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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.'"
LMFAO!!!
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.
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!
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
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?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.
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.
Problem is that all that stuff in space is much harder to get to than Paris, although probably less hostile to foreigners.
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
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
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.
Worst...sig...ever!
640 tonnes of lift capacity ought to be enough for anyone. ;)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
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.")
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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.