Glory Satellite Lost To Taurus XL Failure

FullBandwidth writes "The protective nose cone of an Orbital Sciences Corporation Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory environmental research satellite apparently failed to separate after launch Friday, preventing the spacecraft from achieving orbit in a $424 million failure. It was the second nose cone failure in a row for a Taurus XL rocket following the 2009 loss of another environmental satellite."

Comments

Womp Womp

[Anonymous Coward]

Orbital Sciences laid off my dad when I was a little kid, so fuck 'em.

Re:Womp Womp

[orphiuchus]

And they're about to lay of a lot of other peoples dads. Bad news here.

Re:Womp Womp

[PopeRatzo]

And they're about to lay of a lot of other peoples dads. Bad news here.

I don't know, Orbital's board of directors looks like a who's who of republican lobbyists and military contractor sweethearts.

A few lunch checks get picked up, a few golfing trips to Manele Bay and everybody's good. Oh, there will still be layoffs, but as Speaker John Boehner put it, "So be it."

Re:Womp Womp

[Whalou]

I don't know, Orbital's board of directors looks like a who's who of republican lobbyists and military contractor sweethearts.

Conspiracy alert: They caused the nose cone problems to prevent those environmental satellites from confirming global warning!

:-P

Re:Womp Womp

[gatkinso]

Unfortunately after this they will be laying off more dads.

Re:Womp Womp

[DragonTHC]

that's oddly believable.

Re:Womp Womp

[Anonymous Coward]

Three Cheers to the dumbfuck for taking quotes out of context.

Re:Womp Womp

[Anonymous Coward]

That shit is insured and spread out over successful launches.

So the rate is going up for anything launched by Orbital Sciences using the existing rig, but they're not out half a billion straight-up.

Re:Womp Womp

[PopeRatzo]

They caused the nose cone problems to prevent those environmental satellites from confirming global warning!

The nosecone failures were probably due to something besides Orbital Science's malevolence. And due to Congress' never meeting a military contract it didn't love, my guess is that Orbital's going to have a very good year, despite nosecone failures. The workers it lays off? Their year won't be as great.

The Glory Satellite...

[Anonymous Coward]

...vanished into the Glory Hole. CowboyNeal is under investigation.

$4 for every US Household

[theaveng]

Damn.

Skip eating lunch today, and "make up" for the loss.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't you better eat lunch twice and put that money back into the economy?

Re:$4 for every US Household

[ciderbrew]

I'd rather eat two lunches.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't you better eat lunch twice and put that money back into the economy?

We already put that money into the economy by building the rocket and satellite. This isn't an monetary loss at all. This is a loss of potential knowledge from the satellite.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

Skip eating lunch today, and "make up" for the loss

I've got a better idea. Let's ask the top 1% not to open the second bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild at dinner for a week and pay for the space program for a year.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[DigiShaman]

You mean the same 1% of media elites and politicians that demand the rest of us do with less while at the same time living their hypocritical lifestyle? I agree.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Lumpy]

I prefer the bottom 99% show up at the 1%'s homes with torches and pichforks and solve the whole problem in a night.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[operagost]

Hey, Captain Working Class: instead of buying that second six pack of PBR, why not feed an impoverished family in Liberia for a week? Or, if you believe charity starts at home, try one of my preferred charities.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooooh that would be fun!

Re:$4 for every US Household

[A beautiful mind]

I think a student phrased it perfectly.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[osgeek]

Don't be silly. Sacrifice is for OTHER people.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

....where the hell am I supposed to find a torch and a pitchfork???

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

I've got a better idea. Let's ask the top 1% not to open the second bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild at dinner for a week and pay for the space program for a year.

How about you put your money where your mouth rather than Other Peoples' Money? If you aren't willing to kick in, then I can't be bothered to get the 1% to kick in either.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[afidel]

Don't live in farm country eh? I'd just go across the street to the neighbors barn =)

Re:$4 for every US Household

[myth24601]

Of course this is a monetary loss, something worth half a billion dollars was destroyed. The half billion was spent to create something of value, had it been spent on something else that was not lost, we would have spent the money and had something of value to show for it.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[afidel]

As a percentage of wealth or income I already kick in a LOT more than anyone who could be described as wealthy. Remember Warren Buffet pays a much smaller percentage in taxes than his secretary does.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[hey!]

Actually, Mercycorps (http://www.mercycorps.org/gifts) provides affordable "kits" that allow you to do just that. You can do anything from buying a chicken for an impoverished family for $35 up to digging a well for a drought struck village for $3000. My favorite kit is the goat. For $70 a family gets a goat they can turn out on the scrub around their house and get valuable wool, milk and eventually meat from.

These kits make great gifts for that person who "has everything". Well, does he have a rural third world classroom built in his honor ($125)? Maybe instead of that iPad for that special someone, you could pay for the education of five girls at $100 apiece; provide a dozen vaccinations to children at $45; or teach ten women to read at $50 apiece. You can reintegrate eight child soldiers to their community through education and apprenticeship programs for only $58 each.

I am amazed at the cynicism of some people. You make it sound like philanthropy is something working class people would never do. Well, *I'm* working class and *I've* done it. The power of the almighty dollar isn't just for the rich. You can do amazing things for so little. You can change somebody's life for what amounts to pocket change you'd never miss.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

First, in effective tax rates Warren Buffet certainly does NOT pay a smaller percentage of Federal Income taxes than his secretary. This is because his (proverbial) secretary's standard deduction is a much larger percentage of her income than it is of his. Then, a much larger percentage of her income is taxed at the lower end of the scale. For a salary of $50k or so, the effective rate is only about 12%. For a salary of $25, this drops to 6%. Meanwhile, the least Warren is paying is 15% on any money he is actually pulling out of his enterprises/investments in usable form. Because of the large quantities of money he's doing that with, his effective tax rate closely approaches 15%.

Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount? At best a percentage-based system is just a vague - a really vague - approximation of whatever kind of fairness principle you have going. You probably don't even have an identifiable principle on which you are basing it.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Xoltri]

What if you're at the top of the bottom 99%? Might be awkward showing up at your neighbors house with a pitchfork!

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount? At best a percentage-based system is just a vague - a really vague - approximation of whatever kind of fairness principle you have going. You probably don't even have an identifiable principle on which you are basing it.

The principle is that income is at least proportional to the benefit gained from government.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[anyGould]

Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount? At best a percentage-based system is just a vague - a really vague - approximation of whatever kind of fairness principle you have going. You probably don't even have an identifiable principle on which you are basing it.

For the same reason a sales tax is percentage-based - it keeps the tax relative to the value. And it dates back to the classic church tithe (as in "give the church a tenth of what you make").

I would be thrilled to see a proper flat percentage, with the barest minimum of deductions for the poorest.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[orphiuchus]

Of course this is a monetary loss, something worth half a billion dollars was destroyed. The half billion was spent to create something of value, had it been spent on something else that was not lost, we would have spent the money and had something of value to show for it.

The thing of value was the knowledge we would have gained from the satellite. The post above you was dead on correct.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[LordNacho]

And the assumption behind is that every benefit is gained from government existing.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

That 1% pays more taxes than the bottom 95%. Maybe you should go thank them for paying your way.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[inviolet]

Actually, Mercycorps (http://www.mercycorps.org/gifts) provides affordable "kits" that allow you to do just that. You can do anything from buying a chicken for an impoverished family for $35 up to digging a well for a drought struck village for $3000. My favorite kit is the goat. For $70 a family gets a goat they can turn out on the scrub around their house and get valuable wool, milk and eventually meat from.

These kits make great gifts for that person who "has everything". Well, does he have a rural third world classroom built in his honor ($125)? Maybe instead of that iPad for that special someone, you could pay for the education of five girls at $100 apiece; provide a dozen vaccinations to children at $45; or teach ten women to read at $50 apiece. You can reintegrate eight child soldiers to their community through education and apprenticeship programs for only $58 each.

I was excited about that website until I read the fine print:

These gifts are examples of what Mercy Corps does to save and improve lives in the world's toughest places. To help deliver the most effective solutions to the greatest number of people, your donation will be combined with other funds and used as it is most needed, not necessarily to purchase or distribute the actual item shown.

Meh. It's general-purpose charity with a fashionable front-end.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

So, unlike every other service, we pay for government based on benefit and not cost? Even if that part made sense, the whole thing would still fall apart. Rich people don't benefit more from police work just because they have more stuff to protect. First, more stuff isn't necessarily any harder to protect than a little stuff. Second, how often do you see cops expending time and resources in rich - or even middle-class - communities? Hardly ever. They spend most of their time chasing relatively poor people, who largely victimize other poor people. Or take another major expenditure of traffic enforcement. How are the rich benefiting more? They only have one life to lose like the rest of us. And when it comes to protecting their property in that way, they would be much less inconvenienced by the cost associated with accidents that the rest of us, so the benefit to them is actually lower.

When it comes to federal expenditures, like this one, how are the rich getting more benefit from NASA, or the launching of an environmental satellite, than the rest of us? How are they getting more benefit from the Department of Education? How is anyone who isn't a subsidized farmer getting more benefit from the Department of Agriculture? How are the rich getting a greater benefit from our wars in the Middle East?

But paying based on benefit doesn't make any sense. I don't pay Staples $86 for three black-and-white copies just because they are going to save me a ton of trouble when I deliver them to my attorney. Instead I pay a price determined almost entirely by the costs of those copies to Staples. Their immediately, contingent value to me acts only as an upper boundary, not a baseline market valuation.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

So, unlike every other service, we pay for government based on benefit and not cost?

In short, yes.

This is one of the problems with government services and taxes. There is no market where people voluntarily choose to buy the service at the given price voluntarily offered.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Lumpy]

ebay duh!

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Lumpy]

So raising their taxes by another 2% will solve all the problems.

Thanks for volunteering that.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[butalearner]

The thing of value was the knowledge we would have gained from the satellite. The post above you was dead on correct.

This should be pretty obvious. I mean, does anybody honestly think the components in the satellite are worth half a billion dollars? The vast majority of that money went to paying the people that developed it over the past several years.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PitaBred]

The middle class pays more by percentage of their income than the upper class (even if it's not more total). The middle class also lives much closer to the line of having to cut out various expenses if income changes, as compared to the rich. We already are putting our money where our mouths are.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[TooMuchToDo]

Oh man, I better go long in pitchfork and torch futures ;)

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

You only need one or the other. It's hard to used both at the same time, although I have seen combination torch/pitchforks. The problem with those is, if you ever need to use the pitchfork function, one of your hands is grasping the business end of the torch mechanism.

