Actually the program end is in 2015, with the de-orbit in 2016. This end, however, was pulled out of the previous NASA administrator's ass, when they realized the Bush administration wasn't going to come through with promised additional funding for Constellation / Orion / Aeries and flights to the Moon and Mars. NASA cancelled the ISS early, flushing the potential science down the toilet in anticipation of reallocating the projected funding to the Moon and Mars flights. They seriously annoyed their international partners (Japan, Europe, Russia) in the process. Don't let them fool you. I'm all in favor of expanded manned exploration, but I want it done right. Get the science we paid for out of the ISS. Build a launch system to reduce the cost of payload delivery to orbit, so that we can return to the Moon, and explore Mars and beyond with regular, sustained flight rates, not a political stunt once every fifty years or so.
This isn't an issue of sunk costs. It's an issue of entirely failing to capitalize upon the investment made, failing to do the science that the ISS was designed to do, the science that the public expected to happen when they funded the construction of the science platform. I merely enumerate the costs to demonstrate the magnitude of the crime that NASA and the Bush administration committed when they suddenly announced, without consulting their international partners, that the ISS would be de-orbited in 2016, far short of its original planned lifespan as a research platform. It was originally intended to be operational for 10 to 20 years, not four or five years, after it was completed.
Although a space station as a "construction shack" might be useful for really large projects, the ISS isn't in the right orbit to be used as a way station to anywhere interesting. Smaller projects can be assembled easily in whatever orbit happens to be convenient for the mission. A mobile construction shack with an ion engine and appropriately outfitted for such duty would make more sense and cost less than retooling ISS for this new mission. The real issue is the cost of getting to orbit. It's way too high. If we don't do something to bring the cost down (something realistic like X-33/VentureStar, not over-reaching like NASP et. al.) then we will not see anything other than a series of changing plans, and missions aborted at a succession of funding crises. We might, maybe, see a return to the Moon for a few flights, which would then be terminated prematurely to make room in the budget for a series of flights to Mars, which are then cancelled before flown.
I don't know how they plan to get this to the ISS, but Ad Astra and NASA agreed to test VASIMR ion engine at ISS. Assuming they can resupply the engine, and the engine parts designed life is sufficient, even this test article could work to keep ISS on station for quite a while. The Russian resupply vehicles (Progress) periodically boost the station, too.
That's one of the major problems with the current Constellation / Orion / Aeries I / Aeries V / Moon / Mars plan. Although it's likely to be quite a bit more reliable (e.g. safer) to fly, the Constellation program doesn't do much to increase access to space. Constellation re-uses the Apollo/Shuttle launch infrastructure, with only two launch pads and two (or possibly 3, there is an unfunded plan to build one more) crawlers, and the constraints of the Vertical Assembly Building (with a limited number of assembly bays, one of which is used for storage of rocket parts). This means the flight rate to orbit tops out at something like a dozen or 18 launches a year, maximum. Flight rates for the heavy lift Aeries V are likely to be so low that the vehicle will never achieve a reasonable per-flight cost, because too few vehicles will be built to get the cost of flight hardware down.
NASA has abandoned the goal of building a reliable, cheaper transportation system. They were hot on the trail with the X-33 / VentureStar program. Like nearly all R&D programs, it went over the original budget and behind schedule. However, the program had the right goals, and the right basic plan for getting to them. If NASA had stayed on course, we would have had a replacement for the Shuttle by now. The planned VentureStar production flight vehicles would be flexible enough to sustain the ISS. It would have a capacity high enough (in terms of payload per flight, which was similar to the Shuttle) and flights per year (which could scale with the addition of vehicles, without the constraints of the expensive and limited Apollo-era launch systems). The modernized vehicle design (lifting body airframe, engines with fewer moving parts, substantially more durable thermal protection system, simplified container-paradigm-based payload integration) would yield shorter turn-around of a single vehicle, from days to a couple weeks, compared to a few months to several months for the Shuttle).
Instead, NASA dabbles in scramjets, with a million here and a million there in loose change. Scramjets are a technology with great potential, but even if aggressively funded (which they are not) they won't be ready for a long, long time. A more modest program like the X-33 / VentureStar could get us to higher flight rates with Shuttle-like capacity and reduction in cost of payload delivery which would be substantial enough to stimulate the space economy. We could get to the Moon and Mars a lot cheaper, and go there more often with a rational approach to building a transportation system. (NASA needs to rethink the in-space transfer vehicles, too. VASIMR is a technology within our reach, and if developed as the inter-planetary engine, can dramatically reduce flight times to Mars, from many months to 1 month.)
