and convince people that we were on the edge of the future -- now we can't go back and make a rocket?
I mean, at worst, what's keeping us from looking at, say, the Saturn design and updating it with modern technologies, materials, and safety measures?
I feel like I'm missing something here.
If what is stated in the summary is true, then I think I've simply have to give up any trust in the prowess of NASA.
What happened to this organisation that managed to put people on the moon, that managed to build a huge telescope in orbit around the earth, that even built a permanently manned space station? How is it possible they can't even design a rocket to take us to the moon?
It is for sure not an easy task - but with the immense expertise that should be present within NASA, and commercial rocket launches now being commonplace, I'd say even geostationary orbit is an off-the-shelf technology, and I don't believe the step from there to the moon is that big, technically speaking.
Not having enough power to lift off in the first place, come on! Someone didn't read the design specs, or were they not written down properly? It is really the most mundane if not stupid problem I can imagine when designing a moon rocket system.
The other two mentioned problems (liftoff drift and the shaking) seem to me more like scaling issues, that presumably can be solved. Nasty ones I bet when you find them out, but the fact that they are found on the drawing board already means they're known issues. Then why making so much fuss about it! I bet they have had to deal with many more design issues that they found out only when modeling their new upgraded rocket.
One huge difference between the Apollo/Saturn design and the Space Shuttle was multiple methods of abort that would separate the manned portion from the rest of the rocket. Things like the launch escape rocket (the little pointy thing on the top of the command module) and the ability to fire subsequent stages to at least get the astronauts way the hell away from a problem stage would have saved the astronauts in the event that the Saturn V had problems.
The Saturn V got a little more dicey once you decided to move out of low earth orbit on the 3rd stage and head for the Moon.... such as what Apollo 13 found out the hard way. But even that had redundancies that simply haven't existed for the Space Shuttle.
I certainly would trust the Saturn V and its safety record over the Shuttle. Had we been using the Saturn V for the past 40 years with the same level of upgrades and technical improvements that have gone into the Shuttle, including proposed "Apollo II" vehicles that would have carried seven astronauts at once, I have no doubt that we would have a vehicle right now that would be considerably more reliable than even the Soyuz spacecraft (currently the best "proven" manned spacecraft design for safety).
We might have even saved a whole bunch of money compared to what it has cost us to run the whole Shuttle program. Wernher von Braun certainly was anticipating production runs on the Saturn V on the order of hundreds of rockets, not the dozen or so that actually were built.
They did lose a crew. Apollo I during pad testing.
The Apollo 1 fatalities were not due to the rocket. Additionally, Apollo 1 wasn't mounted on a Saturn V, so the comparison is moot.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff"
Would that be bad, then?
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
The Saturn V is (was) built from what is now antiquated technology.
Except for the J2 second stage engine, of course, which is being reused on Ares (with some mods.)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
There are going to be setbacks. Mistakes will be made. For the most part these rocket surgeons do the job, on time.
I think you mean brain scientists.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Chair vibrating too much? simple.. just look at your compass floating away, undo your straps and let your chair crunch into the ceiling while you float for the rest of the trip.
Only works with ships designed by aliens.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Why is the parent modded funny?
I was probably modded funny because someone thought I was making a Jupiter > Saturn joke.
why does parent want to see a rocket built that NASA rates as not worth the effort
I suspect bias is the reason for their opinion. They have about as much incentive to seriously consider Jupiter as MS has to seriously consider *nix.
One of the most interesting things to note about Soyuz is in fact the Launch Escape System.
It's been used twice, and both times, the cosmonauts were pretty pissed off afterward (nobody likes 21gs), but were able to walk away from the incident.
Both incidents were pretty remarkable. The first occurred after the vehicle caught fire on the pad, with the LES (manually) activating two seconds before the vehicle literally exploded on the pad.
The second occurred mid-way through launch, after one of the stages failed to separate. In this case, the LES activated while the rocket was pointing down toward the earth. The capsule then landed on the side of a snow-covered mountain near the Chinese border, and rolled 500 yards before coming to a halt. (The Russians somehow anticipated this sort of situation, and there was cold-weather gear stored on-board for the cosmonauts).