But this is slashdot, we don't need to use 14th century weaponry. Grab your bat'leth and your 9 LED head lamp and let's go!

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

That 1% pays more taxes than the bottom 95%.

And they hold more of the country's wealth than the bottom 98%, which, in my book makes them undertaxed.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[DigiShaman]

We, as a society, should be careful about vilifying the rich through higher taxation. This leads to a transfer of wealth to more friendly nations (more so than now). There is (will be) a breaking point. It's already an issue in the US, but once we start vilifying them as a culture, that's when people will start physically uprooting their own lives and move to other nations too. Not just their wealth. Historically, this leads to the hollowing out of a nation and thus oppression, populism, and dictatorships start taking over. The likes of tyranny never thought possible could occur inside our own borders.

Wealth by itself isn't the problem. It only becomes a problem when the wealthy are allowed to corrupt the system. It's at that point we start to see class-warfare solidify and everything else along with it falls into place ~for the worst.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

Hey, Captain Working Class: instead of buying that second six pack of PBR, why not feed an impoverished family in Liberia for a week?

What makes you think we don't? I spend a lot of money things that the government should be doing, but doesn't because the right wing thinks poverty is a character flaw not a societal defect exacerbated by an economic policy that places the needs of the wealthy above all else.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

You are missing the point that Buffet does not pay payroll taxes on anything above the income cap, and doesn't pay any payroll taxes on capital gains. That's an addition 9% or so that his secretary pays that he does not.

Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount?

Wow, your education was severely lacking. The rich get the most benefits from a stable society. The poor get very little from it. And apparently you can't see that taxing the poor at an amount greater than their annual income would both be unfair, and would quickly lead to a very unstable society with very few live rich people.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

When it comes to federal expenditures, like this one, how are the rich getting more benefit from NASA, or the launching of an environmental satellite, than the rest of us?

They own the companies the build the satellites, launch vehicles, the parts that go into either, the ground station equipment, the dish antennas and provide the fuels for the launch vehicle. And on top of it, they own the large corporate farms and logging/paper companies that stand to benefit most from the information provided by these satellites. It would be hard to come up with any specific benefit the poor get apart from potentially more stable food prices.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[theaveng]

>>>right wing thinks poverty is a character flaw...places the needs of the wealthy above all else.

Wrong. According to various studies over the years, Republican voters (aka conservatives) give 5 times more money per year to non-church charities then Democrat voters (aka liberals).

And at the Government level, the Democrat representatives often give nothing at all (example: Al Gore, Hillary Clinton) while their Republican colleagues give thousands each year.

Please don't shoot the messenger.
I'm just telling you the statistics.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[theaveng]

AC writes:
>>>We already put that money into the economy by building the rocket and satellite. This isn't an monetary loss at all.

By that logic, installing new windows in a home and then smashing them, is a productive activity.
No.
It's a LOSS. Money thrown away.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[publiclurker]

Funny how you conveniently omit how much of the money they earn. Unfortunately for you the rest of us know it's way more than the percentage they pay in taxes. that's probably why you are an anon coward. You want to whore for you masters but not enough to expose yourself to ridicule.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

So raising their taxes by another 2% will solve all the problems.

Government would just spend more. If you fail to tackle the spending, then any increase in tax revenue will be met with an increase in spending.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[dryeo]

And how much of that money would make it to Liberia? Generally the way charities work is that 90% of the donations are used to pay for the charity and advertising.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[mbkennel]

"First, in effective tax rates Warren Buffet certainly does NOT pay a smaller percentage of Federal Income taxes than his secretary. "

Ah yes, the convenient self-serving restriction to "Federal Income taxes"; favorite of deceptive propagandists.

Buffet isn't dishonest.

Add in FICA + Medicare --- both parts, the part which you see deducted from your paycheck and the part which you don't see deducted, state and local taxes, and Buffet is right.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Lumpy]

He really does not know what he is talking about.... but I do.

I'll post the info for him...

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

the inequality is so huge that it's utterly disgusting when I hear even 1 of them whine about taxes. we can DOUBLE their taxes and they will not notice.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

But this is slashdot, we don't need to use 14th century weaponry. Grab your bat'leth and your 9 LED head lamp and let's go!

My jian is normally used for practice, but it would hold a very very sharp edge.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[bjk002]

Statistics will tell you whatever you want them to. I should know, its what I do. How about considering within your statistics the average income of each group? That might paint things in a new light as to the reasons why such a situation might occur, if its even true as I do not recall seeing such studies and you've provided no substantive links.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[bjk002]

Thanks. I was going to argue this point until I saw your post.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[im_thatoneguy]

Yes. Great plan. So good even the Greeks thought it was unfair and immoral.

Because as we all know giving up one of your 10 houses is roughly equivalent to not eating anything for 5 days a month if you can't afford groceries on 90% of your income.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

Wrong. According to various studies over the years, Republican voters (aka conservatives) give 5 times more money per year to non-church charities then Democrat voters (aka liberals).

Citation needed. Every study I've seen doesn't compare to total income of the donors (one republican (i.e. Bill Gates) can throw off the statistic), nor do they break out religious vs non-religious charities, nor do they distinguish charities by purpose. Besides, if Republicans were really concerned about poverty they would realize that charity work has failed to eliminate poverty and would support government efforts paid for with tax money.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[im_thatoneguy]

Well not really. It was undoubtedly insured. So some money was lost but not half a billion in this incident since the successful launches helped cover this failure.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

According to various studies over the years, Republican voters (aka conservatives) give 5 times more money per year to non-church charities then Democrat voters (aka liberals).

Every single one of those studies used charitable deductions on income tax returns as their raw data. There's another one that has the same results that is often trumpted by right-wing trolls that uses self-reporting for data.

I don't know about you, but I believe if you try to recover your donation via deductions against taxable income, it's not really charitable.

Now, NORC here in my home town did a study breaking down donations by income ranges and political affiliation. That told a much different story. It seems that among people making less than $50k/yr, Democrats give much more than their counterparts in the Republican Brotherhood. From $50k to $150k they are about equal. You only start to see the GOP-affiliated giving more after $500k (and again, the data comes from charitable tax deductions.

My guess is that the "charities" that a lot of the >$500k Republicans are giving to are opera companies, museums, foundations, and other things where you get a great deal of public recognition. Maybe donations to fundraisers by other members of their country club set. Gotta keep up appearances after all. I bet Mrs David Koch likes to see her name on the big plaque that you see over the door at the museum. Maybe giving helps her sleep, knowing that her husband is fucking over all the little people who live outside her gated community.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

Rich people don't benefit more from police work just because they have more stuff to protect.

Sure they do. They use the courts more, they use infrastructure more, they benefit from increased access. They get more benefit from the Dept of Education because they hire people who have learned to read and write. They benefit from the Dept of Agriculture because thanks to the food stamp program there are not starving people overrunning their property and killing and eating their thoroughbred horses.

Remember, there isn't anyone in the United States who has gained wealth on the basis of their hard work and ingenuity alone. Not one. Their use of "the commons" and their benefit from "the commons" goes up along with their wealth.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PyroMosh]

Actually both statements are correct.

Putting windows in and smashing them *is* economically productive. It's a loss to you, but it stimulates the economy.

In the case of this launch, it's also both. It's a loss, because we won't have the primary benefit of the satellite, which is the data it would provide. But it's also stimulative, because much of the money that would have been spent on the project was already spent in building the thing and attempting to launch.

It's a loss but the bright side is that that loss had some economic benefit to the overall economy. Clearly it would have been better had it succeeded though.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Shotgun]

You obviously mean that his indoctrination is lacking.

The poor most definitely derive the most benefit from a stable society. The rich can still hole up in their castles. It is always the poor that are raped and pillaged by the rampaging barbarians.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[anyGould]

Well, that's a problem with minimum wage then, isn't it? (Which, taken literally, should mean "minimum wage required to live").

Not to mention I did point out that some deductions should be allowed - just only for the folks you describe (which wouldn't be a major hit to the budget anyway, since they're by definition the lowest taxed in raw dollars), not for the billionaires.

Aside: 10% of a month is 3 days, not 5.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[cowboy76Spain]

Truly

Plus I'll amaze the chicks with my spork.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[i_b_don]

The rich are richer now than ever before in our history since right before the great depression. The super rich have a jaw dropping staggering portion of our society's wealth. The rich have gotten where they are sometimes through hard work, sometimes through luck, sometimes through inheritance. If you look at the numbers the top 1% have barely been hurt by this recession while the rest of us have taken a cold shower, but now when it comes time to pay for the lost revenue they're coming after the middle class and poor. Fuck that.

To somehow claim that the super rich have been 100,000 more productive than some blue collar worker is stupid. They've gotten where they are by utilizing the United States and everything that brings with it. From roads to education to educated workers, etc. They didn't get there in a vacuum. Many of them have the right to make more than the rest of us because of chances they took, the ideas they had, or the luck they found themselves blessed with. I'm not saying they should make the same amount of money as a laborer, what I am saying is that the difference shouldn't be as high as it is. That much money should not be concentrated in the hands of so few. We are not a banana republic.

Wealth itself is not the problem, massive uneven distribution of wealth is. The class warfare has been going on a long time and the poor and middle class have been getting their asses kicked.

BTW, if you're threatening that the super-rich may up and leave us, then great, let them go. I don't think we'd miss them in any negative way. They are not that special and they can be easily replaced.

d

Re:$4 for every US Household

[cowboy76Spain]

Better yet, because it is a sales tax. So you last line should be something like that (I corrected the days in month too):

Because as we all know buying each year 9 cars instead of 10 is roughly equivalent to not eating anything for 3 days a month if you can't afford groceries on 90% of your income.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[DigiShaman]

Look, no system is ideal or perfect. But as long as everyone's lives are improving regardless of acceleration rate based on wealth, that should be the most important. Unfortunately, people being people like to constantly compare what they have with others. I can guarantee you that the poorest in Africa would be abso-fucking-lutely rich living among America's "poor". It's all relative in the eyes of each individual.