Well, vast amounts of science, as you say, could possibly be done on it. Thing is, not much of the possible science really started. The substantial delays in construction meant that the crew required to do the science, and many of the modules, didn't arrive until recently. That's why dumping the thing in a few short years is such a crime. $100 Billion, twenty years, and the lives of seven astronauts were given to build the ISS, and NASA wants to dump it to make room in their budget for an unfunded Mars stunt. The very plan is criminal.
Your rule of thumb is broken. Convert the same square mile of farmland to some other use, such as building automobile manufacturing plants in the 70s or 80s, and you get a rate of return that dwarfs what you dismiss as "too good to be true".
"Stallman only has cookies (the GNU toolchain, the GPL), he does not have a beating stick. He is not forcing anyone to do anything. He is not forcing anyone to even listen to him. You can write software and license it under whatever the hell you want, Stallman respects your choice as long as it is lawful. You should know who makes free software look unappealing through rhetoric and monopolistic practices: Microsoft, Apple and friends. Apple does it even as they leech on the work of the BSD team. Stallman is not it."
Stallman's stick is the threat of legal action for violations of the GPL. It's not a very well funded stick, so it's more like a soggy carrot that's been in the refrigerator too long, with a bit of masking tape down one side, and the word "stick" written thereupon with a sharpie. Be that as it may, it's still a theoretical stick. A serious GPL violation might inspire some well funded GPL fans to wrest the soggy carrot from Stallman's hands (both being firmly upon it at all times), bronze it, and hand it back, in more robust stick-like form.
Stallman's carrots, include the contribution of an open source (not free) compiler to the world -- a truly wonderful thing in many ways. The intellectual contribution of the viral/sticky (no pun intended) GPL approach to free software code licensing and sharing is even greater. I admire both contributions, and both contributions were noble, and selfless.
However, the flip side of this coin is that the Stallman GPL approach denies the value (and attempts to undermine with virility and stickiness) a model which has proven to be valuable to many people and organizations -- the truly free and entirely unencumbered BSD style software licensing model. The GNU toolchain, largely because it wasn't really free (as in speech, love, and BSD) and because people didn't really quite understand that, sucked all the air out of the room, essentially killed the compiler industry, and stifled compiler innovation, for roughly twenty years. This, too, is a valid perspective. Both can be (and happen to be) true at the same time, about the same thing.
Your criticism of Apple is odd. Apple contributes in dramatic and substantial ways to free software. WebKit is rescuing the standards-based internet from almost certain doom. Please don't try to claim that Mozilla saved it, you'll be laughed out of the room. If it wasn't for the sudden competitive pressure from WebKit, Firefox still wouldn't pass the Acid 2 test suite.
Ever hear of LLVM? Got any idea how many full time Apple developers contribute to LLVM related projects? (Oodles.) It's going to liberate the BSD team from the tyranny of GCC. You'll thank 'em, later.
Oh, I suppose you probably know this stuff already, since this claim that Apple exploits free software unfairly has been debunked at Slashdot probably hundreds of times in the past few years by people with direct knowledge of Apple's contributions to open source teams. I saw one recent post which listed over a dozen significant projects to which Apple has made major contributions, many of which directly benefited the BSD team.
Bureaucracies seem to be scared of this agile stuff, because it doesn't pretend to be able to answer questions like, "given this enormous pile of features, how many developers do we need to get this project done in 18 months?" Of course, the various methods they use do give them answers to these sorts of questions, demonstrably and wildly incorrect answers. So really, all it requires is a fundamental shift in mindset, and a shift to managing projects with an agile mindset. That's probably not possible for most organizations. They prefer certainty and predictability, out into the range where it simply doesn't exist. They prefer to fail time after time after time, and are willing to live with occasional, accidental success for thirty years past its useful life. But of course you know this.
Got it, in one! Bioengineering is potentially dangerous. Various analogs of the "grey goo" problem are a real bioengineering risk today, and we're not ready to deal with it any more than the far future hypothetical nano-engineering risk. Corporations, by default, will be inclined to ignore risks like this, and it's not clear how to effectively regulate it. Think the financial crisis was a problem? Wait until we make our first major screw up with bioengineering.
For the record, I think that this type of ethanol production has the potential to replace oil for transportation. We need to make sure we invest properly in risk investigation and management, so we don't completely wreck the biosphere in some disastrous new way, in the process.
