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White House Panel Seeks Input On Spaceflight Plans
Neil H. writes "The Augustine Commission, commissioned by the White House and NASA to provide an independent review of the current US human spaceflight program and potential new directions, is seeking public input on a document describing the preliminary beyond-LEO exploration scenarios they're analyzing. The destination-based scenarios, designed with NASA's current budget in mind, range from a Lunar Base (essentially NASA's current plan), to 'Mars First' (human exploration of Mars ASAP), to 'Flexible Path' (initially focused on several destinations in shallow gravity wells, such as Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids, and the Martian moon Phobos). The Commission is also seeking input on the issues of engaging commercial spaceflight, in-space refueling, and coordinating human and robotic exploration."
So I figure we build a few thousand probe droids with solar sails and sling shot them around the sun and send them aimed at planets of all nearest solar systems. I've got some basic plans drafted up. Couple hundred years from now the first will be hitting Alpha Centauri and although we may all be dead, the footage they send back will make for some bitchin opening movie scenes.
My work here is dung.
send up a noah ark-esque mission to the nearest solar system and back.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
into the input socket on the plans.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
Yeah well my ion drive will still beat your solar sail crap to Alpha Centauri any day. And will be many times easier to steer.
The next time we send manned missions to the Moon (or Mars), let's get serious and do it sustainably. This business of sending someone up to collect rocks and beat a path back home just for the sake of planting a flag is just lame and depressing. Take the long view, secure international cooperation and funding, and work on genuine colonization efforts.
All of the proposed plans are based on the arguably flawed assumption that humans can add significant value in flexibility over current robotic explorers. Which is clearly not the case based on experiences with the mars rovers and similar devices.
Why can't we just admit the unpleasant: Yes, in 1969, if you wanted to explore the moon you needed a person. Now, 40 years later, you need robots and let the people sit comfortably back at JPL and Houston, safe and sound and cheaper.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Don't use solar sails. Use nuclear pulse thrusters. Those same probes could be sending back images within our lifetimes.
Not a typewriter
As appealing as "get your ass to mars" seems, I suspect the "flexible" shallow gravity wells option (mining NEOs and the like) would cause the most sweeping changes across industry and society.
If a space presence is what we really want, then that would seem to (under-informed) me to be the option with the most immediate and obvious financial benefits, and the one most likely to encourage indistrial expansion into space. Expansion of the sort that is most likely to stay.
The flexible path that would go to shallow gravity well destinations, such as asteroids or the martian moons, makes a lot of sense to me. This lets NASA gradually transition from the international space station to long duration space voyages, while avoiding the big problem of lifting the huge amount of mass needed to enter and return from gravity wells. To show how much simpler the shallow gravity well problem is, consider that efficient, low-power thrusters mounted on a platform similar to the international space station could do the trick. At the same time, this lets us gain access to materials (ice, metals, etc.) present in the space environment, and also lets us do a lot of interesting fundamental science.
Couple hundred years from now the first will be hitting Alpha Centauri
Not if we play the game with 'bloodlust' turned on.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Dude, this is America! We don't wait for things! Even the 6 months it takes to get to Mars is pushing it...the way our attention span is, we'd probably launch the astronauts to Mars, and then 3 months later some Congresscritter would recommend cutting out this silly "Mars mission" from the budget, because no one even remembers what that was for, and use the money to build a new movie theater in his district (named after him, naturally). They'd lay off everyone at Mission Control, and the astronauts up in their capsule would wonder why no one is answering their transmissions anymore.
Talking about something that would take 200 years? Hell, when Voyager was (briefly) back in the news a couple of years ago, most people probably didn't even know what the hell it was, other than some vague memory in the deep recesses of their brains that it had something to do with Star Trek, much less what it was supposed to be doing out there. 200 years from now, people will probably think the transmissions coming from your proposed spacecraft are from some alien race and freak out.
My prediction is that this whole process results in some pretty exciting plans, which will all be canceled after NASA's budget gets slashed yet again.
Go to Mars. Most of us would agree that there are much more beneficial endeavors, probably more profitable as well. But the fact of the matter is nothing else would get as much attention from the general public as going to Mars.
I'd go to mars in a second! But I hear the demon population is a bit high on Phobos, and ammo for a BFG is just too expensive these days.
