Space Shuttle To Be Replaced By SpaceX For ISS Resupply

destinyland writes "Next year SpaceX will perform resupply missions for the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle is grounded, as part of a $3.5 billion NASA resupply contract. 'The fledgling space industry is reminiscent of the early days of the personal computer,' notes one technology reporter, 'when a number of established vendors and startups reversed-engineered Microsoft's DOS and manufactured PCs using the Intel 8080 chip set. We're likely to see a similar industry shakeout in the private space vehicle market segment in the coming decades.'"

Comments

Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

LMFAO!!!

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Bill Currie]

Yeah, I noticed that too. It was IBM's bios that was reversed engineered, not MS DOS.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[TheRaven64]

And built computers using the 8080, no less. I actually used a computer with an 8080, but they were much less common than machines using the Z80, which was 8080 compatible and also included a number of other instructions. I suspect this 'technology reporter' wasn't around in the '80s and hasn't read any history of technology, which makes me wonder how he or she is considered qualified for the title.

If this is like the computer revolution of the '80s, I wonder who will be claiming that we need a rocket on every desk...

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[negRo_slim]

LMFAO!!!

Yes I agree it is laughable that our government is thinking it appropriate to move basic space endeavors to the private sector. I might have more faith in this move if we were pursuing greater feats while leaving the left overs to the private sector. Seams to me that since the abandoning the Apollo kit for the Space Shuttle we have been on a steady downward decline at NASA.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[maxwell demon]

"There will be a world market for about five space transporters."

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

And built computers using the 8080, no less. I actually used a computer with an 8080

I actually built a computer with a 1337!

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Chris Burke]

If this is like the computer revolution of the '80s, I wonder who will be claiming that we need a rocket on every desk...

A stark contrast to when it was like the computer revolution of the '60s.

<glayven> I predict that in a hundred years, rockets will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive only the five riches CEOs in the West will be able to afford them! <glayven>

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[MyLongNickName]

Sorry for hijacking the first post. However, this story appears to be completely false. There is a report which recommends this as an alternative. However, I can find not reputable news source that is suggesting this will happen. So, either I cannot find the right sources, or we have another example of shoddy Slashdot journalism.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

Transporter 2012 - Jason Statham in Space

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Brian Gordon]

I predict that by the year 1992 computers will have become so advanced that we'll only need a single blinking light for I/O

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[iocat]

Just to add to the horse-shit, there was a key difference between the early computer industry and the nascent private space industry. Two guys in a garage could start a small hardware or software company and have a shot of success. Getting a rocket to orbit or manned flight takes a few more resources than maxxing out your credit card to buy an Altair or even an Apple II.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Brian Gordon]

shoddy Slashdot journalism

A perfect example of a Pleonasm.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

another Jason Statham fan I see

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[that this is not und]

They didn't 'max out their credit card' to design the Apple 1. They resold stolen long distance time from the phone company.

The early PC clones used the 8088 chip. The 8080 chip was what grown up hardware enthusiasts were using in their S-100 computers. The kiddies had the weaker, cheaper 6502 parts.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[that this is not und]

The Space Shuttle was designed (badly) as a low cost re-launchable vehicle. However, when it was discovered that it would need to be stripped down to the bare airframe and totally rebuilt for each relaunch that idea sort of fizzled. Then it simply became a funding mechanism for the aerospace industry, which it remained for the remainder of it's use life. Thank goodness most of the airframes are ash now, so we don't have to continue that particular bit of 'earmark' funding any longer.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Sensiblemonkey]

Yeah, I noticed that too. It was IBM's bios that was reversed engineered, not MS DOS.

IBM's PC BIOS didn't need to be reverse engineered; it was published and sold by IBM along with the PC's schematics in the technical docs for the machine.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say that I'm a fan persay, but I would definitely suck him off if he stuck his cock in my face.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[morgan_greywolf]

Speaking as someone who had one, yes, that's true. But the only clone makers that made it were the ones using Phoenix's BIOS, since Phoenix had reverse engineered it, and everyone else copied IBM's BIOS and got sued.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[wiredlogic]

It wasn't exactly reverse engineered in the truest sense of the term since the IBM manuals included the full source code to the original PC BIOS. I don't know when they stopped doing that but that code was the framework for Compaq to write their cleanroom spec. rather than the raw machine code from the ROM itself.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[djrok212]

And isn't it funny that these are the same computers that still run the space shuttle.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[altstadt]

IBM's PC BIOS didn't need to be reverse engineered; it was published and sold by IBM along with the PC's schematics in the technical docs for the machine.

Yes it did. IBM did not grant anybody the right to sell a machine with IBM's BIOS just by virtue of the fact that they published the asm source for it. If anything, the existence of the published source made it more difficult because every company had to prove that their BIOS was developed in a clean room.

I was interviewed for a job at the time by a company that was busily reverse engineering the BIOS.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Fourier404]

We're moving to project constellation with the Ares series of rockets and the Orion space capsule. A 5 year delay doesn't mean we're dropping NASA like a ton of bricks, it just means we're not wasting money keeping the shuttle fleet running when there's a private sector version available. Hopefully it'll be cheaper, but even if it isn't giving the private sector a boost isn't all bad.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[fractoid]

Two guys in a garage could start a small hardware or software company and have a shot of success.

Yeah, playing with LEO-capable rocket motors in your garage tends to piss of the neighbours, if not the feds. :/

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[fractoid]

It was reverse engineered as in black-box analysis. They had to do that because IBM included the full, copyrighted source code. This let IBM claim that any compatible BIOS was stolen from them; IIRC (disclaimer: I get my entire knowledge of this incident from Kringley's "Accidental Empires") they had to actively try and find 'virgin' coders who hadn't ever read the IBM manuals.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[CAIMLAS]

I don't know about that. I've read quite a bit about "rocket enthusiasts" who are doing just that - launching rockets into space. Amateur radio enthusiasts come to mind. Something like, oh, this.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

Even I noticed this one.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[angelwolf71885]

actually the shuttle has gone trough ageist 2 refits in its life time so its actually more likely that it has similar computers to a jet fighter or commercial airline

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[iocat]

Early PC software pioneers might have maxxed out their credit cards to BUY an Apple II. I wasn't suggesting Woz or Jobs did so to BUILD the Apple II. And they sold blue boxes -- the means to steal from the phone company -- not actual time.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

"If this is like the computer revolution of the '80s, I wonder who will be claiming that we need a rocket on every desk..."

Maybe a well-known Saudi millionaire currently hiding somewhere in Afganistan...

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[AndroidCat]

Well, not for long. Grown up hardware enthusiasts started throwing all kinds of stuff their S-100 bus. Microsystems Journal would be the mag of that day to check for the serious stuff. (I have a 8085 S-100. Three whole megahertz and 64k!)

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[SL Baur]

The Space Shuttle was designed (badly) as a low cost re-launchable vehicle.

Would anyone care to explain to me why this comment was moderated down as anything other than -1 "The Truth Hurts"?

Just asking.

The space shuttle wasn't quite as stupid as the design of the Apollo spacecraft that were sent to the moon, but it was pretty close and that's not saying very much.

Disclaimer: I'm not a rocket scientist, but I used to work with them at JPL.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[aqk]

I suspect this 'technology reporter' wasn't around in the '80s and hasn't read any history of technology, which makes me wonder how he or she is considered qualified for the title.

You actually "wonder" about this journalistic claptrap?
Figure of speech, I assume

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[dododuh]

You guys are ten years too late. Back in the 1970s, when computers ran on 8080 processors, the company Micro-Soft (which is what they were called when they were in Albuquerque before the name change to Microsoft and the move to Washington) had an operating system and a basic interpreter that were widely pirated, reverse engineered, and otherwise ripped-off. At the time, I was running an MITS Altair. This thing started with 256 bytes of RAM, but we eventually upgraded it to, I think, 8k bytes. After loading a few hundred bytes of boot code in using the panel switches, it would suck Micro-Soft's "Disk Basic" boot loader in off the first sector of the 8" floppy drive, then load the OS and BASIC interpreter. It was so nice when we finally burned that first boot loader into a ROM! By 1976, Bill was pissed about people ripping his wares, and he wrote a famous letter about it. This may have happened before you were wearing nappies, but you should still be embarrassed about laughing at the author. I now ROFL at your childish and uninformed antics!

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[TeXMaster]

Getting a rocket to orbit or manned flight takes a few more resources than maxxing out your credit card to buy an Altair or even an Apple II.

No it doesn't

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[kubitus]

and it aint the 8080

if the guy knows as much of rockets as he knows of computers:

Good night America - Hello Houston, we have....

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[IrquiM]

2010 will be the year of "rocket on the desktop"!

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[dbIII]

MS DOS was pretty well a cut down workalike of DEC's CP/M anyway and a held a lot of the computer industry back until 2000. Crap that requires it and runs on PCs is still being written, so it's still holding a few people back.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[S-100]

Wellll, my S-100 has a Z-80, as did most in the end.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[rufty_tufty]

You mean they moved onto Z80s?

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[S-100]

The Phoenix BIOS was not the first - that credit probably goes to Compaq. The legal method was for one team to analyze the published IBM BIOS, and write a functional description of each particular BIOS call. Then a team that had not been given access to the IBM BIOS source would write equivalent code.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[petermgreen]

Amateur radio enthusiasts come to mind. Something like, oh, this
I had a quick look at some of the entries in their list and all the ones I looked at were piggy backing on government missions.

Do you have any evidence of "rocket enthusiasts" reaching orbit without governemnt assistance?

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Big Hairy Ian]

+1 Funny please

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Attila Dimedici]

You guys are ten years too late. Back in the 1970s, when computers ran on 8080 processors, the company Micro-Soft (which is what they were called when they were in Albuquerque before the name change to Microsoft and the move to Washington) had an operating system and a basic interpreter that were widely pirated, reverse engineered, and otherwise ripped-off. At the time, I was running an MITS Altair. This thing started with 256 bytes of RAM, but we eventually upgraded it to, I think, 8k bytes. After loading a few hundred bytes of boot code in using the panel switches, it would suck Micro-Soft's "Disk Basic" boot loader in off the first sector of the 8" floppy drive, then load the OS and BASIC interpreter. It was so nice when we finally burned that first boot loader into a ROM! By 1976, Bill was pissed about people ripping his wares, and he wrote a famous letter about it. This may have happened before you were wearing nappies, but you should still be embarrassed about laughing at the author. I now ROFL at your childish and uninformed antics!

Yes, but that wasn't MS-DOS. MS-DOS did not exist until Microsoft contracted with IBM to supply the OS for IBM's new PC (which Microsoft already had a contract to supply a Basic and a C compiler for). Microsoft bought the rights to what would become MS-DOS off of another company that had developed it as QDOS.
So, what you were using was something completely unrelated (except for the fact that it came from the same company) to what would later be MS-DOS. What Bill Gates was pissed about was people ripping off his (and Paul Allen's) Basic compiler. The original posters were correct and you are incorrect.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

Per se.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Shuttle runs on a slightly more compact derivative of IBM S/360. These are *not* used in commercial airliners, unless your airline uses B-52s. (How to tell: Do you sit on a bomb in economy class?)

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't 'max out their credit card' to design the Apple 1. They resold stolen long distance time from the phone company.

Weren't they selling boxes that let people make long distance phone calls for free? That's different from reselling long distance time.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[angelwolf71885]

Shuttle runs on a slightly more compact derivative of IBM S/360. These are *not* used in commercial airliners, unless your airline uses B-52s. (How to tell: Do you sit on a bomb in economy class?)