I stress, once again that despite these "worst case scenario" failures, the crew were relatively unharmed, which is a pretty strong testament to the inherent safety of a very simplistic (by rocket science standards) system such as Soyuz.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The problem is, believe it or not, some bright genius (or group of them) at NASA decided that, once upon a time, a large quantity of the documentation for Apollo was not worth saving. Documentation for many assemblies has been lost, as have many of the men and women who built them.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
While I would have to agree that it was a huge mistake to abandon the Saturn family of rockets in the 1970's, any attempt to revive the project would simply be starting all over again with a whole new rocket design.
More importantly, all of the talent that went into building the Saturn V, including much of the undocumented "fixes" and the folks who were on the line actually putting the thing together have long since retired or simply died. Also, none of the suppliers for the Saturn V even exist.
Heck, I'm not even sure you could find the manufacturing capabilities for many of the Saturn V components in America any more. Most of that capability has been shipped overseas to places like China, India, and Taiwan. And you wonder why those countries are getting rockets of their own going?
We can't get it back, we can only make a copy and find out the hard way what some of the bits that are undocumented for were really added for. On the other hand we can make a launch vehicle that living designers know backwards based on expertise that is not just limited to NASA and a couple of contractors, and we can repeatedly test the things to destruction like the motors in the Saturn V were. The problem is that it will take time and we need to be able to listen to experts instead of going for headlines. Chasing headlines IMHO is how we ended up with a NASA culture that was so malevolent that the only person untouchable enough to speak the truth was a dying Nobel prize winner. The Russians had major failures too but I think a lot of their success came from announcing things when they were done - in a lot of cases they had less time pressure than US missions (Sputnik was an exeption and had to be launched before the instruments were ready, but we didn't find that out until decades after a launch that was still a huge success).
That can't be right. A 1/6 chance to fail is a 5/6 chance to succeed. Wikipedia indicates 11 manned launches. (5/6)^11=0.13
If 1/6 chance is correct then there was only a 0.13 chance that all those launches succeeded. I find it hard to believe that we were really that lucky. The chance of failure had to have been much lower.
Cow Cube
It might seem unrelated but this "management project" might be easier to experience for most of us. Lord of the Rings Online PvMP. Tactics.
Two sides, uneven numbers and uneven skills. Battles tend to be tank rusk vs tank rush, or zerg vs zerg. Hit the other with all you got and see if you can wipe them out. It is the nature of the game. In the battle area there are keeps to take. First thing a SMART leader who understands KISS does is ask himself. Do I really want to add complexity to the battle by giving myself TWO goals, fighting the enemy AND taking a keep at the same time? Note that taking a keep itself already has two tasks at least, killing NPC's and stopping others on your side "accidently" pulling every NPC in the area.
KISS means, Keep It Simple Stupid. The more complex you make a task, the more trouble you create for yourself. The human brains ain't all that good at dealing with a lot of tasks so it tends to just ignore things it can't handle if overloaded. Overlooking the basics by focussing on to many complex demands at once.
In Lotro PvMP one of the basics is "you need numbers". A complex task is to try stategies like creating a diversion, flanking etc etc. Everyone who thinks they know about war might think these are valid tactics but forget one thing. KISS. Even an attempt at flanking the enemy is FAR to complex to pull off. Sure, it might work once, if you got people who REALLY work together, but 9 times out of 10 it just ends up with the enemy just wiping one part first, then the second. PvMP is Lotro is about numbers vs numbers, so stick together and hit them in force. It works, has been proven to work and is something most people can deal with. Split for instance into two groups and you waste ten minutes getting everyone to follow the right leader, while the enemy looks on and thinks "Yummie, bite sized enemy forces".