I don't know how to solve this problem of disproportional income and whatnot. Part of it is simply supply and demand while another is blind luck and gaming the system. But I do know that we should be careful about throwing out the baby with the bath water. If we as individuals are fueled with so much hate and rage, we could ALL lose everything. And by that time, it's too late to regret what we've already done. And that's my point.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

They might use civil courts more (I didn't see a reference there), but not criminal courts. Infrastructure should be supported by user fees, then using more infrastructure wouldn't matter. For infrastructures like roads this is already partly true due to things like gas taxes. Besides, you're just making grand, blanket statements. Not all of these apply to all rich people, and certainly not in any proportion to their wealth or income level. You're just making up anecdotes to justify taking orders of magnitude more money from them.

I knew someone would play that Department of Education card. So.... they get *more* benefit than the people who got educated? Really? They owe us a ton of money because without a Federal Department of Education they wouldn't have been able to find enough literate workers? REALLY!!?? You do know that department was only started in the 1970's, right? Although you're correct about the food stamp thing. Prior to the 1960's, stampedes of starving poor people were a huge problem for the wealthy, and of course for their horses.

Benefit from the commons does not increase with wealth in any way that creates an obligation. If I borrow $1 from you and turn it into $500k, I don't owe you more interest simply because I "benefited" greatly from your loan. Your loan was not responsible for any benefit, only for opportunity. It produced the same opportunity regardless of whether I had lost it, made $10, or made the $500k I managed to. That's why borrowing dollars has a very stable, market-driven cost. If there are any commons for which is not handled properly, such as transportation infrastructure divorced from user fees, then the just course of action is to move to user fees, not to slap a massive and arbitrary tax on a an entire class of people. That doesn't true anything up, it only whacks it further out of alignment with any discernible principle of property rights.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't missing that, but you are, because you don't know how much payroll taxes are. They are 15.3%. You just don't see half of it because your company is forced to pay it for you. If you were self-employed - that is, if you were capable of earning an income without riding on the back of the accomplishments of a rich person - you would know exactly how much that tax costs because you would pay it all yourself in the SE tax.

But to your attempted point: these taxes are one of the few that remain tied in any way, even theoretically, to the benefit the payer may actually derive from them. The Social Security tax cuts off at around $110k because the benefits, which are poor and limited, could never possibly approach a reasonable return on investment for the payer if they continued to apply. In other words, this is one program that is actually tied to *gasp* contributions. Why do you think Warren Buffet should be paying for the retirements of 8,000 random people in order to be pulling his weight? He already paid for his own SS benefits just most others his age, and yet doesn't need them. He somehow owes your grandmother a retirement, too?

Taxing the poor in excess of their annual income would not be unfair only because the vast majority of taxation is unfair, period. Not because it was in excess of their income. It's not unfair for a car to cost $15k, even if I only make $10k. What would be unfair is forcing me to buy it, and to go into debt for the $5k I don't have. Or forcing someone else to buy it for me, when it was an inefficient and unnecessary purchase in my position. What would certainly happen if we were all forced to pay an equal share of the government's budget is that everyone would immediately decide they didn't need 80% of it so much, after all. Because that's what happens in the real world when you can't afford something, and aren't allowed to steal it.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Grishnakh]

I'm not saying they should make the same amount of money as a laborer, what I am saying is that the difference shouldn't be as high as it is. That much money should not be concentrated in the hands of so few. We are not a banana republic.

Wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=2&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

We have a more unequal distribution of wealth than any other banana republic before us, including Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana. We are officially a Banana Republic. The only thing missing is the bananas.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

Those programs are supposed to fund retirement benefits for the worker. So they are tied to - wait for it... - the benefits. Imagine that. A tax tied to a benefit. And of course it's horribly done, and the Social Security system still represents a significant redistribution of wealth, yet apparently not enough of one for you. You apparently resent any association between taxation and benefit, and want Warren's capital gains to be subject to a tax designed to get workers to fund a reasonable retirement plan for themselves, despite the fact that Warren isn't a worker as far as that income is concerned, and doesn't need a government retirement plan in the first place.

Besides, this post is about NASA funding, which comes from the Federal budget and is funded by personal and corporate income tax. (Oh, yeah, lest we forget, Buffet is subject to double taxation since the bulk of his earnings are in corporations, so 15% is hardly all that he is paying.) So this discussion is about Federal Income taxes. (And once again, lest we forget, Social Security funds do sometimes pay for NASA because the government breaks its piggy bank every year to see if there's anything in it. I trust you won't hold that against my argument as well?)

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Grishnakh]

Look, no system is ideal or perfect. But as long as everyone's lives are improving regardless of acceleration rate based on wealth, that should be the most important.

That sounds great, but the problem is that the living standards of average Americans are going down, not up. Real wages are way, way down since the 1950s, after you adjust for inflation, and as a consequence, people have to work much harder for less reward. Sure, some things seem better: we have nicer houses (except all the people who've lost theirs), fancy flat-screen TVs, computers, etc. But there's two things that caused those: 1) greatly improved technology, and 2) much more work. Back in the 1950s, a family of four could easily be supported by one man working if he had a decent job. Now, having two earners is basically a requirement, because real wages have fallen so much that a single salary or paycheck isn't enough to get a decent home outside the ghetto. On top of that, jobs are so unstable these days that a family can't count on the main earner's job being there, as workers are laid off left and right whenever the corporate executives decide they can outsource something to China and collect a $20 million bonus.

So no, everyone's lives are not improving at all, and "trickle down" economics are a sham.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Kagura]

How do you know your work is being followed through with? I'm just curious how it works.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

So.... they get *more* benefit than the people who got educated?

Absolutely. The growing disparity in wealth is proof of that.

This is really quite simple stuff. Your argument that the wealthy don't get a disproportionate share of the benefit never really gets past the perseveration stage. And "user fees"? Tell me, which do you think costs more, your average corporate lawsuit or the average criminal case? Next you'll argue that the wealthy don't really have more money than the poor.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

"The growing disparity in wealth is proof of that."

Ah. I will now stop arguing, as I cannot hope to defeat a tautological argument.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't work. The 1% will just pay some of the 99% to protect them. As long as the initiation of force is deemed moral, the rich will be ready to turn it back on us should it threaten to come their way.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Obfiscator]

Well, I'd like to suggest another charity, then.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate

As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I can tell you that the process is pretty upfront. A volunteer talks with community members to figure out how much money will be needed (and what the community will contribute...the community has to provide as least 25%, in order to give more incentive to maintenance after the volunteer has left). Once that much money is raised (usually from friends and family, although I still donate to random projects in the country I was posted in), the volunteer goes to the capital, collects the money, then heads back to the village to start construction. No money is used for salaries of the organization: the volunteers are already there and supported by taxpayer money. So, donations go straight to the project with no overhead. The only exception is if the volunteer leaves the country before the project is completed. If another volunteer doesn't take it over, the donated money goes into the general country fund.

No organization is perfect, but in my experience these projects are pretty good. I've seen wells dug, schools built, and even a bridge, on top of a lot of educational programs.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

To somehow claim that the super rich have been 100,000 more productive than some blue collar worker is stupid.

I don't see the issue. There are two things to note here. First, the super-rich generally don't earn 100,000 times more than a full time blue collar worker. That would mean several billion dollars earned in a year. Usually that kind of windfall is due to many years of work falling into place, not a one year surge of work. I would consider 10,000 times a blue collar worker's salary to be more accurate.

Second, when you grow businesses worth tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in a few decades, you indeed can have 10,000 times or more the productivity of a blue collar worker for a few of those years.

BTW, if you're threatening that the super-rich may up and leave us, then great, let them go. I don't think we'd miss them in any negative way. They are not that special and they can be easily replaced.

Speaking of stupid, you might not miss anything, but the rest of us would miss the jobs and the great goods and services that businesses which would have been created by current and future super-rich would have provided.

And speaking of stupid again, but it's easy to become super-rich by catering to the idiocy of ideas like the ones you mention above. A government with the power to redistribute wealth fairly has the power to redistribute wealth to its cronies.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[toddestan]

A torch? What, you don't have a flashlight?

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Morty]

For the same reason a sales tax is percentage-based - it keeps the tax relative to the value. And it dates back to the classic church tithe (as in "give the church a tenth of what you make").

I would be thrilled to see a proper flat percentage, with the barest minimum of deductions for the poorest.

Tithing is older than the Church, which inherited it from Judaism. And funny thing -- the Jews had quite a few different required donations, not just the first tithe. Some of these include the first tithe, the second tithe, the tithe for the poor, the t'rumah, the t'rumah of the tithe, and the temple tax. The various tithes were indeed each a flat percentage. But the temple tax/census was a fixed *amount* (one half shekel, with a specific biblical requirement that the rich not pay more and the poor not pay less, since the tax was also used as a census). Meanwhile, the t'rumah does not have a biblical percentage but under rabbinical judaism, the rich paid a higher percentage than the poor. In other words, the Jews had three rates for religious taxes: flat rate, progressive, and fixed amount.

And another thing -- most of the above (except the temple tax/census) were only defined for *produce*. In other words, they were only paid by landowners. If you were a poor laborer who owned no land, or a middle-class blacksmith, the tithes were not applicable -- except the half-shekel temple tax. Only farmers had to give tithes. In the ancient world, as in America until not too long ago, wealth was associated with farm ownership. So tithing targeted the rich more than the poor or middle-class.

[NB: what with the separation of church and state, I don't think the above should be relevant. But the parent poster seems to argue for flat-rate taxes based on religious arguments. I don't think religious arguments should be relevant, but as per the above, I think the religious argument actually supports progressive taxes.]

Re:$4 for every US Household

[anyGould]

[NB: what with the separation of church and state, I don't think the above should be relevant. But the parent poster seems to argue for flat-rate taxes based on religious arguments. I don't think religious arguments should be relevant, but as per the above, I think the religious argument actually supports progressive taxes.]

Didn't intend it to be "God says we should pay flat tax", although I can see it read that way. Was just grabbing the one historical example I could think of.

I have no objection to the theory of progressive taxes, but it seems in practice the progression goes the wrong way once all the loopholes are taken into consideration. A flat tax would be harder to duck, in my opinion. (Although I have faith that the rich will still find a way.)

Re:$4 for every US Household

[operagost]

And downmods are for me for chastising the leftist Slashdot elite.

Time for a launch loop

[Menkhaf]

Enough with malfunctioning rockets.

How many payloads have gone to waste because of rocket failures, and at what cost? Enough to explore the idea of a sort of launch loop?

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Overunderrated]

Enough to explore the idea of a sort of launch loop?

No.

Sincerely, Engineers.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[AikonMGB]

Nope.