No, the consensus is that there is a lot of natural gas to be tapped. The problem is that it still dumps CO2 into the atmosphere, and a lot of the reserves are in the same places where the oil is.
Your example is flawed. Even if Apple dropped support for all non-Apple devices from iTunes, you could still find some other program to manage your contacts and music. Still no monopoly abuse.
Yeah. It's totally insane. It's also unfair that your observations were modded "flamebait". The only thing you missed was failing to connect the dots between your advice and the problems you listed.
"There are too many distro's.
...
Do something, go to your favorite distro's website buy something."
You flunked the Sesame Street test. You meant to say:
Everybody vote for a favorite distro, then everybody go download that distro and live on it, and contribute to it, and buy a t-shirt from the same web site, supporting the same project and for Kernighan and Ritchie's sakes do not fork it under any circumstances, make it better.
Many of the UNIX command line utilities are based on open source projects covered by a BSD (or similarly entirely free license), and some are covered by GPL licenses (which are more restrictive and by simple definition are thus less "free" or "open"). The most important GPL software in Mac OS X is arguably the GNU compiler, gcc. Apple is a major contributor to the LLVM project, which will at some point replace gcc as the primary compiler tool chain on the Mac OS X.
Apple has also sponsored a few other interesting open source projects such as Darwin Calendar Server, WebKit, and of course the Darwin UNIX kernel. Most of these projects are covered by a BSD or similar license.
Apple's implementation of the Cocoa Framework is not an open source framework, but it is based on an open specification, OpenStep specification, although it has evolved past the specification. There is an alternative, open source implementation, GnuStep.
I signed up early and played with it some. It's an interesting concept, but it suffers mightily from a signal to noise ratio which started out at "Digg" level and is falling rapidly to "Reddit". Last week they finally added an option to reply to a query with the single magic keyword "google", and the system will construct a polite reply suggesting that the person who asked, "Where can I download Microsoft Windows security patches" or whatever, will get a polite reply suggesting they try a google search. This won't save it, however. The model is broken, and it's not clear how to fix it.
Frankly Microsoft, undeniably, share that "antimatter" characteristic with Stallman, and although they haven't demonstrated much in the way of competence to exploit it, Zuckerberg / FaceBook aspire to that level of domination. Philosophically, Google doesn't, even though they dominate search quite thoroughly, Wolfram Alpha and Bing have recently shown that there is room even in search for serious innovation, and potentially come competition.
Google appears to be the one company in this mix that seems to subscribe to the notion that a rising tide floats all boats. Look at what they are doing with Google Wave as a fascinating example (innovative, open standards based, open source implementation).
Microsoft's world domination by operating system monopoly is over, they are a dead man walking.
FaceBook will integrate with Google Wave, or they will become irrelevant.
Blog engine makers will have an opportunity to see blogs on an equal footing with FaceBook, by integrating with Google Wave. Bloggers will have a chance to spark a conversation through their social network, as with FaceBook, but they will also have the chance to have that conversation grow beyond their circle of friends, as with a high profile blog today. As a participant in those conversations, your contribution today is normally "fire and forget" (I always wonder why people bother posting to the comments area of the major newspapers, where there comment is read only by them and one or two lunatics with an axe to grind). Tomorrow, with Google Wave, you can participate in conversations all over the internet, without the need to remember to go back to hundreds of places to check to see if anyone else was interested in what you said.
If they (or someone else) figure out how to build a decent set of filters and ratings into it, Google Wave might make Digg irrelevant.
Google Wave (be sure to watch the video, it's long, but there is lots of interesting stuff in it) will provide a system based on open standards and open source code. It will let folk use their own email inbox, IM client, and blog as the focus of their communication with the world. The open federated model will end the stovepipe model where I must have 5 IM systems, 3 to 5 social networking systems, and hundreds of blog logins what I must keep track of to communicate with folk. FaceBook will probably integrate and play with it, so they won't die overnight, but they wont' become the center of the internet. Google Wave, assuming it works as envisioned, will probably cement the "Google at the center of the internet" model, but it will leave room for other players, probably even help them, even those who could challenge Google Ads.
"As a satellite designer you should also recognize that it's the solar power density in space, rather than panel efficiency, that make solar so useful in space."