One project which would be helpful for any sort of Mars exploration would be the establishment of a communication and navigation infrastructure. Maybe a dozen small satellites in polar orbits* with a sort of GPS-lite capability and a store-and-forward messaging capability. Plus two big communication sats with nice big solar arrays and very powerful radio transciever for getting data back to earth. (And forwarding commands to any probe or manned mission that needs it.)
A near-Earth-system manned mission capability. Take the planned NASA Earth orbit / Moon orbit ship and add a refuelable propulsion / service module. Future versions could have a reactor & radiator, and maybe even a fission rocket motor.
* Yes, this is a challenge.
The most important single advance that could help spaceflight, manned and unmanned would be to reduce the cost to LEO. This will require, ultimately, a SSTO (single stage to orbit) launcher. Of course it's tough (remember the X-34? the Delta Clipper?) but that doesn't mean that with new advances in materials (can you say carbon nanotube reinforced composites) it's impossible. Unless we can bring the cost of access to space down by a factor of at least 10 a lot of these dreams will remain just that; dreams.
After that, new low thrust high specific impulse engines would be very useful along with a compact energy source to power them. VASIMIR sounds promising and maybe magnetic sails (which might have the side benefit of protection against cosmic rays). We'll probably need real nuclear reactors in space like the SNAP program (or the Russian equivalent). Remember the words of an airforce general: "a new plane doesn't make a new engine possible, a new engine makes a new plane possible".
Ultimately, of course, a space elevator is the best way to go. There was a proposal, I think, of building one for less than $10B by using a "small" elevator to bring the materials gradually up from earth (rather than trying to capture an carbonaceous asteroid to use as a material source/counterweight). Of course we'll need those carbon nanotubes again!
We create a huge solar array, big enough to cause a solar eclipse, and position it so it happens every other week or so. It would really freak India out...
Man, create a blog or so to post your rants so it's easier to filter out this crap. It's not even loosely related to the current discussion.
Anything else we do is grave decoration.
Sending probes or even people to explore Mars, Alpha Centauri or Wolf 359 is a waste if we are wiped out by an asteroid. We have some good theories on how to do it. We need to test them.
Let's practice while we still have the luxury of time... and failure.
The delta-v required to get off Earth is just plain enormous. That's a fact of physics which will NEVER change. What can change is (a) the cost of energy, and (b) how efficiently we can use that energy to escape our gravity well. If you want to make space exploration more feasible you have to do one or both of those two.
The construction of a space elevator will allow humans to get anywhere else in space faster and cheaper. Rocket-based methods are horribly inefficient ways to get to orbit. Payload launch costs of $10,000 or more per pound? You gotta be kidding me. If we don't have the technology for space elevators yet, NASA should be working on that as a top priority.
call me FOSS im the boss with the sauce and the source
You just solved the 'Middle East Crisis'!
Go ahead and go, go anywhere and everywhere...
But actually DO something once you get there, don't just go there to wave your dick around.
I'd really like to see a good sized radio telescope built on the far side of the moon, complete with relay lines to dishes at the terminus between near and far sides, so there's no accidental reflections from earth off of relay satellites instead.
Going further out than LEO would be good also...
I remember reading this PDF of a flight plan from around 40 years ago, where they wanted to send a crew further INTO the solar system, and actually intercept/orbit Venus, using apollo tech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby
How about a small, self sufficient station at L3?
You'd need a couple of relay sats for comms, but that's a smaller cost than the station.
Alas, none of this will happen though, because we're too adverse to risk these days, and we wouldn't DARE send someone condemned to death out there instead, it'd de-demonize them (serial killer and first man on another planet?).
Plus, have you noticed that most of the studies about going into space for long periods of time involve seeing if people can do with limited to no social interaction?
Yeah, most of US can, but the ones they trust to send up there, CAN'T!
So we gotta settle for unmanned probes.
So fire off at least one every month.
Pick something to study: moon, planet, propulsion tech, comm tech, interstellar phenomenom (this one will take time and would need to be fast).
And if you need some tech to make sure it works (such as an RTG), and people complain about it, ignore them with extreme prejudice.
And more space telescopes!
Seriously, we have barely a handful pointing outwards, but probably hundreds (classified, guess, and hope you're not accurate) looking back down?