Don't get me wrong, I would love easy access to space, but there are enormous up-front costs to constructing a mega launch service, like a launch loop or an elevator, not to mention significant technical risks, very few of which are in the process of being retired.

Rockets are a tried, tested, and true method of getting to space. They have put up many times the value of spacecraft as they have lost, not to mention a growing number of human payloads. They are also getting cheaper, with public ventures like SpaceX. I think it's going to be a good long while before you see someone investing heavily in alternative launch methods.

Aikon-

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Sockatume]

I think we're a long way from any 2000km-long megastructure being a viable solution to the problem. There's a lot of good ground between rockets and sci-fi megatech that should be explored first.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[strack]

you think the launch loop is a good idea because you have no idea just how chaotic a system a cable, being accelerated through a curve at some very high mach number, is. and the most minor of wobbles is enough to crash it into the sheathing and kaboom. not to mention sending something along it, that is magnetically suspended close to it. and the wear from flexing at those speeds, and the heating, and having a flexible tube in which it can be magnetically suspended in as it passes through it. a tube that must also maintain a vacuum. and a myriad of other near impossible obstacles.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[OzPeter]

Enough to explore the idea of a sort of launch loop?

I'm curious to know where you are going to put this thing. Its not a case of NIMBY, but NIMC (Not in My Continent)

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Charliemopps]

only because of naysayers like yourself. We are very close to having the tech to build a space elevator. A big project like that is just want the USA needs, and having the only cheap way to and from space would secure our super power status for the next 100 years or more. Our ability to seed space with cheap orbital solar arrays and solve our energy problems would be reason enough to do it. That's not even considering all the easy material wealth that could be mined from asteroids. Flying around and working in space is easy, it's the getting out of earths gravity well part that's the problem.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Calindae]

Rockets are a tried, tested, and true method of getting to space.

Treating cancer is also a tried, tested and true method of saving *some* people. Why not develope a cure and save them all? Why not develop a more efficient gateway to space and save the $424 million next time?

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because of a malfunctioning bolt, now you propose that the same technology will work with a near-magical, impossible technology? You're insane, you're a Space Nutter, you're deluded.

Here, let me explain. I think it's time we build a Ringworld. Then you don't need satellites, you just put cameras on the opposite side of the Arch. Ta-dah!

Do you see the insanity, the cluelessness, the childish sci-fi derived wishful thinking?

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Well you engineers can't seem to get the process of nose cone separation right, let alone the rest of the rocket. How about let's not lose any more missions because a nose cone didn't come off. Redundant systems hello???? When the thing failed to come off, there should have been two more systems behind that ready to crack that nose cone off the rocket.

Or maybe engineers are just a bunch of monkeys jacking off after all.

Sincerely, REPUBLICANS who fucking hate smart people.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[dave420]

Very close? The longest carbon nanotube ever observed was only 18.5 cm long. I think LEO is a bit higher than that.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

Really? If you are right, then so is he. At 18.5 cm, you can start meshing the things...

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Yvanhoe]

Not to mention that the USA is one of the few big enough countries to have such a structure.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[heathen_01]

Why not develope a cure and save them all? Why not develop a more efficient gateway to space and save the $424 million next time?

enormous up-front costs ... significant technical risks

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Combatso]

Clearly they need you to tell them how its done. Sure, in your perfect world every system is redundant, the redundant bits have backups, the backups have an auxillary system and the auxillary system has a dwarf with his finger on the button. The real world can't do this, because some Republican who hates smart people moans about costs being too high.

Sincerly, Rational Thinker

Re:Time for a launch loop

[0123456]

The real world can't do this, because some Republican who hates smart people moans about costs being too high.

When was the last time that anyone else lost a satellite due to failure to separate the fairing, let alone two in a row? I remember the Agena docking target on one of the Gemini missions in the 60s and one other failure in the last few years (which may have been the other Taurus launch mentiohed).

As rocket science goes it really seems to be a solved problem that's been done successfully thousands of times before.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Anonymous Coward]

If you assholes manage to do it, someone else will do it too, within 10 years, not 100. USA is doomed. not a super power, just dicks.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Combatso]

$424 million wasn't lost. The only thing lost was a satelite. The money got spent building the rocket and satelite. People got paid, now they get paid again. Cry all you want about the tax payer, but the sad reality is, they would have taken your money anyways.

Atleast this way its slightly distributed, and the aerospace community learns something. Consider how much fuel is spent, per day, fighting two wars. How much it costs to build a fence acrosss the border (which is the same security they use to keep preteens from sneaking in to the county fair). How much it costs to keep travellers from taking a bottle of water on a plane.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Combatso]

and what happens when this $800 billion dollar project fails to get a satelite up? I'll take my chances on the $400 million... thanks... I don't know why you think flying around and working space is easy.. Real life isn't star trek. It's not easy or safe to mine materials on earth, let alone on a rock sailing along at 12,000 meters per second reletive to us.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Anonymous Coward]

If they can't manage to separate a fucking nose cone, how exactly do you expect them to manage a space elevator? Jesus christ you guys need to learn "KISS", and no I don't mean the band.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[MurphyZero]

That fully redundant system you designed costs $1 billion to launch a 10lb payload. There are several groups that could all be at fault here. CEO (makes decisions involving costs), Management (Choosing to cut corners, bad decisions), Engineers (bad design and/or bad procedures), Technicians (not following procedures), Manufacturing (crappy products)

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Combatso]

You make it sound like it was the same issue affecting both.. How do you know that? Sure the same result, nose cone didn't seperate. The question is WHY. Did launch vibration cause a failure of the electronics? Was there a defective part or parts? Was it the same root cause for both?

He is a car analogy.. I had a power steering failure, I was losing fluid which in turn was making my pump whine. I had a look, saw the rack seal was leaking, I replaced the rack, replaced the hydraulic fluid, and bled the system. Three weeks later, the leak and noise were back. This time it was a high pressure hose fitting that had snapped. Two seperate events, causing the same failure, but with two different root causes... It wouldn't make sense for me to re-invent the entire hydraulic system design every time I had a power steering failure... You identify the problem, correct it, add a preventative measure to keep it from recurring and try again.

If it is the same root problem I would agree that its a stupid mistake... but for all we know the first was because the fairing was damaged and jammed, and this time was because the bolts were defective...

Re:Time for a launch loop

[damnfuct]

Good point. If you had the materials/controls to make such a structure, I'm sure a whole bunch of other "cheap to orbit" ideas also become possible.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[0123456]

No, the question is how one company manage to have something fail twice in a row when other launchers seem to have been able to do it thousands of times with no major problems.

Weren't there some other problems before the launch too? I remember skimming through an article about problems with this launcher last night and thinking 'well, I wouldn't want my satellite on that one'.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[budgenator]

Dude seriously, Carbon nanotube are very conductive and they also tend to spontaneous combustion when flashed with a light, now imagine one reaching from the Earth's equator to LEO during hurricane season; it's not rocket science here.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Show me a process that allows you to mass produce carbon nano-tubes at 18.5 cm long in quantities large enough to start meshing them together for a space elevator cable.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

spontaneous combustion aside, conductive is a feature, not a bug...

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

I don't know. I don't follow the field, but not long ago, 1 cm was science fiction. So progress is made at an amazing rate.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[anyGould]

Not to rain on the parade, but from where I'm sitting, I don't see the US building one of these this generation. One, you don't have remotely the political will to fund it. (I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either). Two, you don't have the money to do it anymore. Three, before you can start building that sort of stuff, you'd need to rebuild your manned launch capability, and you may have noticed that's not going particularly quickly.

My money's on China being the one to make the next big technical leap forward - they have the money, and can muster the will. The EU is another possibility - they still have some sense of adventure for space, but I don't know if they can hack the expense.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[budgenator]

spontaneous combustion aside, conductive is a feature, not a bug...

Not when it get hit with a bolt of lightening I'm sure the 30,000 C generated in a lightening strike is enough to fry you carbon nanotubes.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[v1]

iirc, the beagle explorer to mars failed to jetteson a heat shield. And that specific problem has happened at least once more at mars when a probe did a flyby but didn't get the shield ejected and just took pictures of the inside of the cover.

Surprisingly common problem. You'd think they would have gotten a bit more focused on it by now?

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

Because we never make ships, planes, buildings out of conductive metals... You know, there are solutions, and no-one says the cable will not be isolated.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[AikonMGB]

Treating cancer is also a tried, tested and true method of saving *some* people. Why not develope a cure and save them all?

If there was a potential avenue for a cure, but there were a lot of issues left with it that you didn't know how to solve, and the cost of researching it was prohibitively expensive, would you stop all current cancer treatment to pay for it and let all of those people die in the pursuit of this potential payout sometime in the future?

People are working on the technologies that will enable mega launch systems, like room-temperature superconductors and carbon nanotubes, but we're just not at the point where it's a cost-effective or even manageable project. Someday we'll get there and we'll build it, but in the meantime, we're going to continue to use and advance the methods available to us today.

Why not develop a more efficient gateway to space and save the $424 million next time?

This money is not lost; a significant portion of that cost is the NRE that went into designing the thing in the first place. Presumably they have enough spare components (as any good aerospace corporation should) to build a duplicate spacecraft for a mere fraction of that. The cost of materials and workmanship that goes into a spacecraft like that is a pretty tiny portion of the overall system cost.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Calindae]

would you stop all current cancer treatment to pay for it and let all of those people die in the pursuit of this potential payout sometime in the future?

The OP asked "Enough to explore the idea of a sort of launch loop [wikimedia.org]?"
The OR (original replier) said "Nope"
I, in turn, was saying that the exploration, whether or not it's currently happening, is worthwhile. Did I say stop anything that currently works? No.
I understand you need to direct your hate at someone, but try to RTFR and understand what others are saying next time.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Muad'Dave]

I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either.

I think you'd see a Republican support space initiatives because of the possible military spinoffs long before a "We've got to solve all our problems here on Earth first" Democrat.

I believe that once we've diverted all our money into feel-good social initiatives and stop pushing forward the boundaries of science, we're doomed. We may already be doomed, in fact. We're pretty far along that road with all of the current 'entitlements' and 'Bread and Circuses' attitude of the average American Idol (idle, really) consumer.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Brett Buck]

No. And the problem here would still be present with any alternative technology. If you are launching from the ground you will definitely still need a payload fairing - and that's what failed to separate in this case (and quite a few other OSC launch attempts, as it turns out).

          A rocket, particularly a solid rocket, is a remarkably reliable and very inexpensive way to launch things.