WIKIPEDIA: The glass cockpit has become standard equipment in airliners, business jets, and military aircraft, and was even fitted into NASA's Space Shuttle orbiters Atlantis, Columbia, Discovery, and Endeavour, and the current Russian Soyuz TMA model spacecraft that was launched in 2002

so it has to have something more advanced then an IBM s/360

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[HasHPIT]

Actually there is currently a 2 man team working in a garage in Denmark to produce a rocket capable of safely taking a person into space (and presumably back somehow). They have completed small scale testing of their engine (video on the link below) and are currently building the real version. Article in danish: http://ing.dk/artikel/98441-byggeriet-af-danmarks-stoerste-rumraket-er-begyndt

Also a danish team of about 8 people are participating in Googles Lunar X price: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28258165/

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Rasperin]

Quantum G points out that popular mechanics point this out below: For anyone who would like to read a good article about SpaceX http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4328638.html check out that link. And it's not just SpaceX that will be delivering cargo to the station under COTS, there's also Orbital Sciences. Just thought it would be better pointed out under the call to false then buried way down below.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[dododuh]

For those of you too young to remember, the acronym DOS stood for "Disk Operating System" long before it was productized my Microsoft, much as "word" and "windows" once referred to linguistic elements glazed structure penetrations before being co-opted by the beast. While MS-DOS was the trademarked name of a later product, the original author wrote "Microsoft's DOS", which would seem to include Microsoft's disk operating system as used on the Altair, which (again as cited by the original author and laughed at by others) ran on an 8080 CPU. This DOS also included a basic INTERPRETER, not a compiler (so you're wrong there), and was also referred to as "Disk BASIC".

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[K. S. Kyosuke]

WIKIPEDIA: The glass cockpit has become standard equipment in airliners, business jets, and military aircraft, and was even fitted into NASA's Space Shuttle orbiters Atlantis, Columbia, Discovery, and Endeavour, and the current Russian Soyuz TMA model spacecraft that was launched in 2002

so it has to have something more advanced then an IBM s/360

Why? Did they throw out all the GPCs or what?

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Attila Dimedici]

The first product that Microsoft sold as DOS was PC-DOS, which shipped on the IBM PC. The acronym DOS was first used in QDOS which stood for Quick and Dirty Operating System. Microsoft changed it to Disk Operating System (DOS) after they acquired it. Disk Basic was never known as DOS.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Fourier404]

Daily Productivity Loss I hate you, but not as much as I hate myself.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[TeXMaster]

So I guess you don't want to know about the second episode, do you?

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[R2.0]

"So, either I cannot find the right sources, or we have another example of shoddy Slashdot journalism."

It can't be both?

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[dododuh]

Disk Operating System, acronymed as DOS, has been in use in the literature of computing since before Bill Gates was born. IBM started shipping DOS for its mainframes (replacing the paper tape 1401) back in the early 60's I believe. But let's concentrate on microcomputers of the 1970s. Here's a link to a Zilog flier from 1976 that mentions Disk operating System Z*) Development System. There's an interesting article with some history. According to the article, ICOM had its FDOS on the market in 1976. Here's a quote for you:

The May 1975 issue of IEEE Computer magazine had a one-page ad from MITS for the Altair 8800. In the ad, they mention their "DOS Extended BASIC Language System for $6649" for an Altair with 16K memory, terminal and interface, "disc controller and 2 disc drives, DOS and Extended BASIC software."

And another:

An IMSAI ad in June 1976, mentions a "floppy controller with on-board processor and DOS"

So obviously not only was the term DOS being used for Micro-Soft's BASIC-oriented OS in 1976, it was being used on 8080 computers from multiple manufacturers, and as we established earlier, being widely pirated (or at least widely enough for Bill to complain loudly). Case closed, and be careful arguing with old guys about history they lived through. Sometimes we can still remember stuff!

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[lennier]

"Thank goodness most of the airframes are ash now,"

Math fail? 2 out of 6 isn't most.

Colombia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour, Atlantis. Enterprise if you count the glide test airframe - I believe after Challenger there was talk about building it into a real replacement vehicle but they built Endeavour instead.

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[mccabem]

True to an extent, but the Wright bros. pioneered air flight more or less on a shoestring. I'll grant you it'd have to be a bigger shoestring for space, but people have bigger shoes these days. :-) Seriouslly, I think that's a worthy example as they had so little resources (in modern terms) at their disposal to help them get flying and inventors today have so much at their disposal.

I wanted to agree with you, but I'm actually not so sure it's impossible for a "garage inventor" to get to space. Just really unlikely...like flying was before the Wrights.

-Matt

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[Chelloveck]

Aaarrgghhhh!! I didn't need to know there was a sequel! Kiss my afternoon goodbye...

Re:Reverse Engineered Microsoft DOS???

[TeXMaster]

Aaarrgghhhh!! I didn't need to know there was a sequel! Kiss my afternoon goodbye...

I will hide this link from you to beg for forgiveness.

If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[curmudgeon99]

This is a great idea. Since NASA has lost the last 40 years on good scientific research but no exploration, I think it's time for somebody else to take those dollars and try to see if they can make money. It's the same as we have in good IT shops. You have the roving team of experts who design and build your systems [the NASA guys] but you don't waste your best on maintenance. For that, you have another team that lives with each app. This will also force the NASA people to actually DO something.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[serviscope_minor]

This is a great idea. Since NASA has lost the last 40 years on good scientific research but no exploration

Seriously, what it is with the insane, ingorant NASA hate around here these days. No exploration? What about spirit and opprtunity?

Don't they count?

And when it comes to rocketry, sure, the shuttle is getting a little long in the tooth, but is there any other vehicle capable of either servising Hubble, or bringing anything down?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[mweather]

I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[geekoid]

There is no money to be made directly from space exploration.

If mars had large wooded forests and a magic crystal that was trivial to turn into some paradigm shift technology, then yeah.

NASA's exploration allows us to better understand the universe, and gives focus to companies to develop RnD to accomplish goals. That RnD and it's results is the market payoff, and why the space program actually more then pays for itself.

Satellite launches? sure, that can go private.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[solevita]

Problem is that all that stuff in space is much harder to get to than Paris, although probably less hostile to foreigners.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[curmudgeon99]

I meant no NASA hate--I have followed everything they have done. My hate is for our leaders since JFK who did not have the foresight to move maintenance off to dedicated resources. The rocket scientists at NASA should be spending their time dreaming up cooler stuff. Think of the innovations that came out of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo missions. And in the intervening 40 years we have had no more of that innovation. The shuttle was designed in the 1970s. I think if our rocket scientists were put up to the challenge by giving them nothing else to do but invent new stuff--that innovations would come that would spur new technologies.

Only recently, I've gotten the idea that the space program, somehow, went on out of the public eye. I never used to think that but now I'm thinking the reason the public was not treated to the continuing space program was because they were all already preoccupied with the secret space program. Think about it. We designed the shuttle and all that in the 1970s. And in 40 years nobody has thought up a better way? So, innovation in space just stopped in 1970? I don't think so. I think they just classified it.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[curmudgeon99]

The best thing NASA has done in the past 40 years is Hubble. That is a real treat for anybody with a pair of eyes and an imagination.

Did you really write that there was no money to be made in space exploration? There are an infinite number of ways to make money there. Sure, it takes huge investments but even as tourism and mining there's a lot out there. Wasn't Lebensraum ("living space") one of the main justifications for World War II? People just want to explore.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[yurtinus]

Conspiracy theories are fun and all, but I think the more obvious explanation will suffice here-- We simply haven't had motivation to push our space programs as we have in the past. Certainly there have been innovations and rocket scientists dreaming up new and better propulsion systems, but there has been no grand scale programs to put them to the test. With any luck, China and India will be pushing their own space exploration programs to spur on a new space race, but short of that a lot of Americans simply don't care.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[symbolset]

There is no money to be made directly from space exploration.

Remember the old real estate salesman's pitch?:

Land! It's the ultimate investment. It's not like they'll be making more of it.

There are whole worlds to be had.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[goodmanj]

I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.

No, but it *is* about the same as looking at someone else's holiday photos.

Don't forget the #1 rule of manned space flight: *you* don't get to go. And if you're stuck on earth, does it really matter if the pictures you're looking at were taken by man or machine?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

No they don't. Most people just want to eat, get laid, and have fun. Very few want anything more then that, and the majority of this minority don't care about exploration but rather serving their own phantoms.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[tftp]

is there any other vehicle capable of either servising Hubble, or bringing anything down?

There are plenty of vehicles that can bring themselves down; most of them do, somewhere around South Pacific. If you mean "safely" then the list narrows, but a used satellite, well past its "use by" date, is just not worth of bringing down in one piece. The value is in data bits, not in bits of metal and silicon - and data can be easily sent over the radio.

Hubble is yet another issue. The original cost of Hubble was estimated at $400 million, but it grew out of proportion because of endless delays with launch and because of the defective mirror. It would be probably cheaper and better today to build a copy of Hubble telescope, with all new cameras installed and all the improvements made, instead of replacing failed components one by one in a risky and limited servicing mission. Many components of Hubble telescope are not serviceable anyway. So while STS is a system capable of servicing Hubble, the overall value of such a service is debatable. Of course, if you have STS you use it, but I wouldn't say that without Shuttle the Hubble telescope project can't happen - there would be some other vehicle to launch it on, likely a cheaper one.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Kjella]

I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.

Actually you were checking out Paris on a completely different site, but the same principle applies.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Lebensraum wasn't about exploration... it was about spreading the German people over the Asian continent, and making everybody else slaves or dead.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Yvan256]

does it really matter if the pictures you're looking at were taken by man or machine?

What do you mean, an african or european man?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

very timely comment given that it is the 70th anniversary of the start of ETO (european theatre of operations) for WWII (which had many starts depending on where in the world you live)

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[curmudgeon99]

They explore what's in the TV Guide. (Not me! Stopped watching TV in 8th grade.)

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[riverat1]

A major impetus (maybe the primary) of the 1950's - 1970's space program was the Soviet Union's space program. We couldn't let them out flank us in space. That isn't true now-a-days.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[MyLongNickName]

Yup. There are places on the earth that aren't worth developing. And they have an atmosphere. And they are close to resupply points. And definitely much less expensive than even getting to orbit, much less getting to another planet.

Why would I want to develop Mars? Venus? It would be far more expensive to get there and maintain than you wold ever get out of it.

Sure I am for exploration. But this fantasy that somehow we can make a self-supporting base on Mars or another planet is ridiculous. Fantasy. If we thought about some long-term terraforming project, then maybe some places might be habitable. But with today's technology this is laughable.

Some day we might do it, but not in this century.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

No. NASA spent 50-100x what Spirit and Opportunity cost. Where did the rest of the money go? After the first two were so successful, why didn't they make more of them and explore further? They had the budget.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[ImaLamer]

I can see the moon from my front porch. I can't see Paris. So, which is closer?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[maino82]

Are these unladen men?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Elwood P Dowd]

Just because there's nothing like it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[ColdWetDog]

So while STS is a system capable of servicing Hubble, the overall value of such a service is debatable.

Not really. The really important thing about the Hubble servicing mission - and the various service and resupply missions to the ISS - is learning how to WORK in space. If we're planning on anything long term, we must have the capability to routinely get up out of bed, out the door and fix whatever broke (remember Murphy?).

Obviously, we aren't there yet. It took years of training and planning to fix the Hubble. It took years of training and planning to fix the solar cells on the ISS. We've got to get to the point where we can go 'oops, the widget broke, need to go out and replace it' without spending months choreographing every move. It's routine and boring but it's exactly what we need to do to STAY in space. That's why ISS is important and that's why the Hubble resupply missions were critically important.

Even if you're correct and it's cheaper to just chuck the old one and launch Hubble II.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[symbolset]

The first three settlements in what is now Southern California were never heard from again. But look at the place now...

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[MyLongNickName]

Yup. That is the perfect, superficial logic analogy.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[that this is not und]

Hey. It's okay to joke around about it a little bit. But don't be picking on people's obsessions with plaster of paris and deathmasks. It's just a hobby.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[that this is not und]

What we really need, and will soon get, is a space race with the Chinese.

They'll of course, use the interest payments from the Obamabonanza Loans to pay for their program. The US will be funding both sides of the 'race.'

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Yes, it matters. Because even if I don't get the excitement etc. of being on Mars, someone does, and I bet that person is just as excited as I would be. And I get a small piece of his excitement by listening to his radio transmissions, or watching himself walk around on the surface, or reading about it in the newspaper... whatever. Is it as good as the real thing? I doubt it's even in the same league. But it's also better than nothing, and nothing is what you seem to think we should have.