So how does this relate to the US space program? The mandate to re-use space shuttle parts. Totally unneeded complexity. Re-using existing stuff SOUNDS smart but goes against KISS because it forces you to work around ALL the problems the existing parts bring. It is in this case BLOODY clear the existing parts have troubles because if they didn't, you would be using the old system.
If you want a rocket to take you to the moon with a manned module then THAT is the design requirement. Nothing more. Rocket+manned+moon. Not +cheap. Not +beforedateX. Not +reuseparts. Not +somebodiespetproject. Everything requirement you add makes things far more complex and that is BOUND to go wrong.
People in software are of course familiar with the idea of re-usability. Re-use your code. C++ was build around the idea. The idea has its meritcs. I certainly wouldn't recommend that the next moon rocket seeks to re-invent the screw BUT there is a HUGE difference between using existing parts if it happens to be convenient and putting re-using parts as a design requirement.
Think of it like this. Using GD in your website software vs GD must be used in your website software. Using OS/2 for your desktop vs your desktop MUST use OS/2.
As a software engineer you probably seen this countless time. Software requiring the use of Oracle database to store 1 column because we use oracle in this company. Demands to have servers run windows because that is what the boss has on his desktop.
Ares has to many design requirements that have nothing to do with getting the US back on the moon and that is the reason it failed. If they had gone for a new design, re-using only if it happened naturally, then they would already have had a rocket, it would have been cheaper and it might even have been flying already. But no, it had to re-use by design to be cheaper and faster and voila, as everyone could predict, it is more expansive and slower. re-use as part of the design spec != KISS. If someone mentions re-use of code as a goal during development I have long since learned to get the hell out of the project. I suggest NASA hires me so that I can stand by with a clue-bat during their brainstorming sessions and whack anyone adding needless complexity to their projects. Seeing how much money it wastes, I would say 10 million a year would be nice starting salary. Where do I apply?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There were mistakes made with Apollo 1 that should never have happened, and the fixes to the Apollo spacecraft did substantially improve astronaut safety for future missions.
One of the most insane mistakes made on the Apollo 1 vehicle: There was no method for astronauts, once mounted inside of the spacecraft, to be able to get themselves out (shy of grabbing a hammer and pounding through the side of the vehicle). It was anticipated that even on landing that the recovery vehicles would open the door for the astronauts (so as to not repeat Virgil Grissom's perceived mistake on Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury flight).
There were many others, including the 100% pure oxygen environment @ sealevel pressure that also caused some huge problems.
To my admittedly outsider's eye, NASA looks and acts exactly like your classic dysfunctional monopoly bureaucracy. These things are common and seem unavoidable - everything that I've read about the Ares debacle is right in line with a sclerotic, mismanaged, change-averse (and risk-averse .. just not the right type of risk) fiefdom-addled government clusterfuck we see time and time again. Hell, not just government - occasionally we see this in the private sector too, when a trenchant monopoly manages to establish itself somewhere and then proceeds to lose sight of everything that got it there in the first place and rots from within. Microsoft of 5 years ago, by all accounts, got pretty close to that, but there are many others, especially in defense.
What kills this is competition, genuine competition, that forces the organisation to adapt or perish. Nothing other than imminent risk of complete death will force such organisations to subject themselves to the kind of creative destruction needed to re-invent themselves.
I personally believe that NASA in its present form is lost, but forms can change. The key element is the competition now arising from other countries' space agencies. NASA no longer has a monopoly; it will not take long before the results from other agencies - done better, faster, cheaper - will force radical change at NASA.
It's not the 1960s again yet, but when China and India announce dates for their moon landings, you can bet the clock will start spinning backwards within days.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love America, but it desperately needs competition. The same could go for NASA. Well, it'll get it soon enough.
Funny how NASA - and America in general - needs foreigners to keep itself in line. Back in the day it was Von Braun. Now it's Hu Jintao who will provide the electric shock necessary to revive this intransigent patient.