Well, satellite designers know that they are willing to pay a million dollars a square foot for a solar panel which is about 1% more efficient than a typical commercial panel, because it's so damned expensive to launch a pound of anything, and those precious pounds better generate as much energy as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Near the end of 2008, Ad Astra and NASA signed an agreement to build a 200kw flight article and test it at ISS.
Actually the program end is in 2015, with the de-orbit in 2016. This end, however, was pulled out of the previous NASA administrator's ass, when they realized the Bush administration wasn't going to come through with promised additional funding for Constellation / Orion / Aeries and flights to the Moon and Mars. NASA cancelled the ISS early, flushing the potential science down the toilet in anticipation of reallocating the projected funding to the Moon and Mars flights. They seriously annoyed their international partners (Japan, Europe, Russia) in the process. Don't let them fool you. I'm all in favor of expanded manned exploration, but I want it done right. Get the science we paid for out of the ISS. Build a launch system to reduce the cost of payload delivery to orbit, so that we can return to the Moon, and explore Mars and beyond with regular, sustained flight rates, not a political stunt once every fifty years or so.
This isn't an issue of sunk costs. It's an issue of entirely failing to capitalize upon the investment made, failing to do the science that the ISS was designed to do, the science that the public expected to happen when they funded the construction of the science platform. I merely enumerate the costs to demonstrate the magnitude of the crime that NASA and the Bush administration committed when they suddenly announced, without consulting their international partners, that the ISS would be de-orbited in 2016, far short of its original planned lifespan as a research platform. It was originally intended to be operational for 10 to 20 years, not four or five years, after it was completed.
Although a space station as a "construction shack" might be useful for really large projects, the ISS isn't in the right orbit to be used as a way station to anywhere interesting. Smaller projects can be assembled easily in whatever orbit happens to be convenient for the mission. A mobile construction shack with an ion engine and appropriately outfitted for such duty would make more sense and cost less than retooling ISS for this new mission. The real issue is the cost of getting to orbit. It's way too high. If we don't do something to bring the cost down (something realistic like X-33/VentureStar, not over-reaching like NASP et. al.) then we will not see anything other than a series of changing plans, and missions aborted at a succession of funding crises. We might, maybe, see a return to the Moon for a few flights, which would then be terminated prematurely to make room in the budget for a series of flights to Mars, which are then cancelled before flown.
I don't know how they plan to get this to the ISS, but Ad Astra and NASA agreed to test VASIMR ion engine at ISS. Assuming they can resupply the engine, and the engine parts designed life is sufficient, even this test article could work to keep ISS on station for quite a while. The Russian resupply vehicles (Progress) periodically boost the station, too.
That's one of the major problems with the current Constellation / Orion / Aeries I / Aeries V / Moon / Mars plan. Although it's likely to be quite a bit more reliable (e.g. safer) to fly, the Constellation program doesn't do much to increase access to space. Constellation re-uses the Apollo/Shuttle launch infrastructure, with only two launch pads and two (or possibly 3, there is an unfunded plan to build one more) crawlers, and the constraints of the Vertical Assembly Building (with a limited number of assembly bays, one of which is used for storage of rocket parts). This means the flight rate to orbit tops out at something like a dozen or 18 launches a year, maximum. Flight rates for the heavy lift Aeries V are likely to be so low that the vehicle will never achieve a reasonable per-flight cost, because too few vehicles will be built to get the cost of flight hardware down.
NASA has abandoned the goal of building a reliable, cheaper transportation system. They were hot on the trail with the X-33 / VentureStar program. Like nearly all R&D programs, it went over the original budget and behind schedule. However, the program had the right goals, and the right basic plan for getting to them. If NASA had stayed on course, we would have had a replacement for the Shuttle by now. The planned VentureStar production flight vehicles would be flexible enough to sustain the ISS. It would have a capacity high enough (in terms of payload per flight, which was similar to the Shuttle) and flights per year (which could scale with the addition of vehicles, without the constraints of the expensive and limited Apollo-era launch systems). The modernized vehicle design (lifting body airframe, engines with fewer moving parts, substantially more durable thermal protection system, simplified container-paradigm-based payload integration) would yield shorter turn-around of a single vehicle, from days to a couple weeks, compared to a few months to several months for the Shuttle).