I'm really picking up a huge vibe of jealousy here. "If I don't get to go to Mars, nobody else should either." Or perhaps it's just that you think others should feel that way. I don't really get it. But perhaps you're also one of those people who don't think I should aspire to be wealthy because the so-called American dream is really a myth designed to keep me in de facto indentured servitude for my entire life, only my deluded hope of bettering my situation or my children's preventing me from overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

(Is there a law like Godwin's for calling someone a communist? I think there should be. By the way, I'm not trolling or... flamebaiting... a lot of people actually believe what I wrote above. I don't get that either, but it does explain the parent's sentiment, if I'm reading him correctly, and also why he's +4 insightful when he should be, at most, +4 buzzkill masquerading as "realism.")

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.

No, but it *is* about the same as looking at someone else's holiday photos.

Don't forget the #1 rule of manned space flight: *you* don't get to go. And if you're stuck on earth, does it really matter if the pictures you're looking at were taken by man or machine?

So, imagine living in the 1400s. They want to sent a ship full of people over the edge of the world. Since *you* don't get to go.. you decide to just sent a boat, and watch it fall off the edge of the earth. But since they did.. and found a whole new continent, i'd say it was worth sending a few people on those boats, even though *you* wouldn't have gotten to go. What about the Hubble? Who would fix it? To build a machine as flexible, intelligent, and strong as a human would be insanely expensive and gigantic.. and why? Because you don't get to go? How was that comment ranked insightful?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[jamstar7]

And are they carrying coconuts?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[jamstar7]

There is no money to be made directly from space exploration.

Yet.

Bound to be plenty of stuff we can make that are just better when made in microgravity, like ultrapure crystals & medications, foamed metals, stuff like that...

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[0123456]

What about spirit and opprtunity?

Don't they count?

When people say 'NASA', they mostly mean the part that's spending billions delivering pizza to a few astronauts in a tin can who are too busy fixing it to do anything much useful. Not the unmanned part or the aeronautical part, both of which provide decent value for money.

And when it comes to rocketry, sure, the shuttle is getting a little long in the tooth, but is there any other vehicle capable of either servising Hubble, or bringing anything down?

At over a billion dollars per servicing mission, building multiple Hubbles on a production line and launching a new one every few years would have been cheaper. And there's essentially no market for bringing large payloads _down_ from space.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

And I watched video of her on the internet.... wasn't the same either...

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[CAIMLAS]

So jaunt on over there and visit, silly.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll of course, use the interest payments from the Obamabonanza Loans to pay for their program

Yeah, because they didn't have any of our money before Obama. It's disturbing how many people think our debt just happened in the last 9 months.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

on slashdot, yes.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[fractoid]

Wasn't Lebensraum ("living space") one of the main justifications for World War II? People just want to explore.

And is a bizarre sort of way, Großdeutschland actually happened, only we now call it the European Union and it's (arguably) a good thing.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[AndroidCat]

I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.

No, but it *is* about the same as looking at someone else's holiday photos.

Copyvio if it includes the Eiffel Tower at night. Hopefully that's not a problem on space flights.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[srothroc]

There's a difference between looking at someone's holiday photos online (perhaps with information on latitude/longitude, temperature, and weather conditions at the time of the photo) and looking at someone's photos while listening to them talk about what they saw, felt, and experienced. Even if you didn't get to go personally, the latter is undoubtedly more viscerally satisfying, I think.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[SL Baur]

Seriously, what it is with the insane, ingorant NASA hate around here these days. No exploration? What about spirit and opprtunity?

Children ...

NASA should never have been a government agency. That was President Eisenhower's doing and aren't all Republicans evil?

The moon missions were done as stupidly as they possibly could be. The mathematics of space, delta-V is everything and once you're in Earth orbit you're half way to anywhere, dictated the establishment of a space station that could be used to launch further flights outward. This was debated before they chose the throw-everything-away-along-the-way design they ended up using.

So after all the money spent on R & D we ended up with less than two dozen men walking on the moon and nothing to show for it afterwards except that a follow on space shuttle that occasionally blows up and kills everyone on board.

Or, let me put it another way, we could have had colonies established on the moon and probably Mars by now if we had pursued space exploration sanely. A space station with a hostile environment outside isn't any more difficult than the world outside Mom's basement.

Ah, it's Slashdot let me try a car analogy. What good is it to drive a car if it could only remain within 1 mile of your house?

Now, get off my lawn.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[moosesocks]

Can we debunk this one once and for all? Parisians as a whole don't seem to be any more or less hostile to foreigners than the inhabitants of any other large city.

Granted, I grew up just outside of New York City, and accordingly have absolutely no expectation for total strangers to give me much more than the time of the day (especially in another language), but such is city life -- Paris gets an unfair rap, and really is a wonderful city. Every locale has its little quirks...

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[SL Baur]

So, imagine living in the 1400s. They want to sent a ship full of people

Exploration ships in those days were mostly filled with convicted criminals.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[moosesocks]

I can see the moon from my front porch. I can't see Paris. So, which is closer?

It's a trick question: they're the same.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[SL Baur]

So, innovation in space just stopped in 1970? I don't think so. I think they just classified it.

I think you have a mistaken view of what "classified" means. It's info that spies get to see first before citizens do.

Innovation in space has stopped. It's about time it started up again.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[omnichad]

And if they're carrying coconuts, are they making clop-clop sounds with them?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[TheBilgeRat]

Well, the instant they decide to start launching criminals into space I'm going on a carjacking spree...

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[olman]

Beyond stuff that you can do in free fall that'd be difficult/impossible in 1G, there's truckload of money to be grabbed. As soon as you can extract useful resources from moon and later, asteroid belt, sky's the proverbial limit.

One obvious moneymaker would be of course manufacturing more spaceships. It's the whole pyramid cost structure - Setting up that 1st space ship factory is astronomically (ha) expensive but each step after that costs less and less while the profits grow inversely.

Rocket equation for moon is just way different for rocket equation for earth. And once you can drag heavy metals from asteroid belt you have unlimited resources for practical foreseeable future.

But, yes, in quaterly fiscal thinking, there's no money to be made.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[MadUndergrad]

That gives me an idea: let's get together a ton of money and pay for one jerk to have a millionsome with hot women. We'll get whatever pics he can take with his cellphone camera. Totally worth it, right?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Krisbee]

and without NASA there wouldn't be any Google Maps at all.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I've been to Paris, and the people there were perfectly nice to me.

I think this is an example of selection bias. A few loudmouths went to Paris, acted like jerks, and then came back and told everyone around them how horrible the Parisians were. Meanwhile, normal people went and were treated normally, and didn't say "gee, the people in Paris seemed nice".

I witnessed an American tourist giving a really abusive attitude toward a hotel manager. She had come a day early; her reservation was for the following night. "Madame, I am sorry, we simply don't have any rooms available tonight." "But I have a reservation!" "Your reservation is for tomorrow night." "THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM!" He wound up calling her a cab to take her to some other hotel. I'll bet she told her friends she was horribly treated.

The worst treatment I received in Paris was when we weren't sure how to eat some prawns. We had never before received prawns with the head, legs, etc. still attached and we weren't sure what to do. I asked the waiter as politely as I knew how, "how does one eat this?" He showed me how simple it is: you just grab the head, pull, and *pop* it comes off. I thanked him. He showed me again. I thanked him again, with a little less enthusiasm. And then he just stood there, with this smug little smile on his face, pulling the heads off of all the prawns, as if we were too stupid to do it for ourselves, even when shown. Well, somehow we survived this incredibly abusive mistreatment, and I can't say I lie awake at nights worrying about it.

If you take the trouble to learn even a few words of French -- such as "merci", for "Thank You" -- the French people really appreciate it. They don't expect you to speak perfect French. (Although, a lot of the people I did meet didn't speak any English; if you can't speak any French, you will be limited to pointing at things. But you can actually get around pretty well that way if you have to. Just please learn a few polite phrases.)

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[edumacator]

Even if you didn't get to go personally, the latter is undoubtedly more viscerally satisfying, I think.

You obviously don't have an Aunt Sally...

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[daemonburrito]

I can't speak for the parent, who may actually be talking about a conspiracy theory, but it is true that a substantial portion of the tonnage lifted has been military.

The US put up several generations of total-coverage constellations, for communication, navigation, surveillance and GIS. Some of these programs have been declassified (and in the case of GPS, allowed for civilian use), some haven't (though all are plain to see from your backyard).

And on that note, it seems like you could count GIS as "innovation in space". How many awesome stories about augmented reality have you seen lately?

As many other comments point out, space hardware is already (and always has been) built by the "private sector", whatever that means. It's just that governments are the only entities with the resources and drive to push anything past LEO. Getting a manned mission to another planet, with no short-term payoff, is something that a corporation (or rather, a privately administered program) will never do. It's just too expensive. There's only a couple of countries on Earth with the resources to even attempt it. Space is hard.

In fact, private programs would suck for all of the coolest projects. What would the incentive be for a corporation to put up something like Hubble?

I know this screed is getting too long, but I have to bring up one more thing: The science being done on ISS is very important. The material science experiments, as an example, are changing your world in ways you may never notice.

Innovation in space has stopped.

Not really.

If you want more space exploration, support a larger budget for NASA and/or a reduction in military launches. This dichotomy between the "private" and "public" has no basis in reality. If SpaceX gets a contract, awesome. But that just means that we have a SpaceX vehicle instead of a Lockheed one.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Try punching Pierre in the face and pissing on his dog... hospitality goes right out the window.

It was my first drink! I swear!

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[SL Baur]

In fact, private programs would suck for all of the coolest projects. What would the incentive be for a corporation to put up something like Hubble?

Getting paid for it?

I used to work for NASA/JPL. Whatever.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[daemonburrito]

Maybe we have some crossed wires here, but in case we don't, here's my response.

Getting paid for it?

Yes, getting paid by a government contract or grant, the only entity than can spend billions on a science mission with no short-term payoff. Which is the way it's been for decades, as I said.

I used to work for NASA/JPL. Whatever.

Good on you. Maybe you'd like to talk to the other people in this discussion who also work for NASA/JPL, who seem to have a different opinion.

This "private sector" thing is magical thinking. Public/private is a false dichotomy. As I said, and to which you seem to have no logical answer.

I get the feeling that this might be a religious issue for you. If so, no response requested. Not interested in digressions into debates about free market orthodoxy, though I respect your religious beliefs.

Btw, I liked the rest of your comments in this discussion, but I don't understand why you were so dismissive. Lame. You were wrong in your response to curmudgeon99 (though I disagreed with most of his comments). He has a point. The Air Force has a huge budget, for projects that don't officially exist. And companies like Lockmart handle them. And your statement about innovation in space would seem to be an insult to your former co-workers (besides being 100% wrong). I'm sorry we didn't get you pony; you'll get over it.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[hey!]

I visited Hawaii on business and they put me up at the "Hawaiian Village" at Waikiki. I can tell you that a sufficiently contrived local experience is less informative than a remote exploration. Fortunately, I was there to work so I got to meet Hawaiians without flaming batons being involved.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[SL Baur]

I get the feeling that this might be a religious issue for you. If so, no response requested. Not interested in digressions into debates about free market orthodoxy, though I respect your religious beliefs.

It's religious only in the sense that I had contact with would-be free market to earth orbit folks in the 1980s. They were squashed and I thought it was very unfair.

I got infected by a coworker who was very much into private enterprise launches and the people behind them. He convinced me that that was The Right Way To Go. Sorry.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[bkr1_2k]

While I generally agree with your sentiment, trying to speak French in Paris is just asking for being treated poorly. It's the only place I've ever been where trying to speak the native language (or even speaking it relatively well but not natively) didn't garner better help and hospitality. In fact, it was quite the opposite. They automatically assumed something negative (I can't actually say what the people were thinking) and immediately started speaking to us as loudly as possible in English. I'm not sure why the change in volume, but the change in attitude was quite obvious.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[hey!]

Well, you put your finger on an important point.

When it comes to space exploration -- particularly planetary exploration -- mass is king. Let's say there were great deposits of gold on Mars. It wouldn't be worth going there to get it until we'd completely exhausted mines on Earth, because of the cost of moving the mass from Mars to Earth. The same goes for that mainstay of science fiction: asteroid mining. It may be that as the Earth's population reaches the fifty billion mark, iron will be come dear enough to get it from space, but not any time soon.

So the things most worth going to space for are the lightest things. Knowledge. Information.

