I want to add such "R&D" places are necessary, obviously don't let costs get out of control but don't hinder them with PHB and constant need to show a viable business plan (and there's zillions of jerks that present "viable" business plans that are total failures). If R&D places "waste" money on lotsa gadgets, then places like WeirdStuff and Halted will have neato stuff for us tinkerers to buy.
Give him his own office, a supply of fast food, sodas, coffee and energy drinks and let him work on the weird stuff that would defeat the others.
Isn't that what places like PARC were? Get a bunch of really smart people their own building, give them resources, and turn them loose? I never been to such places but I imagine a lot of people runnning around doing all kinds of stuff that nobody seems to understand. Probably did nothing but spend a lot of money on people's pet projects but then these guys developed GUI type computer interface (did I describe that right? you know, the type that Steve Jobs took for his LISA). I also feel this country no longer has these kinds of groups but those that still exists are much smaller.
...it's full of stars! OK so I used the tagline from a movie. But then it is cool to see this stuff so far away while most of us mortals toil in our cubicles. Almost unreal like it's Photoshop (SETIcon II had panel discussion and one topic debated are difficult to tell actual images from CGI. Hint: don't process the raw images from scopes and spacecraft).
I cannot help but think of the huge numbers of people in this country are druggies whenever I read articles like this or all these drug commercials and ads. I'm talking about the "legal" ones which I think are higher numbers than your typical addicts that get non-regulated non-prescript from the dealer on the street. And then to think there was a time in China when much of the population were opium addicts which made much of the country dysfunctional and was easily overran by foreign powers (i.e. the Opium Wars). I see the USA going the same route. If I could wave the magic wand, my first would be to prohibit advertisements of prescription drugs on television and internet and magazines. Restrict it to only medical magazines and journals.
Because the US, EU, Russia and China will in all probability never go to war with each other... -----
but like what was commented about buying a 2-million-pound dreadnought instead feeding poor subjects because UK, France, Russia and Germany will never go to war with each other. But which they did, and the submarine and carrier based airplanes in later wars made that dreadnought irrevalent. Another item to note is The Empire shrank to an island after those wars.
Reason why VAB was built and Pad 39A and 39B three miles away and using the crawler transporter was based on Saturn V rocket and its assembly and launch complex, all had to be ready in less than a decade. If they had to do it all over again with Space Shuttle, it would be done differently. But wait, it was! At least for Vandenberg AFB which was another Shuttle launch facility on west coast for polar orbits, see these pics at http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/3981.html and you can see overall was done very differently. Regarding Florida, they decide to reuse same facilities instead of scrapping and rebuilding from scratch for the Shuttle. VAFB was abandoned in later 1980s. For the Constellation program, they were to reuse the VAB, Pad39, and crawler (after all Constellation and SLS is Apollo on steroids).
This was one of panel discussions at SETIcon II earlier this year. This DARPA study also funds people doing research to ask what kinds of people need to be selected for the trip? How will they get along? What is the minimum number? They will have to breed, researchers looking into how many people did it take to originally populate north american continent (answer was about 70). What kind of culture(s) of people, other studies show people will bring their own culture with them. Also have to grown own food, how much top soil needs to be packed? Other ways to grow food? how do you keep the soil healthy? It seems when we research and plan for a 100 year starship, we are actually looking back at ourselves. How do we keep our current "spaceship" functional. Really, a common expression of earth itself in the early 1970s per the new ecology movement.
There was a lot of other subjects raised in this discussion, go buy the video of what was presented at http://seticon.com/products/#category=saturday
All Aboard the 100 Year Starship (Panel Discussion) Price: $10.00 Featuring Mae Jemison, Richard Rhodes, Dana Backman, Bill Nye. Moderated by Adrian Brown.
...nor do we see internal combustion engines a million times more powerful than the first generation. Using the technological development rate in electronics to justify that newer propulsion or more efficient energy sources will solve all of our interstellar travel problems at some future date is rather proposterous.
Best damn explanation of the commonly used bankrupted "Electronics Analogy" applied everywhere. I will send your paragraphs to the next person that says, "my iphone is zillion more powerful than the Apollo spacecraft computer." Bzzt, Apollo CSM and LM went to the moon, iPhone only went to your pocket.
I worked there for three months, got paid little more than minimum wage, not too bad as living expenses were not as high like they are now. This was the flexible disk plant at Central Expwy and San Tomas (I think) in Santa Clara, right there in Silicon Valley when this place was rockin. Rest of country may have been in the gutter in 1979 but here in Santa Clara Valley you would never know. Lots of places hiring, engineers can name their own price. Assemblers hired with no experience necessary. My first job was to insert a 5.25 cover (with no disk) into a machine that stamps out holes, this cover was then passed over to someone else that inserted the flexible disk.