The modern national space program like what we've seen recently with the Shuttle was flawed from inception due to Pentagon-mandated low-orbit satellite retrieval capability, cost-prohibitive quick-turn launch requirements and catastrophic reoccuring heat tile failure. NASA for the most part didn't have a problem getting us there, they had a problem getting us back. Arguably, I think the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity provided the biggest return on investment NASA has committed in the last 20 years. Space exploration is a business, and every time you have an orbiter burn up due to a lingering design problem - no matter how cool it is to EVA and pilot a spacecraft - you set the support (ie taxpayers) back. MER took the same form factor, packed in more science return, and left Earth and is presently exploring another planet from it's surface. I'm not saying humans shouldn't be in space, or that scientific achievements haven't been realized. Given the cost, dangers and complexity of putting a person in space versus a robot, a sensable direction begins to emerge. No one except perhaps the designers will mourn for a robot that burns up on entry because of heat shield failure or is destroyed on impact because the parachute fails to open.
One might think the best course of action would be to establish a lunar coloney that could be used as an output for any future missions further out into space. However, the lunar coloney would be subject to the impacts from space rock. The moon is constanly being hit by micro-meteorites and until we can find some way to block these types of impacts, i cant see any type of installtion lasting very long. I still belive that the lunar coloney would be the best starting point for any future space exploration. Just my two cents though
I say we beat the Buggers to Ceres.
My webcomic
>> The cost would be massive
How exactly would massive cost stop the White House and Congress? Just tack-on another stepped 5% income tax to pay for this...works for other programs that way.
A movie theater? C'mon... that kind of budget would be worth at least a minor-league stadium or regional airport or something
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I recommended that NASA add a scenario to recast NASA as an "infrastructure" building public works program rather than a national prestige exploration program. The goal of "safe, innovative, affordable, and sustainable" manned spaceflight can best be met through collaboration with commercial manned spaceflight rather than a system of NASA run manned exploration projects. To achieve this collaboration, NASA should refocus on "infrastructure" - not literally space lift facilities, but instead the knowledge infrastructure private industry is lacking. Returning to its NACA research roots, NASA should perform pure research and development and release the information gained and systems developed to the commercial spaceflight community via an open source license. Specific focus should be given to robust ECLSS systems and standardized docking systems and procedures. This research would allow the space industry to rapidly produce safe and affordable lift vehicles and spacecraft which could interact with the ISS, explore NEO objects for exploitable resources, and generally increase the profit-generating capability of space beyond space tourism. NASA continuing to provide open source research would allow manned use of space to evolve naturally, following the rules of supply and demand to determine which locations need to be explored when rather than an artificial timeline for national prestige.
NASA has showed us some capacity to learn from it's mistakes. Where they recorded over the original moon landing magnetic tapes, they later learned to archive the Voyager transmissions.
Minor note on your second scenario- It could be the group who is persecuted is the ones with money and technical knowledge, if they were politically influential they wouldn't be persecuted.
Third Scenario- An inhabitable world is discovered within a few years travel time.
Theres a lot more incentive to go when you sort of know whats there and as for trading who cares? If land is cheap and food is plentiful and you have a good chance of making it, people will go.
"Ive got 30,000 in debt, and $500 a month in child support. So my choices are stay here and give all my money to someone else or hop on your ark ship and go someplace where ill have land and can do whatever I want.
Where do i sign up?"
what we need, is a huge ass railgun that shoots telephone pole shaped slugs, filled with water, oxygen, or whatever raw materials are needed, up to a space station in geostationary orbit. a space station with a cnc machine, and some manufacturing capability, so you can create new parts for said space station.
? Are you retarded? How is it NOT related to the current discussion?
Direction to head, and hastily assembled proofs..
White House Panel Seeks Input On Spaceflight Plans
and Spaceflight plans don't have relevance?
The infrastructure cost for humans in space is staggering.
That's why I keep going on about how important it is to plant a garden as soon as you get there. And only flush after number two. "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down."
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Forget government, let NASA play it's space game and retire the shuttle, government will never do space right.
Space needs to be done by the public, companies, individuals, etc need to be permitted to go into space without fighting NASA for each flight.