In fact, if you look at the commercial importance of space, arguably space technology is information technology. What are the things that are worth putting a commercial satellite in orbit for? Relaying communication. Taking pictures of the Earth. Even space tourism is ultimately about sensory information.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[bkr1_2k]

I think that would be unlaid not unladen.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[bkr1_2k]

400 years ago it was fantasy for man to fly like a bird. Technology has a way of interchanging fantasy and reality. It takes time, but it happens. We are just taking our first baby steps... or perhaps just learning to roll over in our crib before we crawl.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[daemonburrito]

Fair enough. Sorry for my vitriol.

I was infected with the opposite side of a related controversy: The near bi-annual attempts of the Commercial Weather Services Association to take NOAA/NWS data away from the public (last serious attempt). I'm only passionate about such issues because I fear that the only way to incentivize basic science for the private sector is to lock it up.

Limiting the scope to launches, I would be happy if one of these new private enterprise launch outfits was able to handle everything and send NASA an invoice, and I think NASA should be, too. If what you're saying about outfits in the 80's being squashed is true, then that's awful and shouldn't have happened.

Btw, respect for XEmacs :).

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[RobBebop]

Even if you're correct and it's cheaper to just chuck the old one and launch Hubble II.

I think if NASA adopted this "Dell business model" that you describe, space exploration would take about ten years before if became too dangerous for anybody without a powerful Anti-Debris Scan and Removable Tool. Unfortunately, the requirements of space are higher than the comparable code that McAfee and Microsoft churn out. The option to resign yourself to raising the white flag and start from scratch would have much more devastating results when you realize the Scan and Removable Tool has become overwhelmed.

On the other hand, this would pave the way for a huge Anti-Debris Scan industry which would create tens-of-millions of jobs to kick start the economy. Or is that just another example of the Broken Window Fallacy?

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[selven]

Don't forget the #1 rule of manned space flight: *you* don't get to go.

I thought the whole point of manned space flight was to eventually get large numbers of people out of Earth and onto other planets. It's the next logical step in human expansion.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[goodmanj]

I have no problem with one person experiencing the joy of going to Mars while the rest of us stay home, so long as that one person paid for it himself.

Yes, I deliberately overstated my original post, and you're right that people do appreciate exploration more when there's a person involved, even if the scientific benefit is negligible.

I was once a huge manned spaceflight proponent, but I learned a huge lesson from the Pathfinder and MER missions: humans like it when exploration is done by people, but they're very flexible about the definition of "people". If you build a robot with good sensors and mobility, on a human scale, people will anthropomorphize the crap out of it. They will cheer for its successes, worry over its problems, idolize and even come to love it. We love those "plucky" Mars rovers almost as much as we loved Neil Armstrong.

And Neil's a whole lot more expensive.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[R2.0]

"And when it comes to rocketry, sure, the shuttle is getting a little long in the tooth, but is there any other vehicle capable of either servising Hubble, or bringing anything down?"

That's the entire point - NASA knew that the shuttle would not last forever, yet did very little on the next generation of heavy lifters. If they had diverted more resources into LEO lifting from other programs, we may not have as many probes, but we'd be able to go up and repair Hubble, etc.

Lack of foresight IS a sin, especially when the clues are beating you over the head.

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[gnuman99]

Exactly. Plus you are missing a few,

Galileo - Jupiter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(spacecraft)
Cassini & Huigens - Saturn & its moon titan - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiniâ"Huygens
Spirit & Opportunity - Mars landers

then we have a whole slew of satellites for observing sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon and Mars. Just go to nasa.gov for overview. There is also that fast flyby by Pluto - the only planet not yet observed closely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons

Re:If You Can't Lead--Get Out Of the Way

[SL Baur]

Limiting the scope to launches, I would be happy if one of these new private enterprise launch outfits was able to handle everything and send NASA an invoice, and I think NASA should be, too. If what you're saying about outfits in the 80's being squashed is true, then that's awful and shouldn't have happened.

The aforementioned coworker is this guy http://www.planetpuna.com/siriusa/HysonBio.htm by the way. Make of it what you will, but absolutely one of the brightest people I've ever met and called "friend".

Unmanned deep space probes (ie JPL) is probably OK to leave government funded, but that leaves open the issue of who owns the stuff the probes find. Manned stuff ought to be left to for profit organizations. There's limitless wealth out there, if we can only get to it. And, in my opinion, getting people permanently off earth is way too important to leave to an election or politicians.

I guess you were right. I am religious on the subject. I want manned space travel and I wanted it 4 decades ago when it became feasible.

Btw, respect for XEmacs :).

Thanks. :-)

Alternate History Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how journalists rewrite history. So now the personal computer industry was founded upon stealing DOS from Microsoft and building PCs from 8080 chips?

Wow. Just wow.

Re:Alternate History Much?

[onkelonkel]

It's all true. If Steve Jobs hadn't been off flying his private plane the day IBM came to buy an OS PC's would have all been running MacDOS, and Bill Gates would be selling snow tires to Hutterites in Minot, North Dakota.

Re:Alternate History Much?

[yurtinus]

Of course, if Wozniak were able to fly that plane things would have ended differently-- but as we all know, Wozniak will never set foot on an airplane because it reminds him of his days in the 'Nam.

Re:Alternate History Much?

[TheRaven64]

Jef Raskin was controlling the plane. The reason that Steve Jobs didn't get to the meeting was that Raskin got confused when the plane was coming towards him, turned right instead of left, and crashed it.

Re:Alternate History Much?

[that this is not und]

The cool part about the story is that Steve Jobs wasn't flying kilos of coke around in the plane at the time.

He was such a nice boy.

Re:Alternate History Much?

[nateb]

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Hutterites... They're a religious sect, similar in nature to the Amish, but not as hard-core. They are routinely in my area (semi-annually?) trading chickens for goods and such. My understanding is that they are not allowed to actually buy or sell anything.

Re:Alternate History Much?

[sorak]

Very good. The judges also would have accepted:

Of course. That's how windows got it's start. Without it, Steve Jobs would never have been able to have invented Napster and we would all be listening to Warrant on transistor radios.

Re:Alternate History Much?

[yurtinus]

Since Steve Jobs was killed in that tragic accident, Apple was run by Fake Steve Jobs, the Performa line was never killed off, the NewtonPod was a dismal failure, and MacOS Be is running on all our desktops.

And now you know the rest of the story.

oh no

[ascari]

Let's hope their wrong. Doesn't anybody remember how crappy the first PC clones were? And compatibility, compaq gear didn't work with tandy, whcich didn't work with... etc. etc.Not what you'd want to experience when you're trying to dock to a space station made by another manufacturer.

Re:oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hope THEY'RE wrong.

You ignorant fuck.

Re:oh no

[magsol]

But this is how the computer industry got going. Sure, those first few PC clones and Compaqs and Tandy graphics were horrendous in retrospect, but at the time they were leaps and bounds ahead of anything designed up until that point. If the space industry is going to be successful in the private sector, it will have to grow out of its infancy first, and that means (unfortunately) making mistakes along the way.

Re:oh no

[mrsquid0]

Oh, grow up.

Re:oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, let's not hurt the feelings of someone who doesn't know which word is the proper one. Hurting feelings is bad, especially when everyone knows just what they other person meant. /sarcasm

Re:oh no

[mrsquid0]

It is ironic that a post defending a grammar nazi contains several grammatical errors.

Re:oh no

[snuf23]

Really? Those crappy PC clones were leaps and bounds ahead of the Macs, Amigas and Atari STs available at the time?
It was not about being better. It was about being affordable and compatible with the software you ran on computers at your work place.

Re:oh no

[TubeSteak]

If the space industry is going to be successful in the private sector, it will have to grow out of its infancy first, and that means (unfortunately) making mistakes along the way.

The space industry is almost entirely in the private sector.
OTOH, it's also almost entirely gov't funded, which is why you get descriptions like "space-industrial complex".

You'd think one of the titans of aerospace would be designing the launch vehicle of the future,
but it looks like they're unwilling to do so unless it is on a federal cost plus contract.

Re:oh no

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Yes, let's not hurt the feelings of someone who doesn't know which word is the proper one. Hurting feelings is bad, especially when everyone knows just what they[sic] other person meant. /sarcasm

Don't mistake us wanting you to STFU with wanting to keep his feelings from being hurt. We're not concerned with your feelings being hurt either, hypocrite.

Re:oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

uh #dorkFail

The PC came along well before there ever was a macintosh, Amiga, or Atari ST. Perhaps you meant the Apple II, the Commodore 64, or the Atari 800?

Re:oh no

[fractoid]

It was not about being better. It was about being affordable and compatible with the software you ran on computers at your work place.

Bingo. A computer on your desk running the software you need is "leaps and bounds" ahead of ANYTHING in a showroom and out of your budget.

Re:oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

i am the anonymous coward

Re:oh no

[rufty_tufty]

not really.
The AC clearly likes the idea of good grammar, he just doesn't know how to do it himself. Kind of like how we like the idea of space travel...

Re:oh no

[flitty]

Most Aerospace Gov. Contracts are no longer cost plus. They are competitively bid on by all the big names, and the company that can do it the safest first, and the cheapest next, gets the contract (generally). That's why the next generation launch vehicle hasn't been finalized and funded. All the companies are still trying to prove their version is the best.

Re:oh no

[BooRolla]

Why is affordability not a metric of "better?" If it does the job for less money, it is better as a tautology. Also, your time line of computers is off as other posters mentioned.

Re:oh no

[Gilmoure]

Or of meeting women.

Re:oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

I had an Atari ST back in the late 80's and as a game machine killed anything that the PC had in those days. Great Graphics and Sound built in and none of the 640K memory issues the PC's had (However nothing beat the satisfaction of having the smallest TSR memory use between all my workmates).

As a work machine though. The Atari would never even come close. The software just wasn't there

Re:oh no

[snuf23]

Amigas, Macs and STs predate the advent of cheap PC clones by a number of years. It wasn't until the end of the 80s that sub $1000 pc clones hit the market and dominated it.

I love journalists.

[B5_geek]

Yes it was JUST like the early computer days.

SpaceX bought a shuttle, worked on it in their parents garage, brought it to Berkley and got friends to help out.

I suggest an equally stupid title:
The fledgling Independant Space Industry is just like the Alaska Gold Rush; Folks are excited about getting up their and getting rich!

Re:I love journalists.

[Kratisto]

And then a few of them decided to reverse engineer the Russian's rockets and distribute them as free and open source rocketry, starting a slow and powerful revolution for freer space travel?

Re:I love journalists.

[Locke2005]

I agree, the analogy sucks. Any hobbyist could by a PC clone to experiment with and develop software or hardware peripherals for, while only huge corporations with multimillion-dollar deep pockets can get into the private space flight game. (E.g. all of Invisible Software's original hardware and software was developed by one person. I would like to see anybody outside of Burt Rutan do that with a spaceship.)

Re:I love journalists.

[QuantumG]

I know you're joking, but if someone in the US did that, they'd be facing criminal sanctions under ITAR.

Re:I love journalists.

[EdZ]

If somebody managed to reverse engineer and open-source the NK-33, a lot of people would be VERY happy indeed. Nearly 40 years old, and still the highest thrust-to-weight ratio chemical rocket engine ever created.

Re:I love journalists.

[syousef]

I suggest an equally stupid title:
The fledgling Independant Space Industry is just like the Alaska Gold Rush; Folks are excited about getting up their and getting rich!

Too wordy! Try "Space is like a box of chocolates..."

Re:I love journalists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting up their what?

Re:I love journalists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Black diamonds can be $30,000 for 5 carats. 1 pound is over 400 times 5 carats. Is a return value greater than $13 million/lb worth it? The shuttle can carry 50,000 lbs if it can be brought to LEO for returning to the surface. One full load would almost make up for the stimulus at $650 billion.

Where's my mining ship?

Re:I love journalists.

[jamstar7]

And then a few of them decided to reverse engineer the Russian's rockets and distribute them as free and open source rocketry, starting a slow and powerful revolution for freer space travel?

I know you're joking, but if someone in the US did that, they'd be facing criminal sanctions under ITAR.

I was thinking that'd only apply for exporting the rockets, but when I looked up ITAR, it includes importing as well. Personally, though, I'd be more worried about zoning law violations & running afoul of the local tenants/homeowners association. The Feds got nothing on them!!!

Re:I love journalists.