This Memorex plant produced 5.25 and 8 inch floppies. Magnetic medium came in large rolls, i.e. recording tape but about 9 inches or 6 inches wide from "The Tape Plant" which the flexible disks were stamped from the roll. These circular disks were then burnished. Covers were made from black material that was pressed with white soft cloth with a heat stamp. For you younguns, need to get one of these old disks and take it apart to better visualize these pieces. After covers were pressed with white clothes, they were folded in half and given to me to stamp out the holes for the recording heads to make contact with magnetic medium (I worked swing shift, normally could stamp about 9000, one night on a roll I got up to 10,000 stamped well had a larger number of botches...). This plant was a 3-shift operation, but many times we also had to work Saturdays (which I hated). Later on I did a few other things but overall it was boring. I had cash flow problems and had to get a job real quick.
One particular thing I most remembered is this 2-story building had the sales and marketing upstairs (they only worked day shift), all these people upstairs were all tall, thin, and beautiful. Everyone below were all short, fat, and ugly. However there was one lady that worked grave shift, nice looking and she wore tons of makeup. Not sure why at this time of night but she was quite attractive.
There was one time when demand for flexible disks was high and Memorex was pressed to deliver more (customer was a computer company, I forgot who). When disks were burnished they were inspected for blemishes in the magnetic material, too many blemishes they were placed in a rejected pile (which actually was quite a large quantity). Because of the demand, they pulled these disks out and we took a second look, "well this one doesn't look too bad" and proceeded to make a final product (which finished disks are individually tested for write/read). I asked the boss if this computer company knows we are "recycling" from the reject pile, he said, "None of their concern!"
There was one case when someone working the machine that presses white cloth to the black material, he saw a spider, grabbed it, and put it between the white cloth and black material and fed into the heat press. So somewhere there is a Memorex 8-inch floppy with a squished spider inside.
First flew in 1959. Reached Mach of 6.04 at one point. Had a pilot in it, not just a drone.
In 1959, service stations provided service (even gave out free maps), women dressed like women, and 4-wheel drive vehicles were used as 4-wheel drive vehicles.
An advertisement for a GA airplane (Beech Bonanza I think) said, "economical as a Volkswagon, faster than a Ferrari, luxurious as a Cadillac, it's the perfect car for business travel and yet it isn't a car at all." This was back when single engine airplanes was still an industry (i.e. Mooneys, Pipers, Cessnas) and Aviation Week annual issue listing all aircraft had lists of GA planes with prices (while in college I look through those thinking of maybe one day I'll buy one).
The economical doesn't seem to make sense but back then what you spend on fuel is significantly less to go from point A to B compared to a car. Ad also mention there are no speed limits, you can go as fast as your equipment can do so. Remember back then 55 mph was still standard on many freeways.
Shortly after that, GA industry collapsed. Well not really but it is now domain of business jets and definitely out of reach for middle class. There may be flying cars (actually better described as roadable airplanes), and they can be safe and still NEED FAA pilot's license. Question is affordability. Decades ago they were for many, not so much nowadays. And may become more out of reach. Helicopters were cheap in 1950s (suggesting they will be in every garage), however, they took ***much*** flying skill and were quite dangerous when pilots not paying attention. These days helicopters are quite easy to handle (so I've been told per constant RPM, control algorithms for weight and balance, etc.) but only govts, corporations, and stinking rich can afford them.
I too had some chemistry, physics and years of math that appeared to serve no purpose other than to "weed out" people from the program. However to my surprise I once had the opportunity to participate in a project that would port some chemistry software from mainframes to PCs. I would be interacting with world class polymer chemists. They did not expect me to be a chemist but they did expect me to be scientifically and mathematically literate. The general ed chemistry and physics and the years of math for computer science actually turned out to be useful.
Excellent answer for "why study math, physics and chemistry" which is to be scientifically and mathematically literate.
what really doubts me is actual use of a speedy jet for passenger travel. by the time you get through TSA, someone who were to swim the Atlantic will get there before you do. but then X51A is a hellava missile, awesome weapon system to further bankrupt this country.
ITAR. This is a big barrier for other countries to participate with NASA (US space program). Some of these have simply given up on collaboration with NASA, even though they are behind in space technology but with ITAR they are probably better off working on programs that have no NASA involvement.
Interesting article, what first caught my eye was $300B, ouch.