         

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Anonymous Coward]

except that SpaceX is not a public venture. I know this as I would rather have held their stock this morning than ORB as I took a healthy bath on it when trading opened. Sadly SpaceX is not a publicly traded company.

Also, this was a repeat of a previous failure on a fairing that was previously deemed fixed -- I have lost a lot of confidence in ORB's QA abilities in a relatively new (ca. 25 years) industry which has a low tolerance for failure due to risks to massive capital investments in both vehicle and payload.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[khallow]

$424 million wasn't lost. The only thing lost was a satelite.

The value of something is what you pay for it.

Atleast this way its slightly distributed, and the aerospace community learns something. Consider how much fuel is spent, per day, fighting two wars. How much it costs to build a fence acrosss the border (which is the same security they use to keep preteens from sneaking in to the county fair). How much it costs to keep travellers from taking a bottle of water on a plane.

So... we shouldn't fix problems because we can always find bigger problems to not fix.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[anyGould]

I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either.

I think you'd see a Republican support space initiatives because of the possible military spinoffs long before a "We've got to solve all our problems here on Earth first" Democrat.

Contrarywise, I'd expect Republicans to cut the funding to reduce taxes before Democrats.

The one think I think we can both agree on is that neither party is likely to have a "we will be on the moon in ten years" moment.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[PyroMosh]

Not that I think a space elevator is likely any time soon, but you're assuming a single "you guys".

There are currently several companies in the LEO business in this country. They don't all have the same nose cone issue, one single rocked design of one company does. It's like saying the Japanese can't design a car because of the accelerator peddle nonsense from the past year that plagued Toyota. Free countries are not uniform.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets worse: if we *did* have the technology and materials to build such a thing, what the hell do we need space for? It's still empty and utterly hostile to all life, and we just proved we could do mega-engineering with "just" Earth resources.... I tell ya, the more you think about Space Nuttery, the less sense it makes.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[budgenator]

I've seen a video where a bunch of carbon nanotube is illuminated by a camera's flash and the nanotube burst into flames, the lightening would ignite the cable even if it was not hit simply by being illuminated. If the cable is isolated, I assume you mean what we yanks call insulated electrically it still wouldn't help because the cable will pickup static electricity from the wind until it arcs over to ground/earth and still ignites.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

A single particle of aluminium will spontaneously ignite. However it is rare for a slab to do so. This is because the surface is very large compared to the volume (in the particle case), and therefore the interactions with it can be very energetic compared to the volume considered, and cause combustion.

I suspect it is the same thing with a nanotube. A single strand might ignite, but a cable not.

And yes, I meant insulated.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the aluminum spontaneously grows a film of oxide to protect itself. This is common knowledge among grade-schoolers and up. Stick to software, bub, you're out of your depth. You can't just apt-get new properties onto materials. And no, reading a bunch of sci-fi is NOT the same as a materials science or engineering course! Christ you deluded sci-fi fanbois are tiresome with your completely unrealistic and deluded notions about our technology.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I think you misunderstand. I'm not a Republican. I'm just the messenger. I'm just relaying to you what Republicans think. If I were to tell rocket engineers how it's done, I'd tell them to be engineers and fix the problem using their brains.

But Republicans would take one good look at the engineering degree on the wall, declare that it's a bunch of shit and their high school dropout sister could do way better because she's got common sense, and she goes to church. Their sister could crack a nosecone off a trailer hitch. That's why the message was signed as coming from a Republican. They're fucking morons.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I didn't design it. Republicans did, using their common sense and a Glenn Beck instruction manual.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Grishnakh]

You don't need nanotubes thousands of miles long to build a space elevator. You just need to make a composite ribbon, which is composed of nanotubes a few centimeters long at most, to get the required tensile strength. The challenge isn't in making super-long nanotubes, it's in making moderate-length nanotubes in giant quantities so you can manufacture ribbons thousands of miles long with it. We have the materials technology already to make space elevators; we just don't have the manufacturing technology to produce it in sufficient quantity and at an economical cost.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Grishnakh]

Exactly right. I just wish the other countries would work more seriously on these problems. I read a while back that Japan was considering building a space elevator; they should really work harder on that.

As for the USA, we can talk about doing these super-hard projects, like we did with the Moon landing 50 years ago. However, unlike back then, these days it's all talk, and no action. We no longer have the ability to carry out large projects like that, because 1) we don't have the political will (we only barely managed to do it back then); as soon as the next election comes along and someone new is elected, the project will be sacked. 2) We don't have the technical talent; Americans don't go to school for engineering any more in sufficient quantities to do these things. And 90% of the Americans who do, are in computer-related fields, not aerospace. Computer engineers aren't all that useful for giant projects involving materials, metallurgy, mechanical processes, manufacturing, etc.

Any giant new advances that come out are probably going to come from Japan or China, as those are the countries where they have cultures that value long-term thinking over short-term profits.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Grishnakh]

Republicans aren't going to cut taxes, at least not overall. They'll happily cut taxes for super-rich people, but that's it. Democrats, of course, want to raise taxes, but again for everyone, not just the rich.

Neither party would want to fund anything like this anyway. The Republicans want a bigger budget so they can have more wars, and larger corporate handouts to oil companies. The Democrats want a bigger budget so they can continue funding everything the Republicans put into place before them (you don't see them cutting the wars, do you?), but also add lots of social programs that are easily cheated, so tons of people can get Disability checks for having "a bad back" even though they have a side job (off the books) of moving heavy furniture.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Grishnakh]

I propose Central Asia. It's huge, there's not that much population there, and it's mostly a big ugly desert.

Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[lxs]

I bet Big Oil is behind this.

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

This being idiot liberal anti everything Slashdot, I think your serious.

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's up with his serious?

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Big Oil's angle might be to welcome the launch of satellites that can reveal better information about the climate.
The real people who won't want these launched would be the established climatologists.
Maybe I'm being sarcastic, and maybe I'm not. ;-)

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[G-Man]

Get with the times - everything these days is the fault of the Koch brothers. The KOOooOOooOOCH Brothers!

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[gatkinso]

Charlie Sheen's global warming aliens are behind it... or maybe it is just Charlie Sheen....

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you masturbate, Charlie Sheen snorts another line of coke.

Actually, that explains a lot.

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

WINNING!

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

Koch Industries is pretty solidly linked to Big Oil.

Koch companies are involved in core industries such as the manufacturing, refining and distribution[1] of petroleum, chemicals, energy, fiber, intermediates and polymers, minerals, fertilizers, pulp and paper, chemical technology equipment, ranching,[2] finance, commodities trading, as well as other ventures and investments.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries

Fix to overcome problem next time...

[Anonymous Coward]

IANARS

Just make the fairing lighter and stick a bit more fuel in the rocket, problem getting to orbit solved! As for getting the satellite out, perhaps they could stick a baby chick in who can peck their way through the shell?

(Absolutely no idea why NASA didn't hire me, what with all my lack of qualifications and everything. I have loads of useful ideas ;)

Re:Fix to overcome problem next time...

[ciderbrew]

(Absolutely no idea why NASA didn't hire me, what with all my lack of qualifications and everything. I have loads of useful ideas ;)

Don't put yourself down Senator.

Re:Fix to overcome problem next time...

[Combatso]

I think you are on to something, it worked for Mork

better get walmart to make you a new one

[Anonymous Coward]

Made in china that is

Re:better get walmart to make you a new one

[ciderbrew]

Best thing is they'll make your design and around the back they'll knock about 10 more rip off versions for a tenth of the price for the home market.

seriously wtf?

[strack]

second nosecone failure in a row... man. im no rocket scientist, but im pretty sure thats like, what, a few explosive bolts, something that detects main engine cutoff, with a timer backup? its not like its the fucking guidance system.

Re:seriously wtf?

[EraserMouseMan]

Yea, the whole batch of self-sealing stem bolts is probably bad.

Re:seriously wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody makes jokes about the whole rocket being outsourced to China for the next go-around, but honestly where do the explosive bolts or the explosive inside the bolts come from? I could see somebody being cheap on the part inventory somewhere that could cause a nice chain of events. One would think the nose-cone separation would be the easiest part after considering all involved in getting the thing up there.

As far as we know, they could have a stupid wire popping out from vibration or have something be icing up from moisture getting inside and the drop in pressure on the way up or something stupid like that. Needs more testing to make sure the system works before the next launch. Consistency is one thing, but having it by failing isn't good.

Re:seriously wtf?

[tangelogee]

Yea, the whole batch of self-sealing stem bolts is probably bad.

Quark!

Re:seriously wtf?

[nido]

Yea, the whole batch of self-sealing stem bolts is probably bad.

but honestly where do the explosive bolts or the explosive inside the bolts come from?

"self-sealing stem bolts" is a Star Trek reference, I think. http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Self-sealing_stem_bolt

It fell into the Glory Hole.

[Anonymous Coward]

That hole will swallow anything.

Not a complete loss

[jeffmeden]

The launch failures of these satellites do confirm one important piece of data for us: We now have two massive rockets worth of greenhouse gasses swirling around in the atmosphere than we did not before. This is an important data point, I think.

Re:Not a complete loss

[natehoy]

I was thinking roughly the same thing. "Satellite orbited to study the environment fucks up (in a very small way) same environment, and cannot do the study it was launched to perform. Twice."

Third time's the charm?

Seriously, though, the term "this isn't rocket science" exists for a reason. Because this stuff IS rocket science. Monumentally complicated machines trying to perform monumentally complex tasks, built to a budget by several of the lowest bidders all trying to work together.

What's worse? Wasting money failing to try to do something good, or succeeding at doing something bad?

Re:Not a complete loss

[Sockatume]

That's an interesting thought, actually. I found this blog post on the impact of Shuttle launches, at least. Turns out that you wouldn't want to be in the wake of one for reasons other than the obvious uncomfortable warmth and gustiness. In the grand scheme it's not a whole lot of pollution of course.

Re:Not a complete loss

[butalearner]

I was thinking roughly the same thing. "Satellite orbited to study the environment fucks up (in a very small way) same environment, and cannot do the study it was launched to perform. Twice."

Third time's the charm?

Funny you should mention that: NASA is already paying Orbital to build and launch OCO-2 in February 2013.

On a Taurus XL rocket.

Re:Not a complete loss

[natehoy]

They should have learned the lesson from Ford. Anything named "Taurus" should be avoided.