[QuantumG]

Well, the part I was thinking about was the fact that you really can't claim something is open source if you restrict who can get it.. and ITAR requires you to restrict who can get it. And no, it doesn't matter if the information originally came from outside the US, re-exporting it, or letting foreign nationals learn about it, is illegal.

I expect that even if you did it in another country, if someone in the US got that information then gave it to someone else, the US government would go after you and try to get you extradited. It's just maddeningly stupid.

 

Re:I love journalists.

[jamstar7]

If somebody managed to reverse engineer and open-source the NK-33, a lot of people would be VERY happy indeed. Nearly 40 years old, and still the highest thrust-to-weight ratio chemical rocket engine ever created.

Especially if they can figure out how the Russians fixed the burnthrough problem on this type of engine. Gotta admit, the Russians knew what they were doing, even though a lot of time they weren't on the cutting edge...

Re:I love journalists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting up *there*, fixed that for you. (I don't even speak english at home)

Re:I love journalists.

[fractoid]

Erm, if you brought 50,000lbs of black diamond back to earth, it wouldn't be worth $13mil/lb.

Re:I love journalists.

[jellomizer]

And any problems with such rockets will be blamed on newbees who did it wrong or rather snobbishly add that you needed to add a customized component to work at different latitudes. As it is clearly written in the middle of the 10,000 manual under stuff you probably don't need to know, and written in greek for good measure.

Re:I love journalists.

[hey!]

That's a good point about economic extrapolations. Platinum is an extremely useful metal, it's also hard to find (.003 ppb of the Earth's crust. Therefore it's very, very expensive, about $1200/ounce. Iron is also very useful, but it is forty million times more abundant in the Earth's crust, and it's cost as scrap (not ore) is $50-$100 per ton. So a single ounce of Pt is worth ten to twenty tons of Fe, or something like 500,000-600,000 as valuable.

In any case, GP is assuming that the diamonds are mined, cleaned, and packed ready to ship.

Re:I love journalists.

[Gilmoure]

Yeah, if you paint the trim on your rocket a contrasting color, the lawsuits will fly!

Re:I love journalists.

[toQDuj]

Wiki indicates that the solution of burnthrough lies in metallurgy, as it was mainly an oxidation issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33

Re:I love journalists.

[jamstar7]

Yup, but the Americans have yet to figure it out.

Better Comparison...

[swanzilla]

...Blackwater's security contracts in the Middle East.

I think Blackwater's rise to prevalence (or infamy) might be a little more analogous to this situation than DOS and the Intel 8080 chip set.

Slashdot is slowpoke again

[A beautiful mind]

Last year, SpaceX, along with a rival in the private launch-vehicle business, Orbital Sciences, received a $3.5 billion NASA cargo resupply contract to provide payload deliveries to the International Space Station after the Shuttle fleet is grounding for good next year (and before NASA's own Orion is operational). SpaceX's share will be $1.6 billion for 12 launches of it Falcon 9 vehicle (numbers which could easily increase).

Most of the article is about Tesla anyway. Interesting, but I'd prefer to read about SpaceX in a NASA related /. story.

Yet another "technology" writer

[geekoid]

that doesn't understand computers, and why that revolution doesn't apply to every other technology.

Re:Yet another "technology" writer

[Anonymous Coward]

So all these rocket guys were in the hombrew rocket club? Is every home gonna have a personal rocket in a few years? Will all bad analogies on /. be dragged out to their absurd and bitter end? Find out next week!

Re:Yet another "technology" writer

[CAIMLAS]

Surely a better analogy would be the awesomeness that is Web 2.0. It's the hottest thing going, but once you get up there and start learning what's going on, you realize that it's just a bunch of hot expanded gas that got you where you are, and currently things above look pretty thin.

Re:Yet another "technology" writer

[fractoid]

A bad analogy on Slashdot is like a car journey with that guy who loves bean burritos.

A Better Article

[QuantumG]

For anyone who would like to read a good article about SpaceX check out that link. And it's not just SpaceX that will be delivering cargo to the station under COTS, there's also Orbital Sciences.

Re:A Better Article

[RobBebop]

there's also Orbital Sciences

Don't you mean Aperture Sciences? ~

Wait a second?

[DragonWriter]

'The fledgling space industry is reminiscent of the early days of the personal computer,' notes one technology reporter, 'when a number of established vendors and startups reversed-engineered Microsoft's DOS and manufactured PCs using the Intel 8080 chip set.

What, exactly, is it about the space industry today that is supposed to be reminiscent of those false memories of the early days of the personal computer? All the startups reverse engineering Space-Shuttle-compatible launch vehicles in their garages and undercutting the United Space Alliance on price?

Its hard to figure out which is worse, the analogy proposed or the recollection of history that it is in part based on.

Re:Wait a second?

[QuantumG]

I think the dipshit author is trying to channel this article: A Netscape moment for the commercial space industry? Which is actually quite a nice article, and if you were to remove Netscape from the title it might even be accurate.

Re:Wait a second?

[glwtta]

All the startups reverse engineering Space-Shuttle-compatible launch vehicles in their garages and undercutting the United Space Alliance on price?

They aren't so much reverse engineering as following established standards, but yeah, basically that's exactly what's happening.

SpaceX is awesome

[voss]

Theres a can-do attitude that NASA lost long ago.

Elon Musk is an amazing dude. At a time where rich people are not popular, here is a reason that people
should become rich , he uses his paypal money to do the stuff he wants to do like electric cars and spaceships
and in doing the stuff that makes him happy benefits us all.

Re:SpaceX is awesome

[dgbrownnt]

...we do what we must because we can, for the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead)...

(for some reason I just thought of that)

Re:SpaceX is awesome

[witherstaff]

Musk also manages to take a long term view on a project. Being the first private individual to control a space fleet could make him the richest man in the world. Now there's vision.

Re:SpaceX is awesome

[wiredlogic]

While Musk's accomplishments and drive are in some ways admirable he isn't as great a person as he projects himself to be. He has been known to inflate his credentials and he ditched his ex wife for an actress 15 years younger than him. Apparently, the ex found out about it when he brazenly took the mistress to a business party instead of her.

Re:SpaceX is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Hundreds of trips through 300+ km of red tape will remove anyone's can-do attitude. All I've seen of SpaceX is dozens of launch delays for menial reasons. Did they actually launch something correctly yet?

Re:SpaceX is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Being the first private individual to control a space fleet could make him the richest man in the world. Now there's vision.

He also has a cool, Star Wars character sounding, name!

Re:SpaceX is awesome

[bkr1_2k]

Yeah, because no great man was ever accused of infidelity and still considered "great", right?

Seriously, people's personal lives and who they're sleeping with have, and should have, very little impact on how they are viewed by society in the long term.

The guy may be a dick as a husband, but that doesn't demean what he's done professionally. Inflating credentials is a bit more shady but without further investigation, I'm inclined to give the guy the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Re:SpaceX is awesome

[khallow]

SpaceX has launched two Falcon 1's successfully to orbit. They've also had three failures that didn't fail due to red tape.

How ironic

[chebucto]

After years of people confusing relatively simple computer concepts with unnecessary and imprecise analogies to "real-world" things, people are now confusing relatively simple space transport concepts with unnecessary and imprecise analogies to computers.

ATV? Progress?

[damburger]

Why is there a need for a SpaceX resupply? Where is the evidence that it will be cheaper per kg of cargo than these existing solutions?

Re:ATV? Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard for it to be more expensive than the shuttle.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[cyclone96]

Disclaimer - I work for NASA.

I don't think the cost per kg of cargo is a driving factor on this decision. The US government has a vested interest in supporting both SpaceX and Orbital on the COTS contract. If successful the vehicle SpaceX is developing will provide a domestically produced launch vehicle that has shows some promise in having a lot of launch flexibility and much cheaper rides to orbit.

Additionally, if SpaceX is successful it will provide some negotiation power in getting upmass to ISS (the rides get more expensive when Progress is the only game in town) and will also provide some competition on government contracts to the United Launch Alliance consortium of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[Nyeerrmm]

The biggest concern isn't the cost so much as the existence of a domestic supplier, whether it be Orbital, SpaceX or the big old guys.

Of course the other important part of COTS is encouraging the development of a fixed-price contract system for orbital launches instead of the cost-plus system that dominates vehicle development right now, a change that does have the implication of leading to lower costs.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

> a domestically produced launch vehicle

Well, except for the most technically sophisticated bits, which are designed and made in Russia.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[jamstar7]

Why is there a need for a SpaceX resupply?

Cause the Shuttle is goin bye-bye Real Soon Now. That leaves the Russians with the only resupply/ISS orbital capable gear.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[jeti]

You're confusing SpaceX with something else. Sea Launch, perhaps.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[damburger]

Basically, the US, the self proclaimed kings of brutal capitalism, are forgoing competition with existing European and Russian solutions in favour of subsidising their own 'private' space industry and then patting themselves on the back for having the wisdom to leave space travel to the 'market'? You cannot understand how much this amuses me.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[magpie]

Erm Progress is not the only game in town any more the Europeans have the ATV, if needs be I suspect ESA could up production and launch of them.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[RobBebop]

some competition on government contracts to the United Launch Alliance consortium of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Yeah... Boeing and LM are just as big and resistant to change as any huge organization who has enjoyed many years with a business model that has let them coast along and collect money freely.

Disclaimer - I work for NASA.

And as a further disclaimer... I work for a company who has been partnered with Orbital in the past, though I've never had anything to do with any of those projects.

Re:ATV? Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA Outsourcing spaceflight. What's wrong with this picture? Will we have the Chinese doing it next, or building the rockets/components because its cheaper?

Go SpaceX go

[steveha]

I'm happy to read that SpaceX will be taking over resupply. We should encourage private launch companies.

Having NASA handle all launch needs was putting all our eggs in a single basket, and killed any chance for private launch. It's already expensive and hard to develop a new space launch system; to do it when NASA is offering launches at cut-rate prices was impossible. (NASA has always been embarrassed by how expensive the Shuttle actually was, and never charged anywhere near a profitable amount for flying things on the Shuttle.)

Once we have several private companies flying things to orbit, we can expect the cost to orbit to come down drastically. And once you are in orbit, you are halfway to anywhere in the Solar System.

NASA is talking about a return to Mars 30 years from now. That's crazy; once we have cheap launch, we can assemble a Mars mission in pieces, rather than launching the whole mission on one giant rocket (as we did the Apollo missions). If you can cheaply and reliably launch dozens of launch vehicles, each ferrying up a tonne of fuel, you could make a Mars mission with lots of gear, lots of fuel, lots of safety margin.
steveha

Re:Go SpaceX go

[Geoffrey.landis]

Having NASA handle all launch needs was putting all our eggs in a single basket

NASA does not handle "all" US launch needs. In fact, NASA buys most of its launches from commercial providers. And the defense and commercial sectors-- both of which, I should remind you, has more funding than NASA-- buy all of their launches from commercial providers.

Re:Go SpaceX go

[steveha]

I apologize for unclear writing. I didn't mean to imply that NASA was still trying to handle all launch needs. I was referring to the dark days before the Commercial Space Launch Act:

From the beginning of the Shuttle program until the Challenger disaster in 1986, it was the policy of the United States that NASA be the public-sector provider of U.S. launch capacity to the world market.[4] Initially NASA subsidized satellite launches with the intention of eventually pricing Shuttle service for the commercial market at long-run marginal cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight#American_deregulation

Clearly private launch is not killed now, given that SpaceX is taking over resupply of the ISS! But it would have been rather difficult to get SpaceX funded in 1983 or so, would it not?

My first-ever conversation with Geoffrey Landis and it's about my vague, unclear writing? Pardon me, I need to go weep in a corner.

steveha

Re:Go SpaceX go

[Manhigh]

Having each launch vehicle ferry tons of fuel would require the means to prevent it from boiling off on orbit, or using a more storable fuel and taking the hit in performance (lower Isp). There are technologies that look promising (Methane for one) but thats a ways off and we're not investing much in it at the moment. Plus you'd have to have the cost of launches come down a LOT to make dozens of rockets cheaper than one or two expensive ones. Much of the launch cost is not just the hardware but all of the logistics involved in setting the thing off. That overhead is not going to be trivial for an architecture requiring dozens of launches.