I remember back in the 20th century when F35 was called CALF, Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter.
rather than wait until they've passed what NASA can do.
in some ways they already passed what NASA can do. At this very moment we (USA) cannot put people in space. Of course we have systems under development.Orion though I don't know when they will ever fly it. There is still no launch vehicle everyone agrees on. Then there's Dragon....... gotta wait and see how it turns out.
speaking of independents, way back in the 20th century (1970s) there was this FM station called KFAT located in Gilroy(?), California. It played country but they played a lot of obscure songs of various artists even decades before (it's as if the DJs would scour used record stores and flea markets to find the oddest country tunes). And it was really independent as sometimes the DJ plopped down a LP and set the needle then go and take care of other items around the station. Sometimes a DJ would forget and a listener would have to call the station to let the DJ know the record run its course. Also at the time with the common church bumper stickers "I found it!" KFAT had their own bumper sticker for the fans, "I found it! (and it was hard to find to)." But alas the station was bought out by large media and changed the name to KWSS (KFAT followers called it K-wizz as in what you do when you pee).
and rap (or hip hop, I guess there's a difference, all sounds the same to me) is more than 25 years old. There was a time when a new sound emerged i.e. jazz, rock-n-roll, acid rock, disco,.... but I wonder if The Business has priced itself out of the market and made huge barriers to new creative music. 30 years ago there was 30(?) major labels which have combined to just four (and they spend a lot of time going after pirates). So based on that, it doesn't surprise me someone publishes an article like this one. An not surprising we have posts such as, "Really?," "This is news?," and "Not just me."
reminds me of SpaceX Dragon as compared to LM Orion (ok, bad comparison in many ways), where Dragon was developed along with a launch vehicle and flown twice for about $1 billion (or of that magnitude). Orion is costing billions and billions... not sure when it will ever be flown. What is this difference? An effective cost control is when the money comes out of your own pocket. Unlike the other which is not.
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I want to add such "R&D" places are necessary, obviously don't let costs get out of control but don't hinder them with PHB and constant need to show a viable business plan (and there's zillions of jerks that present "viable" business plans that are total failures). If R&D places "waste" money on lotsa gadgets, then places like WeirdStuff and Halted will have neato stuff for us tinkerers to buy.
Give him his own office, a supply of fast food, sodas, coffee and energy drinks and let him work on the weird stuff that would defeat the others.
Isn't that what places like PARC were? Get a bunch of really smart people their own building, give them resources, and turn them loose? I never been to such places but I imagine a lot of people runnning around doing all kinds of stuff that nobody seems to understand. Probably did nothing but spend a lot of money on people's pet projects but then these guys developed GUI type computer interface (did I describe that right? you know, the type that Steve Jobs took for his LISA). I also feel this country no longer has these kinds of groups but those that still exists are much smaller.
...it's full of stars! OK so I used the tagline from a movie. But then it is cool to see this stuff so far away while most of us mortals toil in our cubicles. Almost unreal like it's Photoshop (SETIcon II had panel discussion and one topic debated are difficult to tell actual images from CGI. Hint: don't process the raw images from scopes and spacecraft).
I cannot help but think of the huge numbers of people in this country are druggies whenever I read articles like this or all these drug commercials and ads. I'm talking about the "legal" ones which I think are higher numbers than your typical addicts that get non-regulated non-prescript from the dealer on the street. And then to think there was a time in China when much of the population were opium addicts which made much of the country dysfunctional and was easily overran by foreign powers (i.e. the Opium Wars). I see the USA going the same route. If I could wave the magic wand, my first would be to prohibit advertisements of prescription drugs on television and internet and magazines. Restrict it to only medical magazines and journals.
Because the US, EU, Russia and China will in all probability never go to war with each other... -----
but like what was commented about buying a 2-million-pound dreadnought instead feeding poor subjects because UK, France, Russia and Germany will never go to war with each other. But which they did, and the submarine and carrier based airplanes in later wars made that dreadnought irrevalent. Another item to note is The Empire shrank to an island after those wars.
with a Buy-It-Now like they have everything else.
Reason why VAB was built and Pad 39A and 39B three miles away and using the crawler transporter was based on Saturn V rocket and its assembly and launch complex, all had to be ready in less than a decade. If they had to do it all over again with Space Shuttle, it would be done differently. But wait, it was! At least for Vandenberg AFB which was another Shuttle launch facility on west coast for polar orbits, see these pics at http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/3981.html and you can see overall was done very differently. Regarding Florida, they decide to reuse same facilities instead of scrapping and rebuilding from scratch for the Shuttle. VAFB was abandoned in later 1980s. For the Constellation program, they were to reuse the VAB, Pad39, and crawler (after all Constellation and SLS is Apollo on steroids).