Instead, NASA dabbles in scramjets, with a million here and a million there in loose change. Scramjets are a technology with great potential, but even if aggressively funded (which they are not) they won't be ready for a long, long time. A more modest program like the X-33 / VentureStar could get us to higher flight rates with Shuttle-like capacity and reduction in cost of payload delivery which would be substantial enough to stimulate the space economy. We could get to the Moon and Mars a lot cheaper, and go there more often with a rational approach to building a transportation system. (NASA needs to rethink the in-space transfer vehicles, too. VASIMR is a technology within our reach, and if developed as the inter-planetary engine, can dramatically reduce flight times to Mars, from many months to 1 month.)
Well, vast amounts of science, as you say, could possibly be done on it. Thing is, not much of the possible science really started. The substantial delays in construction meant that the crew required to do the science, and many of the modules, didn't arrive until recently. That's why dumping the thing in a few short years is such a crime. $100 Billion, twenty years, and the lives of seven astronauts were given to build the ISS, and NASA wants to dump it to make room in their budget for an unfunded Mars stunt. The very plan is criminal.
Your rule of thumb is broken. Convert the same square mile of farmland to some other use, such as building automobile manufacturing plants in the 70s or 80s, and you get a rate of return that dwarfs what you dismiss as "too good to be true".
Stallman's stick is the threat of legal action for violations of the GPL. It's not a very well funded stick, so it's more like a soggy carrot that's been in the refrigerator too long, with a bit of masking tape down one side, and the word "stick" written thereupon with a sharpie. Be that as it may, it's still a theoretical stick. A serious GPL violation might inspire some well funded GPL fans to wrest the soggy carrot from Stallman's hands (both being firmly upon it at all times), bronze it, and hand it back, in more robust stick-like form.
Stallman's carrots, include the contribution of an open source (not free) compiler to the world -- a truly wonderful thing in many ways. The intellectual contribution of the viral/sticky (no pun intended) GPL approach to free software code licensing and sharing is even greater. I admire both contributions, and both contributions were noble, and selfless.
However, the flip side of this coin is that the Stallman GPL approach denies the value (and attempts to undermine with virility and stickiness) a model which has proven to be valuable to many people and organizations -- the truly free and entirely unencumbered BSD style software licensing model. The GNU toolchain, largely because it wasn't really free (as in speech, love, and BSD) and because people didn't really quite understand that, sucked all the air out of the room, essentially killed the compiler industry, and stifled compiler innovation, for roughly twenty years. This, too, is a valid perspective. Both can be (and happen to be) true at the same time, about the same thing.
Your criticism of Apple is odd. Apple contributes in dramatic and substantial ways to free software. WebKit is rescuing the standards-based internet from almost certain doom. Please don't try to claim that Mozilla saved it, you'll be laughed out of the room. If it wasn't for the sudden competitive pressure from WebKit, Firefox still wouldn't pass the Acid 2 test suite.
Ever hear of LLVM? Got any idea how many full time Apple developers contribute to LLVM related projects? (Oodles.) It's going to liberate the BSD team from the tyranny of GCC. You'll thank 'em, later.
Oh, I suppose you probably know this stuff already, since this claim that Apple exploits free software unfairly has been debunked at Slashdot probably hundreds of times in the past few years by people with direct knowledge of Apple's contributions to open source teams. I saw one recent post which listed over a dozen significant projects to which Apple has made major contributions, many of which directly benefited the BSD team.
Either way, this guy is a candidate for a walk to the creek with Pat Buchanan.
Article Summary FAIL.
Bureaucracies seem to be scared of this agile stuff, because it doesn't pretend to be able to answer questions like, "given this enormous pile of features, how many developers do we need to get this project done in 18 months?" Of course, the various methods they use do give them answers to these sorts of questions, demonstrably and wildly incorrect answers. So really, all it requires is a fundamental shift in mindset, and a shift to managing projects with an agile mindset. That's probably not possible for most organizations. They prefer certainty and predictability, out into the range where it simply doesn't exist. They prefer to fail time after time after time, and are willing to live with occasional, accidental success for thirty years past its useful life. But of course you know this.
Everywhere we look, we see single-celled organisms swapping genes. I'm just sayin'.
Got it, in one! Bioengineering is potentially dangerous. Various analogs of the "grey goo" problem are a real bioengineering risk today, and we're not ready to deal with it any more than the far future hypothetical nano-engineering risk. Corporations, by default, will be inclined to ignore risks like this, and it's not clear how to effectively regulate it. Think the financial crisis was a problem? Wait until we make our first major screw up with bioengineering.
For the record, I think that this type of ethanol production has the potential to replace oil for transportation. We need to make sure we invest properly in risk investigation and management, so we don't completely wreck the biosphere in some disastrous new way, in the process.