By all means, I'm cheering for SpaceX to have great success, but them doing so doesn't accelerate the timetable for manned Mars missions, IMHO.

Re:Go SpaceX go

[steveha]

Plus you'd have to have the cost of launches come down a LOT to make dozens of rockets cheaper than one or two expensive ones.

That's just it. I'm saying that the cost of launches is going to come down a LOT.

Besides, it would be really, really hard to do an Apollo-style Mars mission, where you just build one freaking huge rocket and it carries everything up. It would be much better to use a heavy-lift launcher to put some kind of Mars travel spacecraft into orbit, then lots of cheap small launchers to ferry up fuel and supplies for it.

I'd really like to see us return to the moon this way, too. Build an Earth/Moon shuttle, fuel it up, and have it travel back and forth from the moon, never itself landing. Once you have that reusable shuttle, you can amortize its cost over multiple trips... eventually going to the moon could become routine and inexpensive.

By all means, I'm cheering for SpaceX to have great success, but them doing so doesn't accelerate the timetable for manned Mars missions, IMHO.

Not just SpaceX. Cheap access to space, caused by the innovations of SpaceX and the other companies; and even by the competition between those companies. I think cheap access to space is a game changer, and I expect the game to change dramatically before that proposed 2037 launch date for a Mars mission.

steveha

Re:Go SpaceX go

[DerekLyons]

I'm happy to read that SpaceX will be taking over resupply.

SpaceX isn't taking over anything - because SpaceX hasn't the capability to perform resupply.
 
SpaceX will provide resupply at some uncertain date in the future, *if* they can get Falcon 9 off the ground and and flying reliably, and *if* they can get their delivery vehicle operating and certified, and *if* they don't drive themselves into bankruptcy in the process. (Musk's pockets are deep, but not limitless.) There's a lot of "if's" between today and cargo on orbit.
 
 

We should encourage private launch companies. Having NASA handle all launch needs was putting all our eggs in a single basket, and killed any chance for private launch.

In a world where NASA handled all launch needs - that would be true. Here in the real world, private companies like Boeing and Lockmart (and others) have been providing private launch services for decades.
 
 

It's already expensive and hard to develop a new space launch system; to do it when NASA is offering launches at cut-rate prices was impossible. (NASA has always been embarrassed by how expensive the Shuttle actually was, and never charged anywhere near a profitable amount for flying things on the Shuttle.)

NASA offered a limited number of cut price rides on the Shuttle for about five years - over twenty years ago. The minor impact of that and the handful of DoD missions where the DoD used the Shuttle instead of buying a booster from private industry, is long over.
 
 

Once we have several private companies flying things to orbit, we can expect the cost to orbit to come down drastically.

We have no fewer than three private companies flying things to orbit in the US alone - Boeing, Lockmart, and Orbital Sciences. Prices to orbit haven't noticeably budged.

Re:Go SpaceX go

[DerekLyons]

My first-ever conversation with Geoffrey Landis and it's about my vague, unclear writing?

No, it's about your unclear writing, vague logic, and general disconnect from the facts.

Re:Go SpaceX go

[Anonymous Coward]

Apollo missions were not a single rocket. The lunar module was launched separately and then docked in Earth orbit before heading off to the moon.

Re:Go SpaceX go

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA doesn't even touch most launches in he US. Air Force Space Command handles that.

Re:Go SpaceX go

[steveha]

There's a lot of "if's" between today and cargo on orbit.

Point well taken.

The minor impact of that and the handful of DoD missions where the DoD used the Shuttle instead of buying a booster from private industry, is long over.

I do wish I had simply said something like "The more competition, the better I'll like it" and left it at that. That wasn't one of my more useful comments.

We have no fewer than three private companies flying things to orbit in the US alone - Boeing, Lockmart, and Orbital Sciences. Prices to orbit haven't noticeably budged.

Give it time. Several of the new private companies are working on reusable launch systems. When someone develops a launch system where they can reuse the same vehicles over and over (without man-years of labor to overhaul them between flights) to the point where fuel costs become the major expense of space travel, that will change things completely.

As long as we are flying expendable rockets, it will be difficult to really reduce launch costs; a rocket has to fly perfectly on its very first (and only) flight, and then is completely used up. This is not a recipe for low cost. How much would air travel cost if every 747 flew only once and was destroyed in the process?

steveha

Re:Go SpaceX go

[Anonymous Coward]

Apollo missions were not a single rocket. The lunar module was launched separately and then docked in Earth orbit before heading off to the moon.

You are mistaken. The Lunar Module was indeed part of the Saturn V stack; you can see it clearly in the cutaway diagram here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saturn_V_diagram_from_Apollo_6_Press_Kit.jpg

Here's the Apollo mission profile. What confused you is that the service module detaches from the third stage, then docks with the Lunar Module.

http://www.myspacemuseum.com/profile.htm

About 40 minutes after TLI the Apollo Command Service Module (CSM) separated from the third stage, turned 180 degrees and docked with the Lunar Module (LM) that rode below the CSM during launch. The CSM and LM separated from the spent third stage 50 minutes later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Lunar_mission_launch_sequence

Re:Go SpaceX go

[cheesybagel]

Yes, three. ULA, Orbital Sciences Corporation and SpaceX. Funny thing is, there is little to no overlap between payload capabilities of the launchers by these companies at the moment. So actually there is no competition at all.

Re:Go SpaceX go

[cheesybagel]

You are probably being confused by test flights done with Saturn I prior to Saturn V.

Re:Go SpaceX go

[hey!]

I wouldn't count any chickens before they're hatched. SpaceX has had something like two successful launches of their smaller vehicle. While that is a tremendous accomplishment, there is no way that vehicle has the capacity to take over the resupply duties. Their larger vehicle could do the job but it hasn't flown yet. It *may* be able to do the job, but not enough to be relied upon by next year.

If SpaceX has a contract, it amounts to government underwriting of private R&D. That's probably the right thing to do, but it's not proof that space is ready for true private enterprise yet.

Doesn't anybody remember how crappy the PC was?

[argent]

Doesn't anybody remember how crappy the first PC clones were?

Doesn't anybody remember how crappy the PC was? Crippled CPU (in too many ways to list), edge-triggered interrupts, no software (one of the most popular upgrades was a chip that let you run CP/M-80 on it), bizarre wasteful memory map, premium price for an entry-level product? Of course the clones were going to suck. Sheesh.

Re:Doesn't anybody remember how crappy the PC was?

[that this is not und]

What I remember about it was you could buy a 'grown up' computer for big bucks at a computer store. Or you could do as I did, and buy an 8088 motherboard at a swapmeet, used memory chips that had been sweated out in a solder pot, disk drives, a power supply that didn't match the case I also bought, a used keyboard with no enclosure and solder on my own cable, an open-frame CRT display salvaged out of a dumb terminal whose signal lines (horizontal, vertical, video, gnd) were figured out with some reverse engineering....

Or you could go to the toy department of big box stores and buy a plastic cased Commodore or Atari.

Re:Doesn't anybody remember how crappy the PC was?

[argent]

And whichever way you went, you ended up with a toy computer, and hardly any software unless you replaced the 8088 with a NEC V-20 so you could run a CP/M emulator. Or you could put together a homebrew 8080/z80 box and cut out the middleman.

8088 not 8080

[Anonymous Coward]

The initial IBM PC used an intel 8088, which was an 8086 with an 8-bit (rather than 16-bit) data bus, and trailed the 8080 by several years. IBM wasn't sure that such a wide bus as the 8086 had would catch on...

Re:8088 not 8080

[TheRaven64]

IBM wasn't sure that such a wide bus as the 8086 had would catch on.

No, IBM decided that they wanted to cut costs by using cheap 8-bit components on the motherboard rather than the much more expensive 16-bit ones, and cut costs on the board itself by reducing the number of traces required.

Re:8088 not 8080

[that this is not und]

The 16-bit components simply didn't exist.

There is no 16-bit equivalent to:

8253 timer
8237 DMA controller
8259 Interrupt Controller
or even the 8255.

EPROM and ROM technology was all, and still is, 8-bit data paths.

The '16 bit' 8086 machines like the AT&T 6300 were awkward kludges that mostly existed so there could be a '16 bit bus' bullet on the sales brochure.

I still own an ALTOS 586 machine. It's a five user UNIX box that runs Microsoft Xenix. It has an 8086 in it, but is fundamentally and completely different than the PC Architecture.

Incorrect computer history

[Orion Blastar]

It was the Intel 8088 chip not the 8080 chip used in the IBM PC and PC Clones.

MS-DOS was not reverse engineered, it was originally IBM PC-DOS and Microsoft released the MS-DOS to work with IBM PC clones that had reverse engineered the IBM PC BIOS. MS-DOS used GWBASIC.COM to replace the IBM BASICA.COM that used the IBM PC BIOS and wouldn't work on PC Clones.

Some say MS-DOS and IBM PC-DOS which was based on 86-DOS/Q-DOS was really a reverse engineered DRI CP/M-86 with some commands renamed to be more user friendly and moved into RAM instead of the floppy disk. DRI later on released DR-DOS to compete with MS-DOS. Anyway DRI lost the DOS wars and when they tried to make a competitor to Windows named GEM, they got sued by Apple and had to change the way it looked.

Re:Incorrect computer history

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh the GEM desktop. I vaguely remember lots of red.

Re:Incorrect computer history

[ogdenk]

I remember it in an absolutely hideous shade of green with b&w bitmaps for icons.

Re:Incorrect computer history

[BooRolla]

Wikipedia disagrees with you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_DOS

Microsoft made the first incarnation, IBM basically got to add work on top of it and brand it as IBM-DOS

Re:Incorrect computer history

[Orion Blastar]

Uh

"IBM PC DOS is a freeware DOS system for the IBM Personal Computer and compatibles, manufactured and sold by IBM from the 1980s to the 2000s."

It was not freeware, I remember having to pay for it. It also is still for sale here called PC-DOS and definitely not Freeware.

Also:

"This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)"

The Wikipedia article does not cite any sources.

Only the Chinese version of PC-DOS 2000 seems available for download from IBM, no doubt for a deal struck with the Chinese government. Otherwise it is commercial software.

640

[interactive_civilian]

640 tonnes of lift capacity ought to be enough for anyone. ;)

Re:640

[Anonymous Coward]

Standard: Metric: or LT (long Ton)

Re:640

[notmyusualnickname]

Metric for ESA and Long Ton for NASA, how else are they going to continue the (albeit nascent) tradition of unit-mismatch induced failures?

Re:640

[thesnide]

640 kilos actually... but you can always attach some external "weight boosters".
And then wait the 64-nozzle era of space flight...

Re:640

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never met my mother in law.....

What a loser!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait? There are 'Space X' fanboys???

What a fucking loser.

Those are the clowns who were having trouble even getting their crap to launch, let alone in orbit! What do they have? A 25 percent failure rate!

Let me guess! You're one of those dipshits who so fucking stupid they see the idiots from Space X as the 'teh private sektor' vs 'teh govermet'

Re:What a loser!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shut the hell up troll.

Start the pod race...

[goodmanj]

Are you sure about this? Trusting our fate to a rocket we hardly know? The Hill will not approve.

Re:Start the pod race...

[b1t r0t]

Would Hank Hill feel better about it if the rocket used propane?

How To Recognize The Idiots In A Space Story..Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like how easy it is to cull the idiots from a political story by the posts that start off with "I'm a Libertarian..."

With space stories it is equally easy, just look for the posts babbling about Mars...

 

Recycling, With Gravy

[DynaSoar]

As far as I can see the only thing in TFA that wasn't covered months ago in http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/24/0151211 is the entirely useless analogy to the computer industry. I wonder if that section is replaced with say, an equally bogus analogy to automobiles so it can be sent to Car And Driver.

I just want someone to invent the capsuleer pod...

[LoganTeamX]

...so I can get up there and have the first Caldari control tower anchored off the Moon. Manufacturing, research, storage. I'll have it all.Now all I need to do is to make sure that the damn Minnies don't start throwing VWs at my station. Who wants to help build cruise missile batteries? Capital construction hangars?

Nothing new here

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing in TFA that is news to slashdot readers. It's a gosh-wow summary of old news.

Please note that the original article headline is a question, not a statement.