Burt Rutan discusses this issue fairly well, I'm with him, private industry and people will be the viable plan for future spaceflight, forget the government.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
--
you can find some good, interesting and useful suggestions for the Human Space Flight Plans Committee and NASA here:
--
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/045suggestions.html
--
If we define succcess as radar mapping, atmospheric and soil analysis, then yes a huge step as been taken. The bridging of technology intended for human use in an exploratory capicity with military oversight is problematic; the military will always require a capability that brings the cost way up. Not that the two can't complement each other, it's that they hinder each other's growth. The military equivelent of "exploration" is "search and rescue", usually assigned to asset recovery. The military has no interest in scraping the surface of Martian rocks or analyzing subsurface ice looking for microbial life. Interestingly, if NASA could implement a "search and rescue" protocol of it's own to recover discarded equipment, (think Salvage One tv show) there could be business oportunity and recovery of space assets that are for all intents and purposes, considered lost.
NASA as it exists today is too political. To get any program started, you have to court politicians and promise work in their districts.
That's pure crap.
We want results, not engineering welfare.
NASA, with political input, should choose tasks that need to be performed and create prizes for the different solutions that work - similar to the X-Prize. No more NASA programs, just prizes for completing missions. Let the private sector take the risks and you'll end up with results, not cost overruns.
See, NASA will only go beyond LEO when a ship the size of the Titanic can be sent to contain all the required redundancy. I'd like to see some team on "motorcycles" head for Mars. Think about the pioneers who left St. Louis to homestead in Wyoming ... They knew they could die in the attempt and many did.
Let risk takers lead the way.
Don't use pulse thrusters. Use Temporal Overdrive Motivators, so that we can simply inherit those images from our grandparents!
Is there a organization dedicated to exploring and inhabiting all the different environments of the world and developing materials to make it easier? I'd fund them before I funded NASA.
/ramble
All the money we spend on getting off our planet could be used to further explore the planet and the advancements made applied to space travel. If we could develop materials, method, and technology to the point that we could easily live on the bottom of the ocean (extreme pressure and temperature), I think it might be easier to get that same rig adjusted to work on Venus. If we can easily inhabit the (Ant)Arctic, I think it may be easier for us to check out that same tech on Mars, etc. If we can get a self sustaining flying environment, it might be worthwhile to send it to Jupiter.
In addition, someone else mentioned that it would be impossible to get the materials back from wherever we went. Well, I'm sure exploration of our own Earth and the ability to safely occupy any of it's environments would give us a wealth of resource exploiting opportunities, or at least experience in resource harvesting under adverse conditions, which is what we would need to get those resources from whatever planet/moon we visited in the first place.
You gotta crawl before you walk. Putting man on the moon was novelty, and now we are too hung up on going back. Putting man on the bottom of the ocean in a self sustaining environment has practical applications. In addition to the research and advances from getting there, I'm pretty sure the bottom of the ocean is safe from any cataclysmic event save tectonic motion, which provides another level of certainty that our species survives things that may otherwise destroy most life on the planet.
I thought we arrive in 2100?
Excavate?
We shouldn't spend too much effort sending people into space until there's a financial payoff. Until then, we should concentrate on robotic missions, in the hopes that one of them will discover that opportunity. And even though distant places may be more interesting, we should concentrate on places with shallow gravity wells because it's more likely some industrial operation could be feasible there. E.g. if the fusion power people figure out how to generate electricity with helium 3, then we will want to set up lunar mining operations. Or if we find a relatively convenient asteroid (low delta V from earth, not necessarily short distance) with a high concentration of platinum. With a big industrial operation, you will want somebody on site for troubleshooting and security. (Otherwise maybe I'll send a robot to steal He3 from your robot :-). Then we'll develop the infrastructure for other things: tourism, colonization, radar astronomy from the far side of the moon, etc. An important part of that infrastructure is a launch method that's much more efficient than rockets - e.g. a space elevator or a rotovator.
See this excellent essay against Mars and in favor of exploring the asteroids, Phobos, Deimos, or Earth's moon by NSS Board of Governors member and former L5 board adviser Eric Drexler, Space Development: The Case Against Mars
This recent NewScientist article overviews a recent report from the NSS co-authored by Buzz Aldrin with a similar conclusion, Astronaut-authored report says NASA needs new direction
is this about science, or about putting humans into space and in particular, on another planet (for good)? If NASA is to be ONLY about science, then we would be smart to just push private industry for rocket launches and then simply fund other companies to build sats. I think that would likely be the death of Space and ultimately, Science in America.