This was one of panel discussions at SETIcon II earlier this year. This DARPA study also funds people doing research to ask what kinds of people need to be selected for the trip? How will they get along? What is the minimum number? They will have to breed, researchers looking into how many people did it take to originally populate north american continent (answer was about 70). What kind of culture(s) of people, other studies show people will bring their own culture with them. Also have to grown own food, how much top soil needs to be packed? Other ways to grow food? how do you keep the soil healthy? It seems when we research and plan for a 100 year starship, we are actually looking back at ourselves. How do we keep our current "spaceship" functional. Really, a common expression of earth itself in the early 1970s per the new ecology movement.
There was a lot of other subjects raised in this discussion, go buy the video of what was presented at http://seticon.com/products/#category=saturday
All Aboard the 100 Year Starship (Panel Discussion) Price: $10.00 Featuring Mae Jemison, Richard Rhodes, Dana Backman, Bill Nye. Moderated by Adrian Brown.
...nor do we see internal combustion engines a million times more powerful than the first generation. Using the technological development rate in electronics to justify that newer propulsion or more efficient energy sources will solve all of our interstellar travel problems at some future date is rather proposterous.
Best damn explanation of the commonly used bankrupted "Electronics Analogy" applied everywhere. I will send your paragraphs to the next person that says, "my iphone is zillion more powerful than the Apollo spacecraft computer." Bzzt, Apollo CSM and LM went to the moon, iPhone only went to your pocket.
I worked there for three months, got paid little more than minimum wage, not too bad as living expenses were not as high like they are now. This was the flexible disk plant at Central Expwy and San Tomas (I think) in Santa Clara, right there in Silicon Valley when this place was rockin. Rest of country may have been in the gutter in 1979 but here in Santa Clara Valley you would never know. Lots of places hiring, engineers can name their own price. Assemblers hired with no experience necessary. My first job was to insert a 5.25 cover (with no disk) into a machine that stamps out holes, this cover was then passed over to someone else that inserted the flexible disk.
This Memorex plant produced 5.25 and 8 inch floppies. Magnetic medium came in large rolls, i.e. recording tape but about 9 inches or 6 inches wide from "The Tape Plant" which the flexible disks were stamped from the roll. These circular disks were then burnished. Covers were made from black material that was pressed with white soft cloth with a heat stamp. For you younguns, need to get one of these old disks and take it apart to better visualize these pieces. After covers were pressed with white clothes, they were folded in half and given to me to stamp out the holes for the recording heads to make contact with magnetic medium (I worked swing shift, normally could stamp about 9000, one night on a roll I got up to 10,000 stamped well had a larger number of botches...). This plant was a 3-shift operation, but many times we also had to work Saturdays (which I hated). Later on I did a few other things but overall it was boring. I had cash flow problems and had to get a job real quick.
One particular thing I most remembered is this 2-story building had the sales and marketing upstairs (they only worked day shift), all these people upstairs were all tall, thin, and beautiful. Everyone below were all short, fat, and ugly. However there was one lady that worked grave shift, nice looking and she wore tons of makeup. Not sure why at this time of night but she was quite attractive.
There was one time when demand for flexible disks was high and Memorex was pressed to deliver more (customer was a computer company, I forgot who). When disks were burnished they were inspected for blemishes in the magnetic material, too many blemishes they were placed in a rejected pile (which actually was quite a large quantity). Because of the demand, they pulled these disks out and we took a second look, "well this one doesn't look too bad" and proceeded to make a final product (which finished disks are individually tested for write/read). I asked the boss if this computer company knows we are "recycling" from the reject pile, he said, "None of their concern!"
There was one case when someone working the machine that presses white cloth to the black material, he saw a spider, grabbed it, and put it between the white cloth and black material and fed into the heat press. So somewhere there is a Memorex 8-inch floppy with a squished spider inside.
Yep, such as things were in the 20th century.
First flew in 1959. Reached Mach of 6.04 at one point. Had a pilot in it, not just a drone.
In 1959, service stations provided service (even gave out free maps), women dressed like women, and 4-wheel drive vehicles were used as 4-wheel drive vehicles.
X15 was a technology demonstrator like the X51 but with the former, you can get an autograph (though not sure of this ebay item but you get the idea),
http://www.ebay.com/itm/X-15-Test-Pilots-Neil-Armstrong-6-Autographs-Print-/160631385970
yes, common complaint heard these days among senior citizens when promised while they were in grade school.
maybe outfit it with some missiles and flares and search for rogue spacecraft launch facilities hiding in some extinct volcano someplace in Japan.