SpaceX might get a contract to resupply space station. And they might not.

dammit

[Anonymous Coward]

Timothy, will you please, for once, actually R T F A before you POST it!

Reaction mass bounty

[Baldrson]

1.6Gdollar;12launches;10ton_metric/launch ? dollar/kg = 13333.3 dollar/kg

Here come the parasites.

Could turn into a buy-off of a threat to big aerospace.

If NASA were serious they'd cut out all their launch technology development and just put up a $2000/kg bounty for reaction mass delivered to orbit, by any domestic system, at the desired inclination and altitude, starting immediately. Grab it with a tug later.

You can always use reaction mass.

Let the industrial learning curve do the rest.

Of course, if they did that, launch services would become so affordable, there would be private space stations and they'd lose their mandate for big bucks operational budgets and have to go back to science.

Re:Reaction mass bounty

[exhilaration]

...there would be private space stations...

What about private space exploration? If SpaceX gets to Mars first, can it claim the whole planet?

Re:Reaction mass bounty

[Anonymous Coward]

Robert Heinlein suggests yes.

Re:Reaction mass bounty

[halltk1983]

Only if they want to pay property tax on it...

Old news

[CrimsonAvenger]

This is news?

It was announced late last year, and has appeared on /. at least once already.

A lot of faith

[amightywind]

Great idea! They are putting a lot of faith in an organisation that has exactly one successful orbital launch of a dummy spacecraft to their credit. SpaceX is an admirable organisation, but it is a decade away from being able to launch large payloads. The Falcon 9 has never flown. Given the track record of the Falcon 1 we can expect failures. And when they lose a mission to ISS, what then? Will failure be tolerated?

Re:A lot of faith

[cheesybagel]

They launched RazakSAT sucessfully. Sure beats Boeing Delta III uh?

Re:A lot of faith

[that this is not und]

That's better than 'placing a lot of faith' in a low-cost re-launchable vehicle called the Space Shuttle. And I doubt it could turn out a worse deal.

Re:A lot of faith

[Michael Woodhams]

If the payload is 500 packets of 3 minute noodles and 200kg of water, then yes, some failure will be tolerated.

But I agree, it does seem premature to be throwing around multi-billion dollar contracts.

Re:A lot of faith

[garompeta]

Will failure be tolerated?

I guess that since it is a private company, the government will have to call to the customer service 1-800 number in India to claim their warranty. lol

(ring ring, ring ring)
SpaceX recording: "Thank you for calling to SpaceX, Where the sky isn't the limit (tm). If you are calling for customer service press 1, if you are calling for a technical support press 2, if you are..."
US Government DTMF: "1336Hz+697Hz" (2)
SpaceX recording: "Thank you for calling to SpaceX, Where the sky isn't the limit (tm). If your rocket lost your load or is in the wrong orbit please hang up and call to 1-800-loadmisplacement. If your rocket has mechanical failures, press 1 or say 'Mechanical'. If it is leaking fuel, press 2 or say 'Leakage'. If it exploded in midair, press 3 or say "Explosion". If it is about software problems, press 4 or say "Software". If other, press 0 or say "Other"
US Government officer: "Other"
SpaceX recording: "I am sorry I didn't quite get that, did you say... 'mangoose'"
US Government officer: (getting upset) "No"
SpaceX recording: "I am sorry I didn't quite get that, did you say... 'No?'"
US Government officer: (getting upset) "Yes"
SpaceX recording: I am sorry I couldn't get that either, please hold a moment while I transfer you with a representative.
SpaceX recording: (repetitive background music) "Thank you for calling to SpaceX, Where the sky isn't the limit (tm). A representative will be with you shortly, thank you for your patience. There-are---three---customers in the queue before you. Awesome facts! Did you know that the Falcon 1 was the first privately funded rocket in space? Thank you for waiting, a representative will be shortly with you. Awesome offer for a limited time! Get two rockets at the price of one! Only 3.99 (billion dollars), special discount for tax haven countries, only in SpaceX. Thank you for waiting, a representative will be with you shortly
US Government officer: "..."
SpaceX recording: (music interrupts)
US Government officer: "Hello?"
SpaceX recording: (the same background music again) "Thank you for calling to SpaceX, Where the sky isn't the limit (tm), A representative will be with you shortly, thank you for your patience... Did you know that..."
US Government officer: (heavy breathing) "......"
SpaceX recording: "Herow, my name is Suryakant Chattopadhyay, haw can I asidst you torey?"
US Government officer: *SIGH*

Re:A lot of faith

[Anonymous Coward]

"They are putting a lot of faith in an organisation that has exactly one successful orbital launch of a dummy spacecraft to their credit."
Exactly TWO successful orbital launches (one dummy, one operational). Do more research before talking.

Re:A lot of faith

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. SpaceX has *two* successful launches. One of which was an honest-to-goodness commercial satellite which is now in orbit.

antigravity

[sonchat]

instead of continuing to build chemical rockets, nasa should research advanced propulsion. The Large Hadron Collider will be the rosetta stone explaining the energy matter interface, allowing creation of psuedo matter, having the mass and "solidness" of matter that can be turned on and off like a switch, which in turn will lead to force fields which in turn will lead to antigravity.

Re:antigravity

[russotto]

The Large Hadron Collider will be the rosetta stone explaining the energy matter interface, allowing creation of psuedo matter, having the mass and "solidness" of matter that can be turned on and off like a switch, which in turn will lead to force fields which in turn will lead to antigravity.

And also, it will give every little girl a pony. Me, I'm holding out for switching matter over to antimatter, ala _Moving Mars_.

fuck you

[Anonymous Coward]

your such a nigger jew raclst

Re:fuck you

[Yvan256]

Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[CFD339]

The shuttles have taught us a great deal about what you need to be designing into a SHUTTLE rather than a single use rocket. The costs, maintenance, and safety issues that crop up over the 20-30 year life span of a launch platform designed to be re-used. There are things you learn over the long term. Who would have thought that foam insulation around the liquid fuel tanks would be more dangerous because it is light weight than it would be if it were heavier? It took many many launches before we learned it (in a worst case scenario, sadly). Point is, that's just the one big glaring example. There are countless other reliability and availability lessons learned.

We already knew we could make a rocket get into space. We needed to make it almost commercially reliable and cheap. We're not there yet, but a long way closer, yes?

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[curmudgeon99]

We had already solved the problem of achieving orbit but instead of doing things beyond orbit, NASA repeated a lot of the same trick (achieving orbit) without having much to show for it. I wish we had a Mars mission instead of the space station. What is that being used for, again?

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[harperska]

Well, right now it is doing all the microgravity science that was previously done by the space shuttle. FYI, Columbia was in fact on a microgravity science mission when it had its disaster.

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[curmudgeon99]

My intention was not to slam the current folks at NASA. I too am proud of their achievements.

But you know that they were twiddling their thumbs. They had nothing to do. The shuttle was a craft looking for a mission. It was a mistake from the start. It never possessed the ability to go anywhere and so it merely soaked up all the dollars that should have been sent to the private sector so that NASA could do something interesting.

The shuttle satisfied our need for blast offs without actually attempting to do anything. Surely it did a great thing in putting up Hubble. No one wants to disparage what the shuttle did--it just was unambitious from the start. It never was a travel-to-mars platform. We should have started a space launch business and then NASA would have done something new.

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

How, exactly, would NASA have done something "interesting" if the same amount of money the Shuttle program has consumed had been sent to the private sector? Seems to me the remaining budget for "interesting" would have been the same, except that some private sector CEOs would have gotten richer, especially since this would have happened in the middle of the IPO insanity of a few years back.

The Shuttle taught us a lot. It taught us what works and, equally importantly, what doesn't work in a reuseable space vehicle. Most importantly, it taught us to never let White House budget idiots have influence over the design of a spacecraft, which occurred back in the early 70s when it was being designed. Go check on that. It's an interesting and somewhat tragic story--tragic because those design changes were pretty much directly responsible for the destruction of 2 shuttles.

So instead of taking those lessons and doing something useful with them, we're back to using expendable launch vehicles. When NASA does that we complain, and when the beloved privated sector does the exact same thing on a smaller scale with a higher failure rate, we somehow call that a "success".

Welcome to Corporate America. Please check your science and engineering at the door.

BTW, the private sector should be permitted and encouraged to get into space. Monopolies on any kind of transportation do nobody any good. It's just that, when left to do things correctly and not harassed by shortsighted politicians and an idiot press that knows less about space engineering than they do about computers, NASA usually does OK. The trouble is that nobody has left them alone since the Apollo program regarding human space flight, and the results have been more than tragic. They've cost many of us an entire lifetime of any real achievement in space.

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[moosesocks]

But you know that they were twiddling their thumbs. They had nothing to do. The shuttle was a craft looking for a mission. It was a mistake from the start. It never possessed the ability to go anywhere and so it merely soaked up all the dollars that should have been sent to the private sector so that NASA could do something interesting.

Why is the private sector some sort of magic bullet for NASA's problems? If you'll recall, the shuttle was built by a consortium of private contractors. If SpaceX is successful, they become the next Lockheed (or more likely, as with Scaled Composites, they'll be flat-out purchased by Lockheed or Boeing). Big whoop there.

I'm also more than a little bit troubled by the existence of enormous companies that exist solely to provide goods and services directly to the government. Seems to blur the line between public and private, while offering the advantages of neither.

In any event, rather than throwing money at private contractors, NASA could have funded more science missions. Instead of servicing the Hubble, couldn't we simply have built another?

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[couchslug]

"The shuttles have taught us a great deal about what you need to be designing into a SHUTTLE rather than a single use rocket."

It taught that single-use rockets can evolve more quickly and don't need to be refurbished.
It taught us that locking ourselves into a design to be used for decades is silly since technology isn't static.

It OUGHT to teach us to send generation after generation of rapidly improving UNmanned systems so we can explore space vs. sending humans to be entertained by space. Let someone else eat the cost of sending meat tourists. We don't need a manned space program to learn about anything but sending people on a commute to places we should first explore and then master with machines.

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[Graymalkin]

The Shuttle was designed to do a couple of things, build and service a space station, launch a space telescope, launch/retrieve orbital experiments, and carry large military payloads and do all of this affordably through a high launch frequency. It has largely accomplished all of its missions except the affordability part. Yes it is bigger and more expensive than the Dyna Soar++ it was originally conceived to be and accomplished several of its goals a decade late but did largely live up to them. The major issue with the Shuttle which nearly (some might suggest did) ruined the whole program was the Challenger disaster.

In 1985 there were a record nine Shuttle missions. At that rate the Shuttle is fairly economical to fly as a lot of fixed costs get amortized over a larger number of launches. The economic efficiency of a launch vehicle is directly related to launch frequency. A big portion of launch cost is personnel costs, they're getting paid whether you do one or ten flights in a year. The key to the Shuttle being successful as a platform was/is a high launch frequency. Both NASA and the DoD had a number of satellite and space probe launches scheduled on the Shuttle which helped pad out NASA's manned space science missions (Spacelab, etc). These were all in addition to the long term plans like the space telescope and a space station. The Shuttle isn't cheap but is very capable, a single mission can replace several smaller scale missions that taken together would cost more than a Shuttle launch. The Challenger disaster ruined the Shuttle's scheduling and set NASA back by at least a decade.

The DoD was set to launch a number of spy satellites (including an early missile warning system) as well as the GPS Block II satellites on the Shuttle in 1986. With the Shuttle fleet grounded after Challenger the DoD had to kick their Complementary Expendable Launch Vehicle program into high gear. Originally meant to be a compliment to the Shuttle to cover tight last minute scheduling conflicts the program was repurposed to be a Shuttle replacement for a lot of DoD missions and became the Titan IV. The Delta II was developed to launch the GPS satellites and went on to be a fairly successful family of ELVs. The NASA missions intended to be launched on the Shuttle were all pushed back or canceled outright and the number of flights were cut back. In the late 80s and 90s a lot of would-be Shuttle business was instead taken up by the likes of the Delta II and Titan III. The as-designed space station was canceled its components later rolled into the ISS which became an international effort.