Re:Not a complete loss

[bware]

Because otherwise they'd have to completely redesign OCO-2 to fit in another fairing, and it wouldn't launch in 2013 and it wouldn't be cheap. OCO-2 is basically OCO with minor changes, to keep the cost down and the launch in the near future. There's no way it would be launching in two years if it was a complete redesign for another launch vehicle.

FWIW, I've heard that Orbital did a redesign of the fairing after the last failure. They thought they had found the fault and fixed it, and had apparently gone through the reviews and convinced all their customers that they had fixed it. Guess not.

Conspiracy theories abound. I've heard Republicans and aliens. Neither want any independent observations of their terraforming of the planet.

So who is Liable?

[.tekrox]

T-Minus 10 Seconds until OSC bankruptcy

Re:So who is Liable?

[Anonymous Coward]

T-Minus 10 Seconds until OSC bankruptcy

The Tax payers of the USA. Orbital Science has now blown up $700 million in NASA gear on TWO failed Taurus flights, and that does not include the cost of the flight! NASA was paid 50% for the first failed Taurus, no news yet if second flight was insured, I'm sure the cost went up for the insurance after the first flight!

babys; intentions corrected for 'errors'

[Anonymous Coward]

they're 'sleeping' through 'lost in space' right now?

there was not a lot of commiseration about this, as some of the bips are EXTREMELY sensitive at this time, & want to get it 'right'. they really want to help us/themselves, & they're willing to sit/tumble/giggle in large groups with us to prove that. so spelling & grammar challenges, although important, should not be used as a reason to fail to communicate, &/or 'grownups' made the errors. most tiny babys can't even read yet anyway, but they know/feel stuff, & they're paying close attention to what we're doing, & not doing.

our (?corrected?) intentions for US/you;

1. DEWEAPONIZATION (not a real word, but they like it) almost nothing else good happens until some progress here, 'they' say.

2. ALL BABYS CREATED/TO BE TREATED, EQUALLY. (a rough interpretation (probably cost us. seems like a no-brainer but they expressed that we fail on that one too(:)->) 'we do not need any 300$ 'strollers', or even to ride in your smelly cars/planes etc..., until such time as ALL of the creators' innocents have at least food, shelter, & some loving folks nearby.' again, this is a deal breaker, so pay attention.

3. THOU SHALT NOT VACCINATE IRRESPONSIBLY. this appears to be a stop-gap intention.

the genuine feelings expressed included; in addition to the lack of acknowledgment of the advances/evolution of our tiny bodies/dna (including consciousness & intellect), almost nobody knows anymore what's in those things (vaccines) (or they'd tell us), & there's rumor much of it is less than good (possibly fatal) for ANY of us. if it were good for us we'd be gravitating towards it, instead of it being shoved in our little veins, wrecking them, & adversely affecting our improving immune systems/dna/development? at rite-aid, they give the mommies 100$ if they let them stick their babys with whoknowswhat? i can see why they're (the little ones) extremely suspicious? many, oddly? have fading inclinations to want to be reporters of nefarious life threatening processes, ie. 'conspiracies', as they sincerely believe that's 'stuff that REALLY matters', but they KNOW that things are going to be out in the open soon, so they intend to put their ever increasing consciousness, intellect, acute/astute senses & information gathering abilities, to the care & feeding of their fellow humans. no secrets to cover up with that goal.

4. AN END TO MANUFACTURED 'WEATHER'.

sortie like a no-(aerosol tankers)-fly zone being imposed over the whole planet. the thinking is, the planet will continue to repair itself, even if we stop pretending that it's ok/northing's happening. after the weather manipulation is stopped (& it will be) it could get extremely warm/cold/blustery some days. many of us will be moving inland..., but we'll (most of us anyway) be ok, so long as we keep our heads up. conversely, the manufactured 'weather' puts us in a state of 'theater' that allows US to think that we needn't modify our megaslothian heritage of excessiveness/disregard for ourselves, others, what's left of our environment etc...? all research indicates that spraying chemicals in the sky is 100% detrimental to our/planet's well being (or they'd talk to US about it?). as for weather 'extremes', we certainly appear to be in a bleeding rash of same, as well as that all that bogus seismic activity. throws our advanced tiny baby magnets & chromosomes into crisis/escape mode, so that's working? we're a group whose senses are more available to us (like monkeys?) partly because we're not yet totally distracted by the foibles of man'kind'. the other 'part' is truly amazing. we saw nuclear war being touted on PBS as an environmental repair (?depopulation? (makes the babys' 'accountants' see dark red)) tool? yikes. so what gives? thanks for your patience & understanding while we learn to express our intentions. everybody has some. let us know. come to some of our million baby play-dates. no big hurry? catch your breath. we'll wait a bit more. thanks.

do the math. check out YOUR dna/intention potential. thanks again.

NASA COTS contract

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the COTS contract will have any changes because of this? The Taurus is the same rocket NASA has paid to send cargo to the space station. The good thing about that I guess is it wont need a fairing.....

Re:NASA COTS contract

[Annorax]

They could also just ditch Orbital and go with SpaceX for all of COTS.

Strange that no one else has picked-up on the fact that there is more than one player in this game.

Re:NASA COTS contract

[0123456]

They could also just ditch Orbital and go with SpaceX for all of COTS.

To be fair, you'd have to be quite brave to put an expensive satellite on top of a Falcon with so few launches so far.

Re:NASA COTS contract

[budgenator]

To be fair, you'd have to be quite brave to put an expensive satellite on top of a Falcon with so few launches so far.

To be fair, you'd have to be quite brave to put an expensive satellite on top of any launch vehicle, a Falcon with so few successful launches so far or the Taurus with two failures in a row.
There fixed it for you.

Re:NASA COTS contract

[butalearner]

They could also just ditch Orbital and go with SpaceX for all of COTS.

To be fair, you'd have to be quite brave to put an expensive satellite on top of a Falcon with so few launches so far.

It's also important to note that Taurus is the rocket with two failures in a row (three of the last four failed, even). Taurus II, a new medium-lift rocket that Orbital has developed with a liquid fuel first stage, is going to be used for COTS. If they were smart they'd rename Taurus II right about now and move away from that name. Their other products are far more successful.

Re:NASA COTS contract

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely different vehicle, despite the same name. The COTS thingy is a Taurus II - a liquid fueled rocket. This one is the Taurus (XL size) made mostly of solid fuel parts.

It may still have a fairing to protect the actual space vehicle - it's done for many capsule type spacecraft.

Some Glory details

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a huge loss. The satellite contained two instruments.
The first measured solar irradiation. If you expect to understand global warming, then you have to know exactly what came in. Glory had approximately triple the accuracy and triple the precision of prior instruments. There are about 30 years of data here which was to be extended. The problem is that the changes being measured are small, and that the instruments are without calibration for years on end. So the issues being measured are the difference of very small numbers. Without glory, we will continue not to have data as credible as we need.
The other instrument measured aerosols - small particles which remain in the air because they are too light to fall. Water vapor condenses on them, and plays a big role in heat retention. But there are many non-constant natural sources of such particles, as well as artificial ones. Glory measured two things: size (it could tell the difference between a 1 micron and 1.2 micron particle), and reflectivity. The latter used optical mechanisms with more than 200 components. The two measurements meant that it would be possible to distinguish better what the aerosols are, and what proportion are man-made.
Now, alas, we are back to argument without essential data we need to decide on the basis of science rather than ideology.

Nose cone failure?

[Falkentyne]

Is this spy-speak for russian attack sattelite?

Like what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, I'm seriously curious.

What is the middle ground between rockets and sci-fi megatech?

1. Rockets
2. ...?
3. Launch-loops / space elevators / etc.

Re:Like what?

[rossdee]

You left out the 'profit' step. Without that, nothing will get done.

Re:Like what?

[Sockatume]

I was thinking something along the lines of launching to LEO from the back of hypervelocity suborbital cargo aircraft, like that X-Prize competitor but on a bigger scale. We're still talking old-fashioned chemical propulsion, of course, and there will have to be a chemical->physical switchover in launch systems eventually.

Re:Like what?

[Thud457]

'bout time for mr "space nutters" to pop up in this thread and berate us for wanting to better our opportunities.

Re:Like what?

[khallow]

While rossdee has the right one word answer "profit", let's consider how the technology could play out.

1) Expendable vehicles. Use once and throw away. Best choice when you only launch a few times a year. Minimal infrastructure.

2) Reusuable vehicles. These range from simple reuse of parts of an expendable rocket (for example, SpaceX wants to recover the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket) to wholly reusable designs like air-breathing space planes with scramjets. Due to their design, they tend to be a lot more reliable than expendable vehicles.

The big problem is that reusable vehicles require a lot more infrastructure as well as vehicles that can be reflown. Hence, they need a higher launch rate than expendable vehicles in order to be competitive. I've heard claims that 50 flights a year is the minimum for a good reusable vehicle.

If you can get really high launch rates (like thousands per year or higher), then you can drive down the cost of reusable vehicles to where fuel is the key lower bound. For example, in the airline industry, the fuel cost of a flight tends to be about a third the ticket price of a cheap ticket. In a similar RLV situation, that would correspond to a cost of $100 per kg (for kerosene/LOX) to $300 per kg (for liquid H2/LOX).

3) Assisted launch. when one is dealing with low ISP vehicles, you can boost the vehicle at the start. Even a little extra velocity can significantly improve the amount of cargo your vehicle carries. And if you fire a rocket above most of the atmosphere you get four advantages: rocket nozzle optimized for vacuum, low air resistance, above all air traffic hence less red tape, and slightly higher up the gravity well.

There are many approaches, For example, launch your vehicle from an airplane or balloon, fire it out of a cannon, and accelerate it with a railgun or linear motor.

There might even be payloads which you can fire straight off the planet, though something needs to change their trajectory to a useful one (either on board propulsion or caught by something such as a skyhook).

4) mega-scale structures. This is the sexy stuff like space tethers, launch-loops, skyhooks, etc. A key thing to note about them is that while Earth is an extreme hard place to implement one, there are many bodies throughout the Solar System where the task would be easy enough that it could be done with modern materials and sometimes with a far smaller scale. For example, the Moon and any asteroid.

So possible launch structures could be evaluated somewhere else before tried on the Earth. This provides a good incremental development path for megascale structures.

Second, there is an important cost boundary, the cost of the energy required to put something in orbit. For current megastructure designs, the intent is to put matter into orbit and beyond. So mass flow is mostly outwards. At an electricity price of $0.10 per kWh, that is roughly $10 per kg.