An advertisement for a GA airplane (Beech Bonanza I think) said, "economical as a Volkswagon, faster than a Ferrari, luxurious as a Cadillac, it's the perfect car for business travel and yet it isn't a car at all." This was back when single engine airplanes was still an industry (i.e. Mooneys, Pipers, Cessnas) and Aviation Week annual issue listing all aircraft had lists of GA planes with prices (while in college I look through those thinking of maybe one day I'll buy one).
The economical doesn't seem to make sense but back then what you spend on fuel is significantly less to go from point A to B compared to a car. Ad also mention there are no speed limits, you can go as fast as your equipment can do so. Remember back then 55 mph was still standard on many freeways.
Shortly after that, GA industry collapsed. Well not really but it is now domain of business jets and definitely out of reach for middle class. There may be flying cars (actually better described as roadable airplanes), and they can be safe and still NEED FAA pilot's license. Question is affordability. Decades ago they were for many, not so much nowadays. And may become more out of reach. Helicopters were cheap in 1950s (suggesting they will be in every garage), however, they took ***much*** flying skill and were quite dangerous when pilots not paying attention. These days helicopters are quite easy to handle (so I've been told per constant RPM, control algorithms for weight and balance, etc.) but only govts, corporations, and stinking rich can afford them.
I too had some chemistry, physics and years of math that appeared to serve no purpose other than to "weed out" people from the program. However to my surprise I once had the opportunity to participate in a project that would port some chemistry software from mainframes to PCs. I would be interacting with world class polymer chemists. They did not expect me to be a chemist but they did expect me to be scientifically and mathematically literate. The general ed chemistry and physics and the years of math for computer science actually turned out to be useful.
Excellent answer for "why study math, physics and chemistry" which is to be scientifically and mathematically literate.
what really doubts me is actual use of a speedy jet for passenger travel. by the time you get through TSA, someone who were to swim the Atlantic will get there before you do. but then X51A is a hellava missile, awesome weapon system to further bankrupt this country.
alrighty I'm too lazy to search but I wonder if these two have something on FB and the Big Z.
ITAR. This is a big barrier for other countries to participate with NASA (US space program). Some of these have simply given up on collaboration with NASA, even though they are behind in space technology but with ITAR they are probably better off working on programs that have no NASA involvement.
... but make it into a keytar and you can wow the crowds like what Jeri Ellsworth did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LM2bom8fsw
From that Wired article is a link to another article written by the guy who co-designed the F-16 and A-10 http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/The-F-35s-Air-to-Air-Capability-Controversy-05089/
Interesting article, what first caught my eye was $300B, ouch. I remember back in the 20th century when F35 was called CALF, Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter.
rather than wait until they've passed what NASA can do.
in some ways they already passed what NASA can do. At this very moment we (USA) cannot put people in space. Of course we have systems under development.Orion though I don't know when they will ever fly it. There is still no launch vehicle everyone agrees on. Then there's Dragon....... gotta wait and see how it turns out.
"days of the independent radio stations is over."
speaking of independents, way back in the 20th century (1970s) there was this FM station called KFAT located in Gilroy(?), California. It played country but they played a lot of obscure songs of various artists even decades before (it's as if the DJs would scour used record stores and flea markets to find the oddest country tunes). And it was really independent as sometimes the DJ plopped down a LP and set the needle then go and take care of other items around the station. Sometimes a DJ would forget and a listener would have to call the station to let the DJ know the record run its course. Also at the time with the common church bumper stickers "I found it!" KFAT had their own bumper sticker for the fans, "I found it! (and it was hard to find to)." But alas the station was bought out by large media and changed the name to KWSS (KFAT followers called it K-wizz as in what you do when you pee).
Attending MSL landing event at NASA Ames is much cheaper as in free, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/events/2012/ames-curiosity.html
and rap (or hip hop, I guess there's a difference, all sounds the same to me) is more than 25 years old. There was a time when a new sound emerged i.e. jazz, rock-n-roll, acid rock, disco, .... but I wonder if The Business has priced itself out of the market and made huge barriers to new creative music. 30 years ago there was 30(?) major labels which have combined to just four (and they spend a lot of time going after pirates). So based on that, it doesn't surprise me someone publishes an article like this one. An not surprising we have posts such as, "Really?," "This is news?," and "Not just me."
reminds me of SpaceX Dragon as compared to LM Orion (ok, bad comparison in many ways), where Dragon was developed along with a launch vehicle and flown twice for about $1 billion (or of that magnitude). Orion is costing billions and billions... not sure when it will ever be flown. What is this difference? An effective cost control is when the money comes out of your own pocket. Unlike the other which is not.