The Shuttle is not a perfect design but it is not the abject failure its detractors cast it as being. The Saturn was designed to be and was built as a racehorse, it was meant to get the Apollo stack to the Moon and that was about it. The Saturn was not very economical to build or launch and would have made a terrible workhorse. The Shuttle was a realization that cost to orbit was a bigger issues than getting more mass into orbit. If a smaller launcher can get half the mass into orbit at a third of the cost then more science can get done per dollar. The Shuttle was approaching the sweet spot of capability and affordability when the Challenger disaster happened. The program never really recovered economically from Challenger which meant one of the Shuttle's two main features was non-existant.

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[lmckayjo]

There was a paper a few years ago by a guy at or previously at NASA (I'm being lazy tonight and not looking it up, but I'd be happy to find it if you like) which rather convincingly showed that if we used a shuttle on the schedule ORIGINALLY planned for it (several launches per month rather than per year) it would have been cost effective.

I'm not sure if your statement that we're much closer to reliability and "cheapness" is meant to imply that the shuttle has helped in this respect, or not; we could argue whether it has helped give only motivation if not otherwise contributed directly to practical experience in reliable and inexpensive launches. In either case, it has been a very expensive (per launch) platform because it didn't work out as planned, and we have hopefully (!!) learned something about how the government needs to plan for things...

That said, my impression is that there is no such possible thing as a cheap, reliable, NON-commercial launch. Whether we achieve such a thing commercially is up to SpaceX and SpaceX alone, in the short term.

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[rufty_tufty]

We had already solved the problem of achieving orbit

No we haven't, well no more then the Stephenson rocket solved the problem of rail travel for the masses. A lot of technology and infrastructure investment was needed to get the railway to be useful rather than a curiosity, that's what NASA should have been doing in my book, investing in developing new launch technology, and while it was working on that then it should have been developing LEO infrastructure. Why can't we have our orbital construction yard? Why not have a space tug? Get the processing facilities for mining asteroids and NEO objects. That to me is far more interesting and rewarding than another flags and footprints mission.

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[cheesybagel]

At that launch rate NASA probably wouldn't have any vehicles left by now. They already lost two. That would make the whole venture fairly uneconomic. Not to mention that it was made to be flown manned at all times as the stupid thing cannot even land autonomously.

Re:Actually, the shuttles have taught us a lot

[R2.0]

"The shuttles have taught us a great deal about what you need to be designing into a SHUTTLE rather than a single use rocket."

Absolutely correct. The main lesson? DON'T BUILD MORE SHUTTLES!

sendeths enlgish class

[Anonymous Coward]

omfg.

to = let's go to the movies.
too = there are too many of them.
two = there are only two of them, not three.

there = let's go there.
their = it is their house.
they're = they are going to the house.

seriously people. 3rd grade stuff here. learn these 6 simple things or be doomed to look like an idiot when you write.

Realizing the reality of our childhood reading

[Sir_Dill]

Good comments from all and maybe this has been said before but I am EXCITED as hell to watch this happen.

Private spaceflight is a long standing theme of MANY sci fi favorites.
Its the next great frontier, the next new world.
We have been reading about the "early days" of space exploration from the position of the future.
Stories about clipper ships taking off in the distance.
I think once things happen, they are going to start happening very quickly.
If not in our lifetimes in our childrens lifetime, commercial space enterprises and orbital manufacturing will be a reality.

exciting times indeed!

Awful holiday snaps!

[syousef]

I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.

No, but it *is* about the same as looking at someone else's holiday photos.

Oh man, in that case get your friend some lessons on using their cameras *groan*

Not quite...

[Angst Badger]

Leaving aside the gross inaccuracies about the history of the personal computer in TFA, there's one giant shrieking difference between the "Fire in the Valley" days and the current commercial space rush: startup costs. Any number of early personal computer companies really were started by a couple of guys in a garage with a few thousand dollars. There may very well be some space industry parts vendors who still start this way. But no one starts a private launch company without a ton of money up front.

It's still exciting, but not in the way the early personal computer days were. Back then, you could look at, let's say, Wozniak and Jobs and think, "That could be me!" No one at my pay grade is having that thought about SpaceX.

A bit of creative history here

[SL Baur]

The fledgling space industry is reminiscent of the early days of the personal computer,' notes one technology reporter, 'when a number of established vendors and startups reversed-engineered Microsoft's DOS and manufactured PCs using the Intel 8080 chip set.

I had to double check that it wasn't kdawson that edited this article. Wow. You usually do a pretty good job, timothy. But this?

No one "reversed engineered Microsoft's DOS" and it did not come out until the industry was pretty well established. The original IBM PC's BIOS was reverse engineered. The only thing Microsoft ever did that ran on an 8080 was Microsoft BASIC (which was indeed a true standard of its time - even Apple adopted it as Applesoft BASIC).

In the earliest years, the world was 6502 dominated - Apple, Commodore, etc. There wasn't any need to reverse engineer Apple Software, because they published it all in the Apple ][ red manual.

Once the 8080 came out (and its competitor the Z80) there still wasn't any need to reverse engineer software as CP/M was effectively open source.

PC DOS was very much a late comer to the game and as the industry was moving from 8 to 16 bit. Just because a bunch of whacked out journalist bozos said that the IBM PC (on the traffic light controller 8088, or so sayeth the official Intel documentation on that chip) "legitimized" personal computers doesn't make it correct.

Sheesh.

Re:A bit of creative history here

[sloepoke51]

Oh well, here goes my moderator points...

In the earliest years, the world was 6502 dominated - Apple, Commodore, etc. There wasn't any need to reverse engineer Apple Software, because they published it all in the Apple ][ red manual.

BZZT! WRONG!

The first usable computer was the Altair 8800 from MITS introduced in Popular Electronics Magazine in the January 1975 issue (on newstands December 1974). Bill and Paul wrote a Basic interpeter for MITS, and that later bacame Micro-Soft. The 6502's from MOS technology, came in a number of odd systems, but later after the 8080, 6800 (from Motorola). Steve and Steve were well after, about 6 months after the dominate 8080 was spreading through the market. Several companies were doing non-8080 based systems, but the the king of the hill was MITS Altair 8800. The first clone, the IMSAI 8080, came in December 1975

Once the 8080 came out (and its competitor the Z80) there still wasn't any need to reverse engineer software as CP/M was effectively open source.

BZZT! WRONG!

CP/M from Digital Research, was NOT open source. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that CP/M was Opened up for all to see the insides. I am not sure of the exact date that CP/M was opened up. It cost money for it and was disk based (read:expensive at the time). When I first saw an 8" disk drive, the drive alone was about $1000. My first disk system, a NorthStar Disk, cost was $699 for a single sided single density 5 1/4 drive anda controller and a simple os with a decent Basic interpreter. Disk space about 78K bytes.
Now the market was a tad "free" with software, and the most expensive software was some of the first to become "available." Software like MITS Basic was the software that could be obtained very easliy. Heck the Southern California Computer Society (SCCS), ran a class disassembling a popular interpreter and documenting the entire thing. They were passing out copies of the documented source at meetings.

Don't diss the 6502!

[SL Baur]

The 8080 chip was what grown up hardware enthusiasts were using in their S-100 computers. The kiddies had the weaker, cheaper 6502 parts.

Don't diss the 6502. It was a wonderful chip for its time and although it ran at slower clock speeds than later 8080s and Z80s, it still ran code faster because very few clock cycles were wasted. The instruction set was remarkably well done.

If you've never read through Woz's Sweet 16 interpreter, which fit in just a bit over a page of memory (about 270 bytes) and emulated a 16 bit architecture CPU, you have not experienced True Programming.

The 6502 was a remarkable work of engineering. It's a great pity that they never followed up on it.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[camperdave]

The 6502 was a remarkable work of engineering. It's a great pity that they never followed up on it.

Well, there was the 65816, a 16 bit version of the 6502, but it never really caught on.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[bradley13]

As I recall, there were three competing architectures. And things worked out as they usually do:

• The National Semiconductor chips like the 32032: a clean architecture, consistent and well-designed instruction set. Good engineering, lousy marketing, sank without a trace.
• The Motorola chips beginning withthe 6502 and later the 68000 stuff: acceptable architecture, decent but somewhat messy instruction set. Not great, but ok. Lived on as second-best.
• And, of course, the Intel 80xx series: kludged archtecture, inconsistent and awkward instruction set. Poor engineering but good marketing. Of course, these are the chips that went on to dominate the industry.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[SL Baur]

The 6502 was succeeded by the 65816 (a commercial failure) as was pointed out by camperdave, and was made by MOS Technology. The 8 bit Motorola CPU was the 6800.

Motorola 68k boxes were the first viable commercial Unix machines, not that anyone marketed them particularly well.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[SL Baur]

Yeah, I remember reading about that, but I can't recall a single machine that ever used it.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[Z80a]

Super nes

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[Alioth]

I think the VAX beats M68K boxes as being viable commercial Unix machines.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[SL Baur]

I think microvaxen came out later, but they were also marketed badly. I never got to try one.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[drerwk]

I was responsible for the Infocom Zip on 6502 in 1985. I had the 1 MHz Apple II+ version running just 4% slower than the 4.7MHz 8088 PC XT. Of course the guy doing the XT ASM, while not the ASM programmer I was, was smart enough to go work for M$...

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[camperdave]

It was released in 1984. By that time the Motorola 68000 had been out for five years. The 68020 was released the same year and it featured full 32 bit data and address buses, as opposed to the 65816's 16bit internal, 8bit external buses and smaller 24 bit address space. It was simply a matter of too little, too late.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[nih]

Seriously, go outside, the sun is shining.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[Anonymous Coward]

Motorola 68k boxes were the first viable commercial Unix machines, not that anyone marketed them particularly well.

Well, other than that funny little company with the fruit logo. Oh, wait, english grammar, definite antecedent, you said nobody marketed M68K UNIX boxes particularly well. My apologies; you are a master of understatement!

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[CompMD]

Apollo/HP seemed to do rather well with m68k systems. There are two motherboards from retired Apollos hanging on my wall right now, one with a 68030 and 68882, and the other with a 68040. I've used real working Apollos, and still have full sets of Domain/OS 10.3 and 10.4 tapes for them. Sun also had m68k systems with the Sun 3 series machines. Somewhere I have a Sun 3/80, which has the same 68030 and 68882 as my old Apollo. Even NeXT computers had m68k processors, though while I've had several Apollos and Suns, I've never even seen a NeXT box.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[SL Baur]

Apollo did so well they ended up being bought out by HP and disappearing. DEC did so well with Vaxen and Alpha they ended up being bought out by Compaq and disappearing. Sun, with the lead in Unix workstations did so well they ended up being bought out by Oracle.

I had one of the earliest Sun 3s on my desk at TRW. Nice box, nice GUI, but waaaaaaay too expensive. The year of the Unix desktop was 1987 and Sun blew it. I had two Alpha workstations in Japan, one running Tru64, the other running my port of Turbolinux. Nice boxes, but already getting somewhat long in the tooth. I've seen a NeXT, but never used one.

Re:Don't diss the 6502!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, no, but Macs ran 68k for some time.

8080?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...manufactured PCs using the Intel 8080 chip set."

Wasn't the 8088 used in IBM's first PC, the one that ran PC-DOS?

Reverse engineered the BIOS?

[LostMyBeaver]

I still have in a basement or the garage the original manuals that shipped with the original IBM PC aaaaand, guess what. In the back of the programmers reference manual is the full, commented source to the system BIOS.

There was no reverse engineering of the BIOS involved, instead, it was simply reimplementing it using the original code that was published with the PC.

I don't know if it was common practice to do so back then with other systems, but by releasing full source to the BIOS, it probably saved IBM thousands of hours properly documenting the API of the BIOS.

Keep in mind that for the most part, until Ralf Brown took it upon himself to document as much of the PC interrupts as possible, the BIOS source was probably the only decent documentation available for programmers.

Do not forget Progress

[Zoxed]

I find it a little incongruous of the article to say that SpaceX could 'take over' the resupply of the ISS. The Russians have been doing, and, AFAIK, will continue doing, sterling work with they very reliable Soyuz based Progress missions.

And just like the personal computer industry...

[noisyinstrument]

A 670kg payload ought to be enough for anybody.

Did anyone actually RTFA??

[Big Hairy Ian]

ISS Resupply is mentioned once and even then it's more like a statement of what it can do and no reference to any contract from NASA. Also if they have been awarded the contract how come it's not all over space.com????

Really it's just a waste of a frontpage