You don't wan them to figure that out, do you? ;-)
No, the consensus is that there is a lot of natural gas to be tapped. The problem is that it still dumps CO2 into the atmosphere, and a lot of the reserves are in the same places where the oil is.
Your example is flawed. Even if Apple dropped support for all non-Apple devices from iTunes, you could still find some other program to manage your contacts and music. Still no monopoly abuse.
Well, because you are interested in getting work done, not running porn programs other than Safari.
There. Fixed that for you.
Yeah. It's totally insane. It's also unfair that your observations were modded "flamebait". The only thing you missed was failing to connect the dots between your advice and the problems you listed.
You flunked the Sesame Street test. You meant to say:
Everybody vote for a favorite distro, then everybody go download that distro and live on it, and contribute to it, and buy a t-shirt from the same web site, supporting the same project and for Kernighan and Ritchie's sakes do not fork it under any circumstances, make it better.
Many of the UNIX command line utilities are based on open source projects covered by a BSD (or similarly entirely free license), and some are covered by GPL licenses (which are more restrictive and by simple definition are thus less "free" or "open"). The most important GPL software in Mac OS X is arguably the GNU compiler, gcc. Apple is a major contributor to the LLVM project, which will at some point replace gcc as the primary compiler tool chain on the Mac OS X.
Apple has also sponsored a few other interesting open source projects such as Darwin Calendar Server, WebKit, and of course the Darwin UNIX kernel. Most of these projects are covered by a BSD or similar license.
Apple's implementation of the Cocoa Framework is not an open source framework, but it is based on an open specification, OpenStep specification, although it has evolved past the specification. There is an alternative, open source implementation, GnuStep.
There. Fixed it for you.
I signed up early and played with it some. It's an interesting concept, but it suffers mightily from a signal to noise ratio which started out at "Digg" level and is falling rapidly to "Reddit". Last week they finally added an option to reply to a query with the single magic keyword "google", and the system will construct a polite reply suggesting that the person who asked, "Where can I download Microsoft Windows security patches" or whatever, will get a polite reply suggesting they try a google search. This won't save it, however. The model is broken, and it's not clear how to fix it.
Frankly Microsoft, undeniably, share that "antimatter" characteristic with Stallman, and although they haven't demonstrated much in the way of competence to exploit it, Zuckerberg / FaceBook aspire to that level of domination. Philosophically, Google doesn't, even though they dominate search quite thoroughly, Wolfram Alpha and Bing have recently shown that there is room even in search for serious innovation, and potentially come competition.
Google appears to be the one company in this mix that seems to subscribe to the notion that a rising tide floats all boats. Look at what they are doing with Google Wave as a fascinating example (innovative, open standards based, open source implementation).
Microsoft's world domination by operating system monopoly is over, they are a dead man walking.
FaceBook will integrate with Google Wave, or they will become irrelevant.
Blog engine makers will have an opportunity to see blogs on an equal footing with FaceBook, by integrating with Google Wave. Bloggers will have a chance to spark a conversation through their social network, as with FaceBook, but they will also have the chance to have that conversation grow beyond their circle of friends, as with a high profile blog today. As a participant in those conversations, your contribution today is normally "fire and forget" (I always wonder why people bother posting to the comments area of the major newspapers, where there comment is read only by them and one or two lunatics with an axe to grind). Tomorrow, with Google Wave, you can participate in conversations all over the internet, without the need to remember to go back to hundreds of places to check to see if anyone else was interested in what you said.
If they (or someone else) figure out how to build a decent set of filters and ratings into it, Google Wave might make Digg irrelevant.
Google Wave (be sure to watch the video, it's long, but there is lots of interesting stuff in it) will provide a system based on open standards and open source code. It will let folk use their own email inbox, IM client, and blog as the focus of their communication with the world. The open federated model will end the stovepipe model where I must have 5 IM systems, 3 to 5 social networking systems, and hundreds of blog logins what I must keep track of to communicate with folk. FaceBook will probably integrate and play with it, so they won't die overnight, but they wont' become the center of the internet. Google Wave, assuming it works as envisioned, will probably cement the "Google at the center of the internet" model, but it will leave room for other players, probably even help them, even those who could challenge Google Ads.
Well, satellite designers know that they are willing to pay a million dollars a square foot for a solar panel which is about 1% more efficient than a typical commercial panel, because it's so damned expensive to launch a pound of anything, and those precious pounds better generate as much energy as possible.