America isn't a country, it's a team. It needs to fight, it needs to compete, it needs constant challenge. If there's no "enemy", it gets lazy and tears itself apart. Just like every other empire in history. I use that word without any perjorative intention, by the way - there is simply no other way to describe a country with so many overseas military bases. Of course America is an empire, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But god, it needs competition. The good news is - competition is on the way. In space, and everywhere else, America now faces its first real competition in generations.
I for one am on the edge of my seat, waiting for the games to begin, and looking forward to what the "real america" - the one that competes, and wins - can come up with. USA!
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
That part of the problem is that the US had a very successful manned space program with many firsts (including the moon landing). In fact the US continues to have a very successful unmanned space program. The recent Mars missions, the rovers and the Phoenix Mars mission, have been very successful.
Well those two things help lead to being lazy about future manned space missions. After all that's not the competitive "We've got to do it first," thing going on. Then there's the fact that the unmanned missions are much, much cheaper and seem to produce plenty good data.
You have to remember that sending people in to space has thus far not been all that necessary, nor is there a real economic reason (beyond tourism). If it was a case that there was a lot of money to be made, like say you sent someone to the moon and they brought back billions of dollars of valuable resources, well then sure, there'd be plenty of motivation to keep a modern manned mission going. However as it stands, there's no economic benefit. So the benefit is entirely scientific. Well, that's sure as hell not worthless, but unmanned missions seem to do the job brilliantly.
I mean suppose you are running the program and I come to you and say I have some research I want to do. I can do it two ways: I can either design and build an automated system, which has a chance of failing, or I can send people, who based on past experience have about a 1% chance of dying (that's roughly NASA's record at this point, about 1 in 100). Also, the automated system is much cheaper to do, and can potentially work for longer, though perhaps not quite as flexible.
Which do you choose?
I'm certainly not against NASA modernizing it's manned space program I think it's worthwhile. But let's maintain a realistic assessment of how useful it is and how priority it is. The US has already sent people to the moon, a number of times in fact. Doing it just for bragging rights isn't useful at this point.
Here is the video of both of them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyFF4cpMVag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoBHBOnscY&feature=related
Hehe, you could see the Russian general pull on his collar when they aborted probably thinking "Gorbachev is gonna have my balls pinned to the walls for this on".
I wonder how effective this system really is when you are breaking the sound barrier, if it is safe to do.
Pigs will fly!
Ah, economies of scale - we can transport lots more pigs with a bigger rocket!
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Would you feel happy "riding" into space using "strap ons"?
I certainly would trust the Saturn V and its safety record over the Shuttle.
Saturn V, zero failures in the first (and only) 13 flights.
Space shuttle, zero failures in the first 24 flights, one failure, then zero failures for the next 87 flights.
If you "trust" the safety record of the Saturn as better than shuttle, this is only by an artifact of low statistics-- the Saturn V does not have a long enough flight record to say it has a better record than shuttle.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Two wrongs don't make a right, you know? Yes, some engineers are incompetent, and some are as out of touch with reality as to design an engine block with the spark plugs underneath. (To pick an example of something a mechanic would dislike thoroughly.)
1. Adding an incompetent manager on the next layer doesn't fix it. It just makes the total problem even worse. You can't say it's ok to add an incompetent boss, just because a lot of those under him will be incompetent too.
2. Yes, an engineer will not know everything. E.g., the ones doing physical engineering may not know much about industrial design, or programmers usually don't know much about GUI design. That's why we have a whole organization, not a lone maverick designing it all. You have to mix and match the skills of several people, to have a good design. From the guy designing the engine, to the one designing a pleasing dashboard, to the marketer doing a study in which colour should it have to be attractive to buyers. It's a _team_ effort.
And guess what? The role of a manager is precisely to organize such a heterogenous team, and make sure it has the right mix of skills and that they're used right.
Basically if you can notice the shortcomings of an individual there (e.g., "damn engineers who put the spark plugs there"), you're actually noticing a management failure too. The guy who should have had the missing skill, wasn't there or wasn't listened to. Even if you want to expect that engineers should have had <insert extra skill> in the first place, then someone should have taken that into account when hiring them. If a whole team ended up with _all_ members missing that skill that everyone should have had... why did they get hired then? Or, again, then why wasn't an extra guy hired who has that extra skill needed, and whose job is to apply it.
That's the job of management: to manage it all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Back in the late '70s I bought a book, published by NASA, that described the planned followons to the shuttle... based on using the Shuttle engines and launch system in other configurations, including a heavy lifter. This scheme was never followed through, but it should be.
There's a group of NASA engineers working on it again. They call it DIRECT 2.0.
The structural requirements for an aircraft are very different than those of a rocket. With mass being such a critical problem in rocket design, are you any better off if you have to add a substantial amount of mass to add the capability of taking off and flying to high altitude? From what I remember about rockets launched from balloons, the main problem in reaching space wasn't altitude, it was velocity, and a balloon launch didn't help much in reaching escape velocity.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
My advanced statistics prof would have your nards for a post-hoc analysis. The probability of something that has already happen occurring is, well, 100%. There's no predicting the past.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Actually, from my experience in software, the absolute worst PHB's I've ever seen, were ex-programmers. Some of them _brilliant_ ex-programmers. But they were crap at dealing with people, even worse at organizing things, hated being in meetings half the time now, and most of them also expected their employees to meet and exceed some standards that they themselves actually failed. (Except maybe in their own mind.)
A rough breakdown, off the top of my head, is somewhat like this:
- two ended up obnoxious control freaks, and convinced that nothing ever gets done unless they pester someone to death. One of them used to click on Netscape's title bar to show it that he's watching. He genuinely believed that it loaded pages faster if it knew the boss is watching . (Freaking hillarious or freaking sad, for someone who had been a brilliant programmer before. You decide which.)
- one ended up personally doing the programs of his whole team, because it was less stress than trying to organize and manage that team. He'd make up by lashing out with random acts of mis-management, presumably more to show himself that he's still the boss, than to show it to his underlings.
- two ended up what I can only describe as yes-men in both directions. They basically avoided managing, by pretending to be on everyone's side, both from above and from below.
- one ended up, basically a depressed whiner.
Etc.
As for Dilbert... here's something worth wondering about: several comic strips paint the PHB as being unable to read people's reactions. In one, he can't tell if Wally is sleeping or working, when looking at him from the front. Several make sense only if he isn't even aware of the harm he does. That guy has Asperger's Syndrome. He's a nerd. A complete nerd, in fact.
And if I'm allowed to run amok with analyzing a cartoon character too far: while it is possible that his narrow focus of interest (practically a given for an aspie) was management from the start, it's very _unusual_ for that disorder. Asperger's Syndrome is a bit like being colour blind, only it's about human reactions instead of about colours. The typical way is to end up fascinated with numbers, technology or the like, not with the people that you can't even understand much. My money is that such a person started from engineering, CS or some other such field.
And, yes, I know that it is just a cartoon character, and I'm not pretending that it's real or anything. I _am_ however guessing that it might be based on one or more managers that Scott Adams worked with before.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Air launching reduces range costs. No blastproof pad, blockhouse, or associated equipment is needed. This permits takeoff from a wide variety of sites, generally limited by the support and preparation requirements of the payload. The travel range of the aircraft allows launches at the equator, which increases performance and is a requirement for some mission orbits. Launching over oceans also reduces insurance costs, which are not small for a vehicle filled with what are essentially explosives.
Launch at altitude allows a larger, more efficient, yet cheaper first-stage nozzle. Its expansion ratio can be designed for low ambient air pressures, without risking flow separation and flight instability during low-altitude flight. The extra diameter of the high-altitude nozzle would be difficult to gimbal. But with reduced crosswinds, the fins can provide sufficient first-stage steering. This allows a fixed nozzle, which saves cost and weight versus a hot joint.
*** Don't be dull.***
It has already been proven that Gus did NOT cause the accident. Had he hit the switch that blows the door open, there would have been a nasty bruise on his hand, but none was found. See also, this Wikipedia article.