OTH, if we say that we are going to put man in other locations in space, then it makes sense to have a diversified rocket launch capability. That means that we should PUSH private rockets as well as develop a new large system. We can not afford Ares I AND ares V. Makes zero sense. Instead, I hate to admit it, but Direct makes a LOT more sense. It is cheaper to develop and has the ability to grow to ares V capability (4 engines combined with 2, or possible 4, 5 stage boosters).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
12:52 AM 7/24/2009
maybe this is just too far off, but maybe a loftsrom loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop)
from singapore over to the west kalimantan town of pemankat
would be a good investment into the future.
spaceflight has one big hurdle. that is getting from
this rock into LEO (low earth orbit: 200 km up?).
if there were a CHEAP means of getting "stuff" into
orbit a whole new playing field opens up, because
alot of new propulsion tech (deep space) could be tried and tested
(and maybe even have the benefit of extending the
moral horizon of human kind, once they get to see
their home planet (the blue gem) from a different perspective
(say religious fanatics and leader of rogue states). the message being: "we are one"?).
-
and still, a ferry that just does interplanetary trips
and never lands (just goes into orbit) is probably a good investment too : )
1) Scrap the moon missions.
2) Eliminate the bureaucrats at NASA and trust the employees to actually do the work with jobs based on meeting objectives
3) Install laser based deep space communications platforms at Lagrange points (think Gbps to Pluto)
4) Send a small habitat to orbit Mars with lots of supplies
5) Send 4 rovers and sample-return ascent vehicles to Mars and control them from the habitat to reduce control latency. The return samples can be isolated and studied in the habitat.
6) Do a human visit to Phobos from the habitat
7) Do an automated sample return from an active ridge/volcano on two outer moons.
8) Build a planet finder to analyze exo-planet atmospheres
9) Replace congress with people that can manage finances and long-term goals
I suspect that only #1 will occur during the lifetime of anyone alive today.
When NASA has to get advice from outside sources,..then NASA needs to be shutdown or replaced.
It's like congress going to China for advice on how to run America.
It's NASA's job to prioritize projects and make decisions.
But then again,..NASA is run by bureaucracy and politicians, and not scientists and engineers anymore that do REAL work.
Well, obviously the way you get the Mars mission to keep it's funding is to lunch it with a bunch of 8 year olds on board. That way we can 'Think of the Children'. It wouldn't hurt to make sure that Al-Queda (or even someone in a Hollywood sound stage claiming to be Al-Queda) got a ship on the same flight path and a declaration that they are claiming Mars in the name of Islam to save it from the evil Americans. Then you could get some of that tasty tasty military money.
Dude, this is America! We don't wait for things! Even the 6 months it takes to get to Mars is pushing it...the way our attention span is, we'd probably launch the astronauts to Mars, and then 3 months later some Congresscritter would recommend cutting out this silly "Mars mission" from the budget, because no one even remembers what that was for, and use the money to build a new movie theater in his district (named after him, naturally).
I'm sure you made a good point, but your crazy run-on sentence was too long for my short, American attention span.
A couple of hundred years?!? I don't think you appreciate the scale we're talking here to the nearest solar systems. The fastest probes we've ever launched took like 9-10 years just to reach the edge of the solar system--just a few light *hours* away. The nearest solar systems are several light *years* away. So you're not looking at a few hundred years--more like tens of thousands of years. Not only that, but we also don't have the math or craft to hit anything with the kind of precision that far away, and no way to stop them once they get there even if you could make it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Oh, they'll be fine... just make sure they either have both genders or a way to get back.
A couple of hundred years?!? I don't think you appreciate the scale we're talking here to the nearest solar systems. The fastest probes we've ever launched took like 9-10 years just to reach the edge of the solar system--just a few light *hours* away. The nearest solar systems are several light *years* away. So you're not looking at a few hundred years--more like tens of thousands of years. Not only that, but we also don't have the math or craft to hit anything with the kind of precision that far away, and no way to stop them once they get there even if you could make it.
You're right. And that was a stab in the dark on my part (it is by and large a joke post honestly). But when I said solar sail, I meant pretty big ones. Like this article mentions you might be able to net an acceleration of 1 millimeter per second per second acceleration from the sail. Maybe that's not reasonable but after nine years, you'd already be traveling a million kilometers per hour faster than when you left our system. With a solar sail, Voyager and other craft would have reached the end of our system much faster.