That means that no matter how efficient you make the process, your floor is the energy cost of putting something in orbit. In practice, you'll also need to factor in the cost of propellant required for station keeping of your structure.

If you simultaneous bring matter down so that you remain mass neutral, then you need almost no station keeping and it is theoretically possible to drive cost per kg well below the energy cost of putting something in orbit.

At this point, you'd be capable of moving the entirety of human civilization into space.

Re:Like what?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well to start, we could start developing not-so-mega structures. For instance, if America could get the national momentum to develop a truly high speed rail system, not that wannabe crap that got passed in California a year or two ago, that would show that we could overcome the bureaucratic, legal, and technical challenges that high-power, high-cost, high-risk projects tend to run into. But if you look at how much kick back we get from simply trying to develop various not-so-mega infrastructure projects (repair the national highway system, deploy truly high speed internet everywhere in the country, develop a sustainable, redundant power system, etc.) then you can start to get a very basic idea of what kind of crap we would have to deal with trying to develop the most expensive and riskiest project ever attempted.

Right now the biggest obstacle to sci-fi style mega engineering projects is public willingness. We are, collectively, a country that doesn't want anything to change. Progress is seen as a dangerous, value-less game.

Re:Like what?

[khallow]

For instance, if America could get the national momentum to develop a truly high speed rail system, not that wannabe crap that got passed in California a year or two ago, that would show that we could overcome the bureaucratic, legal, and technical challenges that high-power, high-cost, high-risk projects tend to run into.

I ran across a phrase recently that describes my opinion about large projects like this. You can't steal a million from a million. In other words, you need a big public works project, if you want to steal a lot of money from it. I think a publicly funded space tether would be just as much a boondoggle for the US as a nation-wide high speed rail system today.

If one looks at the high speed rail, it doesn't fill an impressive role. Timewise, it covers distances too long for car and too short for plane. Merely improving those means of transportation (for example, a much faster airport check in and security screening procedure or tolls on congested artery roads) would close up that gap.

Nor is it going to be cheap. Glancing around it looks like the average cost per mile of track will be at least $50 million (and IMHO closer to $100 million per mile). In comparison, a 4 lane freeway in rural areas seems to cost up to $20 million per mile. I think there's far more mileage to be gained from merely improving existing transportation infrastructure.

There's no indication of demand for high speed rail. Amtrak would place somewhere in the bottom ten airlines by revenue passenger mile, if it were an airline.

It doesn't add anything to existing transportation networks. Amtrak had this cool idea of moving cars by rail. That seems pretty popular. But it doesn't require high speed trains in order to work.

While I've beat up on high speed trains, I imagine the same absence of practicality, high cost, and very similar problems would infect any public space tether project.

Finally, the US has a long history of underperforming public transportation projects. Sure, I bet it's the bureaucratic, legal, and technical challenges. But most of all, I think it's the reality challenge. Sure, we could waste a few tens of billions of dollars to find out that not only couldn't we pass those hurdles you mention (since that would never be the intention of the thieves who sponsor high speed rail, a space tether, whatever), but that the resulting product would never be worth what we put in, even if everything had gone along smoothly.

Re:Like what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Right now the biggest obstacle to sci-fi style mega engineering projects is public willingness."

Incorrect. The biggest obstacle is the Universe itself. For one thing, it is mind-bogglingly huge. For another, it doesn't seem to contain any different materials than what we have here on Earth. If you believe there are other chemical elements out there, some that are missing from our table of elements, there's a Nobel Prize for you. Hell, I think you'd get them all.

Now, as for "will", I myself don't "will" myself across the Atlantic ocean at 35000 feet at nearly the speed of sound. I build a tube, made of real, actual materials from the table of chemical elements, and I build engines with the same materials, and burn fuel in it.

Please note the amount of time it took from the Wright Brother's flight to real, commercial flight... It wasn't that long, and that was without electronics, modern materials, computers, etc. We used OIL, metal and guts. That's all.

This has not changed since WWII. There can not be any other way to do things. We've looked, we've tried. What you see now is pretty much as far as we can take our technology. To believe otherwise means that:

1) You believe that something *BIG* has been overlooked in physics. We are still, for the most part, using Newton's Laws and 19th century engineering. The "progress" that people think about is mostly in the field of electronics. You want an eye-opener? Look on-line for old electronics magazines or industry rags from the 1960s. You'll see that mostly the concepts we use today already existed. Digital electronics, computers, process control, solid state, you name it. Thing is, they all *look* outdated, either by form, or by sheer size. Strangely enough, 747s still look the same since 1969. Why is that? Think about it, you'll have your answer.

All our progress since WWII has been mostly "down". We make smaller and smaller transistors. There has been almost no progress "up". A Saturn V is pretty much as far as you can take materials.

2) You believe that there are materials out there that don't show up on the periodic table of elements. We have looked at all the elements. None of them suggest that we can build anything remotely like the grandiose sci-fi dreams.

3) You believe that other races out there *can* build these things. Then you believe that chemistry and physics is local to the Earth and might be different out there? Do you realize that means that all observations we make about the universe are wrong... But never mind that, if you believe that, that means we couldn't survive in other parts of the Universe.

No matter what, Space Nuttery just doesn't work, doesn't make sense, it never has, it never will. Reality is the obstacle here.

Re:Like what?

[Grishnakh]

That's why we need SkyTran. The cost-per-mile to deploy it is much, much cheaper, and it's far more flexible than high-speed rail as the cars are autonomous and can go to any destination on the network automatically. Rail is too big and too expensive, and only good for moving lots of people (or cargo) at one time between a small number of fixed points. That's fine for cargo, but for people, it just doesn't work; people need more flexibility with their transportation; they need to be able to go to many different destinations at any arbitrary time, not the same destination as everyone else at the same time as them. SkyTran can do that; traditional rail cannot.

Re:Like what?

[Grishnakh]

Incorrect. The biggest obstacle is the Universe itself. For one thing, it is mind-bogglingly huge. For another, it doesn't seem to contain any different materials than what we have here on Earth. If you believe there are other chemical elements out there, some that are missing from our table of elements, there's a Nobel Prize for you.

What are you talking about? New and exotic materials are being discovered all the time. Carbon nanotubes and buckyballs have only been known about for a decade or two, and still haven't been completely exploited. Other metamaterials have been discovered that have strange properties, and could be key to, for instance, an invisibility cloak. You don't need new elements on the Periodic Table for this; these materials are all made of long-known elements (carbon's been known about since antiquity), they're just new and different combinations of elements. The latest superconductors and high-strength magnets are made of various exotic compounds of things like Ytterbium, but again, no new elements.

Conspiracy?

[petteyg359]

Maybe Orbital Sciences Corporation is a global warming/cooling unbeliever and rigged these rockets to fail, since they were both launching devices that would observe climate data.

Re:Conspiracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Orbital Sciences Corporation is a global warming/cooling unbeliever and rigged these rockets to fail, since they were both launching devices that would observe climate data.

or mayb they dont want us to realize its all a hoax?
it goes both ways!

Rockets.

[dicobalt]

They suck.

Re:Rockets.

[Q-Hack!]

I think technically they blow.

Re:Rockets.

[maxwell demon]

And sometimes they blow up.

Tachyon Pulse

[MuChild]

This disappoints me greatly. Why didn't they just reconfigure the deflector dish when they realized there was a problem and reduce the mass of the rocket with a tachyon pulse?

Seriously, though, we need a better system. Modern rocketry is almost 100 years old and we haven't come up with anything better?

Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Greyfox]

Everyone seems surprised about this, but getting stuff out of the gravity well is complicated and doesn't always work. I've heard stories about satellite companies with early histories that read like a Monty Python skit "Well yeah, the first rocket burned down on the launch pad. The second rocket burned down on the launch pad. The third rocket fell over, burned down and sank into the swamp." You don't launch a satellite without insurance against that sort of thing. At least then you're not out all of the several hundred million it costs to build something and shooting it into space if something goes wrong in the short time it takes to actually do that.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[0123456]

You don't launch a satellite without insurance against that sort of thing.

The US government does. I'm pretty sure they don't insure any of their satellites, they just ask Congress to fund them to build another one.

And Delta and Atlas have a 95+% success rate.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Sockatume]

And let's not forget pre-launch failures like this one.

(NOAA. Environmental craft seem to have the same sort of elevated failure rate as Mars missions. What is it that the martians do not want us to know about the environment?)

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think they're better than that.. more like 98%... the usual numbers you hear are 1 in 50 launches fails, so Shuttle falls right on the curve.

And, interestingly, I think it's illegal for the government to buy insurance. As pointed out, Congress just allocates the money to build another. In the context of a trillion dollars, $100M is pretty small.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistically, insurance doesn't make sense. On average, you pay in more premiums than is ever paid out in claims. If you're a company launching a single satellite, then that "on average" never has a chance to kick in though, and insurance is important to greatly reduce the risk of financial disaster that would otherwise result from a launch failure. If you launch many satellites, then yes, you'll lose a few, but you cover the cost in the saved insurance premiums on the majority that do not fail.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Combatso]

what company wouldn't want to insure a giant metal can full of rocket fuel with a multi-million dollar, fragile device on the end. I bet that little Gecko would all over it..

So easy, a rocket scientist can do it..... sometimes....

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[0123456]

what company wouldn't want to insure a giant metal can full of rocket fuel with a multi-million dollar, fragile device on the end. I bet that little Gecko would all over it..

If I remember correctly, Lloyds do or did launch insurance, even if no-one else does; I'm sure I read a story about them celebrating when the space shuttle recovered a couple of satellites which failed to reach their intended orbit in the 90s.

Ultimately it shouldn't be much harder than any other field of insurance, except that launch rates are so low that you need to err on the side of caution when estimating the chance of a failure.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Combatso]

Considering what I pay to insure my truck... I wouldn't want to pay that premium... I wonder if they get first-accident-forgiveness

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[budgenator]

I suppose it's a matter of the cost to build Vs. the cost to insure and how big your cahonies are. I expect the insurance rate for Taurus launches are going up past break-even for a while.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[WindBourne]

while OSC has a 100% failure rate on launching Climate sats. All 3 of them. And every loss was due to OSC who builds so very little of their launch vehicle.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the Martians don't want us to follow up our findings of
Global Warming on Mars. (not caused by humans)

Glory Satellite

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me I'm not the only one who snickered at the satellite's name. My first thought was that it was meant to look for black holes.

Memories..

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite interesting, no one's making "jokes" about how this happened because the rocket was american.
Had it been Russian, however, I'm betting we'd see a dozen trolls already, judging by the comments relating to the failed launch of GLONASS satellites in december.

Outsource?

[sirdude]

Anybody care to venture a guess as to how much this mission would have cost if outsourced to India's Antrix/ISRO or Russia? I realise that they also had a failure a few months ago. But their success rate has generally been pretty good when it comes to launches. Are there other space agencies which are offering cheaper alternatives? China? Japan? How about American privateers (sic)?

Re:Outsource?

[oneiros27]

Even if the launch itself were cheaper, you then have to look into getting the payload over to the launch location ... and that might not be a risk they're willing to take.

When there were massive flight delays for some of the groups that I've worked with, they've talked about trying to get into the queue at Vandenberg, rather than Canaveral, but that'd require either trucking it across country, or a flight. Even with launch delays at Canaveral, it was costing them more to hold it on the ground at Canaveral than it would've cost to hold it at Goddard ... but bringing it back to Maryland and then to Florida again was decided to be an unacceptable risk.

I know what you're thinking -- they test these things for vibration on launch, and such, but I don't think that's the same forces as a hard landing from an airplan or hitting a pothole; also, they'd get a cargo plane large enough to ship it ... you can't just send it fedex when it's an oversized load. And for cross country, they have to map out the route so they don't run into any overpasses they can't fit under, etc.

Re:Outsource?

[Anonymous Coward]

Way the RTFA! This WAS a private american company. NASA and US military launches (e.g. boeing, ula) have a much higher success rate than 6/9, but also cost substantially more.

An outsourced launch would not have necessarily been any cheaper... Launches aren't cheap and there are very few players in the arena. Other space-capable capable countries all charge close to market rate!

Taurus?

[Chris Mattern]

Shoulda gotten a Saturn!

What a croc!

[Anonymous Coward]

No more launches on Taurus XL until they PROVE that the fairing works on a test lauch they fund themselves!

Not unexpected.

[Anonymous Coward]

All down to how NASA operates. They can spend all their funding on one big mission with a 1/20 chance of failure and be screwed if it breaks down, or the same money on half a dozen much less reliable missions and play the odds.

Glory Satellite Lost

[todrules]

Glory Satellite Lost... Now, it's just a Glory Hole.

Re:Glory Satellite Lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Glory Satellite Lost... Now, it's just a Glory Hole.

I'm disappointed.. I was expecting way more glory hole jokes.

Shit Taurus

[atari2600a]

Get it together!

A natural pattern here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe these satellites are just not environmentally sound.... heh

Gutted for the team

[Anonymous Coward]

A devastating failure. You've got to feel for them.

Public vs Private

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the failure rate, and cost per launch, for public vs. private launches?
Wild guess: private has lower failure rate and costs.

Re:Public vs Private

[maxwell demon]

Another wild guess: Insufficient statistics.

Re:Public vs Private

[SETIGuy]

This was a private launch. There is only one public launch vehicle in the US fleet: the space shuttle. Or are you talking about whether the payload was public or private? Hard to compare there because the mix of launch vehicles and payload sizes is very different.

This just in

[geekzealot1982]

Rocket science is still a challenging science. Where is Werner von Braun when we need him?

Re:This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where he is, but his spirit's at SpaceX.

Re:This just in

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I'm pretty sure Werner von Braun never designed a payload fairing separation system. He was more into the actual rocket design itself, as in, the engine and nozzle systems and such.

Re:This just in

[atcroft]

Rocket science is still a challenging science. Where is Werner von Braun when we need him?

Wernher von Braum currently resides at 2823 King St., Alexandria, Virginia, USA; however, he apparently has not been responding to correspondence or inquiries since at least Jun. 16, 1977.

Re:This just in

[WindBourne]

Where is Werner von Braun when we need him?
dead.

ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just to clarify:

NASA's rocket drops its load, into a giant glory-hole.

Big Oil, China and the Republican Party

[sinequonon]

Oh come on, we can make the conspiracy bigger than that. China is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter and the Republican Party wants to kill NASA's Earth monitoring program. Their motto: "What we don't know, can't hurt them."

Third world people = third world country

[Anonymous Coward]

Get used to this sort of thing happening more regularly.

"a $424 million failure."

NASA is taking on people who are incompetent, just because they are third world people. Anything to continue the destruction of white countries.

Still, who needs to worry about minor things like your children's lives being ruined, as long as you don't have to actually discuss what's happening in the real world.

Ford Taurus XL?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this was a Ford rocket?

Look ma, no hands!

[StikyPad]

When a Glory satellite crashes, does it make a Glory hole?

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this Glory satellite left a big Hole in our budget?

It would not surprise me

[ThatsNotPudding]

if the US House of Representatives sabotaged it, given it's mission - and theirs.

Re:It would not surprise me

[drooling-dog]

I'm not ready to go that far, but I'm sure the Republicans are cheering about it, since this is an area (climate research) they are actively defunding...

Environmental satellites

[fox171171]

Is it my imagination, or do launch failure rates for "environmental" satellites seem higher than others? Someone still trying to cover up global warming?

pslv

[Anonymous Coward]

check pslv success. same payload

Three Amateur Radio sats also lost

[Muad'Dave]

Also lost in this launch were three Amateur Radio Satellites.

Oh well.

[cyn1c77]

This will be the first of many failures due to the privatization of the space sector.

Re:Oh well.

[orphiuchus]

Uhh... Did you read the article? At the very least its the second.

Re:Oh well.

[WindBourne]

really? Please tell me of successful launches that did not involve private space in the USA.

dummy rocket

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of sending up hundreds of millions worth of equipment that will just crash every time why not send up a dummy payload to test the delivery vehicle. This way you could rig it up with more sensors to see exactly what really happens thus you can test to see if your theories are actually true.

Also you could pack into the dummy payload a way to either make it not become space trash or pack in an anti space trash device such as the solar sail one while maintaining the shape, weight and other psychical characteristics of the payload that was supposed to be there.

PS I have lost many comments to this system (actually almost all of them... not that there is a lot) because of the various anti bot systems.

fix or repair daily

[cellocgw]

Well, duh, it WAS a Taurus...

Necessary evil?

[Clsid]

There will be a painful transition in the space industry from being public to going private. They have to endure the same thing the US and the Soviet Union had to face during the early stages of the Space Race. A lot of people and animals died from both sides during the Space Race because politics mandated that a lot of things needed to be done before the other team got there. These companies face a similar pressure in terms of money and competition among enterprises. In the long run it might be a good thing but I believe if the US wants to develop the private sector, sharing some of the old rocket designs with startups could make things easier for everybody and still conform with the objectives.

it must be said

[chaosmind]

The Glory Satellite is gone... leaving a great, big Glory Hole in the sky.

Failiure To Launch...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Always awkward: http://www.impawards.com/2006/posters/failure_to_launch.jpg

I know the real story . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way NASA can continue to support Global Warming as a man-made phenomenon is to make sure the Earth-observing satellites don't get into orbit. Politically, NASA has to go along with an idea which they know will be debunked by measuring the temperature of the Earth from space, and it's better to have the satellites fail to go into orbit than to have to falsify the data until we have a President and Senate controlled by another (not sayin' which one) political party.

Taurus the Bull Cross to Glory

[ImitationEnergy]

False teachings crept into the early Christian church when the preachers began letting new converts keep their old religious symbols and holidays. Jesus was actually nailed to a "stauros" that could have been a tree or straight pole. The crosspiece came from the pagan's "Mystic Tau" they just lowered the T top bar to make a Cross, and the monies kept on a-flowing into church Sunday donations plates. That is how we came to have our world today filled with "False Religions" that have deviated so far away from what the Bible really teaches. Filled with sexual deviants, imagine that! The Taurus rocket reminded me of the Mystic Tau... add to that affront to the Lord Jesus in heaven that the people named the satellite "Glory", and God says only He is worthy of being called that (my take anyway). The imbeciles named their big phallic symbol => Glory, rather looks like a mistake. I imagine what they'll do is spend another $424,000,000.00 and name it the exact same thing. Except the price will probably slam up against $500,000,000.00 since everybody deserves a Raise.

OSC is proving that private space may have issues

[WindBourne]

OSC has had 3 failures with this rocket. All 3 were climate satellites. NONE of the others failed. But to make matters interesting, OSC builds LITTLE of their launch vehicles. They just assemble them. They really do so little. Yet, the ONE item that they build is the fairing. And yet, on all 3 launches, it was the fairing that failed.

To make matters a bit more interesting, they won the launch for OCO2, which is the follow on of one of the sats that they lost. They just won in jun 2010. At this point, NASA needs to consider one of 2 actions:
1) fire OSC as well as the NASA idiot that awarded them the contract for OCO2. And then allow other American LVs to bid on it.
2) build a 3rd OCO along with #2. If they do this, it will cost them only about 10-20 million. Sounds like a lot, but it is not. With this approach, when OSC fails (and they will if this is not built), then we can launch with SpaceX or ULA within 6 months or less.

Finally, OSC should not even be considered for human launch awards.

Actually

[WindBourne]

ALL 3 loses of the taurus WERE climate sats. The amazing thing is that NASA awarded them the contract for sending up OCO2. That needs to be looked at.

Do not be so sure

[WindBourne]

OSC builds little of this rocket. The one thing that they build is the fairing. ALL 3 of their failures were climate sats. ALL 3 were the fairings. Sadly, OSC is suppose to launch the replacement for OCO (OCO2). I would like to see us build a third one along with the second. It will be cheap insurance. Either that, or fire OSC from doing climate sats (along with firing whoever selected OSC for the latest climate sats).

Re: We had a better system.

[lent]

We had a better system. Launched all its satellite payloads pretty well. Only one Tracking and Data Relay Satellite was lost. Human cost was 14 of our best and brightest people over the launch system's lifetime. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-L and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-107 .

NASA, and now picking up the ball DOD, decided to try and eliminate the human cost. The result, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37, just had a successful launch. Originally, it was to be launched from the shuttle (a shuttle within a shuttle), but the Columbia disaster changed that.

Other ideas still proceed, but slowly...

more on falling to earth...

[ejreed]

NASA's Glory Mission Meets Inglorious End NASA's Glory mission, a rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite, is in the Pacific Ocean after a failed launch attempt, officials said Friday. http://www.newslook.com/videos/295155-nasa-s-glory-mission-meets-inglorious-end?autoplay=true