The sail would then, at a little bit before the half way marker, be flipped backwards so that the membrane would actually slow the ship down on its approach to Alpha Centauri. It would slow to a relative stop near the planet and (assuming everything survived) would use its thrusters for the only purpose they have -- plummeting it to the planet revolving around Alpha Centauri. Then you just need to wait another decade for the data to return to earth. Relatively quick, yes? Extra-solar expeditions need to be thought of in terms of generations not years so why don't we get started now?
I haven't worked all the math out but considering what solar sails might be able to do for us, you can't just compare this to existing craft and draw your metrics from that. Those craft only had initial boosts and will not accelerate.
Also, my diagram had a laser. You forgot to point out that that is unnecessary weight and power usage.
My work here is dung.
Do first thing's first.
Putting a man on Mars, while definitely cool, could easily be just another "been there, done that" vacation from steady progress, like the later Apollo missions were.
Beginning an assessment of lunar resources is the next significant step we can take. What is up there? Anything that we can use as rocket fuel, or as structural material? Can concrete prefabs made of lunar regolith be shipped down to LEO for use in stone space stations at a lower cost than sending exotic materials up from Earth? That's actually likely. Also, while the Moon is very poor in heavy elements in general, it has been collecting meteors for a few billion years: are there any local deposits of iron and nickel that we could use? Something just 0.35% the size of New Jersey (equivalent to the Mesabi Range of Minnesota)? That is a pretty small dot on a lunar map, but just one find like that would provide enough high grade steel for more than a hundred years of spaceship manufacture. How about other minerals? Is there a rich splash of pitchblend nodules near the surface of the regolith in some lunar sea?
We will need the equivalent of several Lewis and Clark expeditions to begin to estimate the potential up there. Much of this will be done by robots, but it makes sense to have many of these robots under the control of lunar explorers, who could easily do first hand inspections of unexpected findings. The explorers would be also experimenting with how to live under conditions that are harsher than Mars in many ways, but also much easier to support from Earth when problems arise.
At the same time we are exploring the Moon, we can be putting more robots on Mars, and sending more satellites to rendezvous with near Earth objects of interest. Perhaps we will find that we can use lunar resources to reduce the costs of these other programs. There are certainly things the Moon experience can teach us that will help make these other probes, and the eventual manned Mars station, more successful.
Will
... and "seeking input" is called a "stalling technique".
The White House doesn't give a shit what any of us think about anything under this Administration. Get used to it.
+++OK ATH
From Wikipedia:-
"In theory, a self-replicating spacecraft could be sent to a neighbouring star-system, where it would seek out raw materials (extracted from asteroids, moons, gas giants, etc.) to create replicas of itself. These replicas would then be sent out to other star systems, repeating the process in an exponentially increasing pattern."
Self-replicating spacecraft WIKIPEDIA
"The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress"
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
*disclaimer*
I am a NASA brat, and worked for NASA myself for two years prior to entering the US Army in 1977. [NTTF** building at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA]
I used to 'play astronaut' in the Mercury and Gemini capsules they had mounted in front of the Control Center building my father worked in when I was a kid. [it still amazes me to this day: my wondering how two astronauts in their bulky spacesuits could fit in the Gemini capsule...they must have lubed them and used shoehorns and hydraulic presses to fit them in!]
*/disclaimer*
As far as my recollection goes, your comment may be the most insightful, informative, imbued with common sense, and under-rated yet on this subject here on /..
[rhetorical question]
How did this escape 'through the roof' style positive mod points?
[/rhetorical question]
In typical /. meme fashion...
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!
**NTTF=Network Test and Training Facility...I was actually a subcontractor working for 'Bendix Field Engineering Corp' as a 'Logistics Specialist'[think glorified parts-counter clerk]. The CSC [Computer Science Corporation] and the Communications section were required to be manned 24/7 so we were required to be there in case they needed parts to keep those mission critical operations running. :-)
Yes, I was that annoying guy at the parts counter that always wanted the 'make, model number, and serial number' to help you.
Actually, they usually came in with the part an/or a FSN [Federal Stock Number], and the process was much easier than getting a part for your car
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti