let he that has not ever typo'd cast the first Godwin.
I thought it was Goodwin?
Nope it's Godwin's Law. Admittedly my use of it was rather oblique as I was thinking of "grammar Nazis," the behavior of and label for are both ridiculous. Apologies if I'm missing a pun or something.
Why would a man join this site compared with dating sites that let him see photos and don't make him jump through silly hoops?
One advantage is that if you see a woman's profile, there is a good chance shell be interested in you since she filtered out all the profiles that she hates. So it could actually be a more pleasant experience for men as well since the number of ignored/rejected initiations should go down. More likely more men will create profiles and no women will be interested in them and they'll have no chance at all. But who knows, maybe it'll work to both parties advantage.
And right after hitting submit, the typos just pop out of the page at me. Why can't we edit our posts? Keep a history that people can review, I'm fine with that. But seriously, let he that has not ever typo'd cast the first Godwin.
Maybe you haven't read it in detail but in these texts were the first ever commandments that slaves be given rights, and eventually freed as well as punishmnets for mistreatment of slaves....
" Gay rights? Nope."
In texts that propose that sexual perversion is evil and evil is bad, no i don't think it would champion "gay rights".
"Women's equality? Nope."
the old testament gave women rights above what had existed previously, the new testament elevated women to equality with men in the eyes of god...
Religious freedom?
"Religious freedom", wow ok, maybe the old testament but definitely not the new... the new testament forbids anything other than loving your neighbor so i don't see how anyone could associate anything else with christianity without blatantly overlooking the stated intent of it's founder.
Freedom of speech?
wtf? i'm not even sure what you're talking about.. grasping at straws i guess...
"If you mean in some magical sense where the universe or reality at its core cares one way or another, no values are better than other values. But I assure you, some values lead to more flourishing and some values lead to more suffering."
the one value the universe holds which is pretty self evident, is one of balance, which is pretty much the core value of the old/new testament too.. so.. if i had to guess you hate anything religious and this attests to the slant and bias your post is full of...
You're right, I'm not found of religion in general, especially not when the literal interpretation of religious texts can be used to oppress people and suppress progress. And my post is in response to one claiming that all our modern values are specifically Judeo-Christian, so course it's "slanted." It's a counter-point. Now, to your points:
The Old Testament gives some rights to some slaves. I guess that's improvement. It does not require all slaves to be released eventually, as you imply. It's still OK to have slaves for their entire lives in both testaments. It's also OK to beat them though in certain circumstances the "owner" may be punished and/or the slave released. Nowhere in the bible is it clearly immoral to own another human being. That is a modern value that did not come from the texts.
We agree that the texts don't support gay rights. Clearly that that is a secular value, not a Judeo-Christian one.
At times, the New Testament does elevate women in the eyes of God. Unfortunately it also makes it clear that women are second class citizens on Earth, which is the life I care about. So women can pray, proselytize, and get to go to heaven (yay!), but must submit to their husbands, be silent in church, should not teach or "usurp" a man. Not a strong case for equal rights, female CEOs or even women's suffrage (boo!). Once again, equal rights for women on Earth is a secular one, not a Judeo-Christian one.
Freedom of speech is a core value in modern democratic societies, which is why I mentioned it. Not that the BIble has much to say one way or another (yes, blasphemy will be forgiven, for the most part so I guess that's nice.) The same for religious freedom, it's a value of modern secular society not the Bible. I'm not saying the Bible should support it, just that it's a modern secular value not a Judeo-Christian value.
The whole point of my original post was that modern values are not the obvious result of Judeo-Christian sacred texts, they are the result of external pressures (Greek philosophy, The Enlightenment, etc.) or at best a cherry-picking of those texts by people who's moral values have thankfully evolved.
P.S. On the whole Old Testament vs. New Testament argument where supposedly the New Testament makes everything better. As far as I can tell, actual Bible scholars are still arguing whether the New Testament replaces all of the Old Testament's laws, or just some of them and if some of them exactly which ones. This is unfortunate when debating
Why should she not be simply because she is friends with the President? We see again that our Republican rulers do not treat us fairly.
Republican rulers?
Why should she not be simply because she is friends with the President?
Republican - I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I don't know, I've often joked that Obama is one of the better Republican presidents we've had in recent memory. And not to disparage Republicans or even Obama. [1] If he had any actual socialist tendencies he would have pushed for a single payer option instead of the insurance company windfall that was passed. You know the political system is screwed up when you miss Richard Nixon.
We should thank secular values for keeping religion in check and forcing its reformation. BTW islam needs a deep reformation too ASAP if you didn't notice.
lol
In the West, secular values are Judea-Christian values. You can't separate one from the other, no matter how hard you try.
Sorry, but the arrow of progress usually comes from ideas outside of religion or at least outside of the fundamental, literal interpretation of religious texts. Democracy is not a Judea-Christian value, we got that from the greeks. And not from their religious beliefs, but rather from their philosophers. While there were Christians who fought slavery, the idea that slavery is immoral is not based on the Jewish nor Christian sacred texts which explain in detail who can be a slave, and how to treat slaves. 10 commandments, none of them even hint that slavery is bad. Gay rights? Nope. Women's equality? Nope. Religious freedom? Nope? Freedom of speech? Nope. Secular western society is a direct result of The Enlightenment which was not based on Christian theology, even though many of the participants were Christian. The Enlightenment was based on the belief that humans were capable of understanding how the world works and that we could and should use that knowledge to improve life before death. The Enlightenment encouraged questioning long held beliefs and assumptions.
Modern society is built upon The Enlightenment. So called Judeo-Christian values have evolved in response to The Enlightenment. Not the other way around.
But suppose you could. Why would one group's secular values be any better or worse than another's? Why would your secular values be better than Islam's religious values?
If you mean in some magical sense where the universe or reality at its core cares one way or another, no values are better than other values. But I assure you, some values lead to more flourishing and some values lead to more suffering.
Leaving out Boeing would be budget suicide for NASA.
No one should be left out because there should be no contract. Instead, NASA should be fostering a spot market for launches. They should have a separate bid for each launch: "We want X satellite in Y orbit, and insured for Z dollars." Then give the launch to the lowest bidder. That way each company can work continuously to cut costs and improve services, knowing that if they leapfrog the competition, they can win the next launch, instead of being locked out for years.
Except there is not an existing manned spaceflight market, just like prior to the commercial cargo contracts their was not a commercial cargo market. If you award a contract to the lowest bidder (or for that matter, any other criteria) before any hardware exists, then only one company will develop the hardware. This is how it used to work, and is exactly what these contracts are meant to avoid. If you only have a single winner, and that winner is developing the hardware based on the contract they won, then when there are cost overruns they will simply tell you they ran out of money. Give us more, or we quit. Or, they will go out of business. You can't run a company in the red forever, even if you signed a contract.
If you are proposing that companies should build functional hardware and then bid, it's not going to happen (except maybe with SpaceX eventually, but they are the crazy exception with a non-financial goal. But it would not happen on NASAs timetable.) It's not going to happen because the risk to reward is off the charts. Spend billions of dollars developing a manned rated launch vehicle, capsule and infrastructure hoping to win a contract? No sane company would do that.
Now, once there is a real market for spaceflight, then investors may take a shot at entering it if they think they can win a piece of the pie. But that market can't exist until there are commercial manned launch vehicles. You have to prime the pump, at least if you want something on a timetable.
They couldn't give it to SpaceX because SpaceX didn't win according to the terms of the competition. From Bloomberg a few weeks ago, "Boeing was the only competitor to meet all of the required milestones". SpaceX was a giveaway to reduce political pressure, and hopefully SNC's protest is against the SpaceX award, which could be overturned, not Boeing's award, which is solid.
SpaceX did win based on terms of the competition and they did complete all of their milestones before the announcement. Furthermore, each company had different milestones based on their proposals and SpaceX's milestones where much more aggressive than Boeing's. For instance, SpaceX already has hardware off of their production line that will be used in a pad abort test in November and an in-flight abort test this coming January. Boeing isn't anywhere near that far along even though they "met all their milestones" sooner.
I am not saying that Boeing did anything wrong, they have farther to go to build a usable capsule and their proposal and milestones reflect this. That's why Boeing is being awarded more money, they have more development to do to finish including developing a new second stage for use with the Atlas V launch vehicle. Contrary to all the frantic arm waving, it is actually a fairly sane process. Competitors are required to make plausible proposals and then show progress against those proposals.
This time, they launched without the landing legs, but since they are still testing above water that does not matter a lot. Deploying the legs and soft landing on water have been tried successfully already, so I imagine they could test other things like partially flying back to the launching site, fuel permitting. The twitters are silent, so far, however.
At the NASA pre-launch press conference, Hans Koenigsmann said that they would be doing the first boost back burn, as well as a re-entry and "landing" burn. At the SpaceX CRS-4 Post Launch Briefing he said that it looked like all the burns wear successful, but they had to wait for the boat that collected telemetry to return.
I feel like I've seen some confirmation on good telemetry on twitter, but I can't find it now and this story is old enough that no one will likely see my post anyway...
SpaceX is already in the process of man-rating Dragon. NASA is, apparently, perfectly willing to let SpaceX run through the man-rating checklists as long as NASA doesn't have to pay for it.
This is true, you can lose funding but continue to participate in meeting various milestones. I believe that Blue Origin already falls into this category.
But NASAs "manned rating" only applies to flying NASA missions. NASA has no control over non-NASA missions - think Bigelow private funded space stations, MarsOne, etc...
If we want to settle Mars and generally expand into space, you need manned spaceflight. I know not everyone thinks that is important. But some people, myself included, do believe that is a worthwhile endeavor.
The scientific return comes from unmanned spaceflight. Manned spaceflights are stunts to keep the pork flowing to Congressionally powerful districts. There is nothing done by manned spaceflight that could not be done unmanned for one tenth or one hundredth the cost as an unmanned mission.
This is true, if the only reason for spaceflight is pure science. I am a huge fan of pure science, but I don't think that is the only purpose of spaceflight.
The problem is that NASA is run by ex-flyboys and astronauts. There is an internal battle between the manned spaceflight directorate and the science directorate (NASA/JPL). The former do maned pork and are always trying to steal funds away from the science guys. The manned fighter-jocks tried to kill planetary science many times, the last time was earlier this year. At one point they allocated more for a Space Toilet (30 mil) than they did for a Europa mission (15 mi).
NASA needs a shakeup and the science guys need equal control at the top.
I think the bigger problem is that NASA funding (and therefore mission selection) is completely hostage to election cycles of Congressmen, Senators and the President. It's impossible to have a coherent long term plan.
While commercial corporations interested in launching their product into space may go with the best price/performance ratio, the chances of a USG contract even being written in a vendor-agnostic manner are slim. It's all about whose district or state the potential money will go.
Actually the commercial cargo and commercial crew contracts were written specifically to avoid those sorts of shenanigans. Congress has no say in who wins. Of course Senators and Congressmen are still trying to play games for their constituents (like the latest accusations that SpaceX has had unreasonable flight anomalies from senators in competitors states.) They are also trying to starve the entire program of money specifically because it is a threat to ULA. But all in all, the commercial contract approach is a huge improvement and it looks likely that SpaceX or SNC will win the bid (possibly both, if Congress will fund that. It makes sense to have two launch providers so an "incident" doesn't completely halt flights - like the shuttle disasters did.) Funny that the article doesn't even mention SNA (Dream Chaser.)
One of the reasons that SpaceX and/or SNC will likely win is that they both are dedicated to developing their spacecraft regardless of the outcome of the bidding process. Losing the contract would slow development, but not stop it. Where as Boeing, with all their money and resources, has publicly stated that they will mothball development if they don't win. (This is a strange attitude given the fact Boeing and Bigelow are partners in the commercial crew competition.) One of the criteria for winning is the commercial viability of the spacecraft. NASA does not want to be in the position of being financially black mailed with threats like "we need more money or we can't survive". The fact that SpaceX and SNC are pursuing non-NASA missions is seen as a major advantage according to insiders.
There is nothing in there that low grade code monkeys, which is the vast majority of the software industry, need to know. I mean, how much skills do you have to have to run a mom and pop web store, publish the jillionth fart app, or maintain a payroll system?
Of course, these code monkeys get swamped whenever the next major technology change comes along but, hey, we can't all be good enough to work for Google or Apple, etc.
Slashdot, where egotistical rants (by someone to lazy to create an account and log in) about other people being idiots is modded insightful.
..., not to mention that Texas has no income tax; what moron would build a factory in California? Elon was just being nice when he didn't categorically rule it out when asked.
You realize that both the Tesla factory and the SpaceX factory are in California, right? So I guess Elon Musk is a moron...
We Americans need to remember what war is and what it is not. It's not about winning hearts and minds, it's about fragging hearts and minds.
If we kept this in mind we would resume winning wars again ala 1945, but there are too many bleeding heart liberals who couldn't handle this brutal variety of truth. Therefore those who can't handle this sort of truth should STFU re: foreign intervention.
Maybe a better lesson would be not to invade countries that pose no serious threat to the US and not to believe the fantasy that if you destroy a country's infrastructure that a thankful democracy will emerge from a sea of sectarian hatred.
I'd rather have seas 30 feet higher in 100-300 years and living with (say) 2314-year tech than current seas and year 2200 tech in 2314...or 2214. Hech, a 10% slowdown, miserably easy for an overbearing government to achieve, would yield a 30 year delta at the end. Hell, I'd rather have 2014 tech than 1984-tech.
Proposed solutions matter and should be judged in the context of tech advancement, or lack thereof. That's what saves lives.
You seem to be creating a false dichotomy, implying that addressing climate change would slow technological growth. Modernizing the power grid, storing energy from non-greenhouse gas generating power sources, better power management, electric cars, solar power, nuclear power, fusion, etc are all technologies that would make life better. Besides reducing green house gasses, energy ultimately becomes cheaper and pollution is reduced worldwide.
Sounds horrible. It's interesting to me that many opposed to AGW (not saying you), complain about the AGW alarmists, but they themselves are economic alarmists. As if addressing climate change will destroy the economy.
SpaceX is not competing with NASA, because NASA doesn't make rockets. NASA has input on the design requirements, but all the real work is done by private contractors, like Lockheed and Boeing. SpaceX is just a new contractor and they operate just like the others. They have some interesting new engineering approaches that may reduce costs, but it's not any fundamentally new business model.
Actually, it is a fundamentally different business model. You are correct that it was always private companies that did the final design and construction of the rockets, but historically Congress forced many decisions on NASA based largely on spreading the money around. For instance, NASA wanted the Space Shuttle to use liquid fueled boosters, but Congress insisted on the SRBs specifically so Thiokol Corporation of Utah would get the business. The same thing is happening with the STS under development now. Congress is forcing NASA to use Shuttle components in the first generation STS specifically to funnel money into certain congressional districts. Under the non-commercial contracts, Congress and NASA actually make design decisions that may not be optimum from an engineering perspective.
The rules under which SpaceX performs NASA missions, are much different. NASA does not get involved in the design of the rocket/spacecraft beyond listing requirements that must be met. Some seed money is provided, for companies that win bids to compete. But ultimately the winners are paid a fixed price - which is also a big difference. Historically, these contracts were cost plus. This new approach does appear to be saving money and it is also leading to competing designs which is interesting as well. For instance with commercial crew, Boeing is building a fairly conventual capsule that lands under parachute, Sierra Nevada is building a lifting body that will reenter and glide like the shuttle, and SpaceX is building a capsule that will land propulsively (parahutes will only be deployed if there is a malfunction in the engines.)
Yes, there are delays and difficulties with both Tesla and SpaceX. Now show me someone that is building more compelling electric cars than Tesla. Owner's of Tesla's love them. If it wasn't a good car, it wouldn't have the satisfaction ratings it does. Car magazines wouldn't be raving about it.
Show me a "new space" company that is delivering cargo to the the ISS, returning mass to Earth, developing a manned capsule, self-funding reusability development, self-funding development of seriously big rocket engines for Saturn V size rockets.
I'm an unabashed fan because he's making interesting shit happen. The main reasons I've seen for people bagging on him are envy or ideology (Tesla got a government loan - that they paid back, SpaceX got NASA money - to deliver cargo cheaper than any competitor, etc...)
Time to rename this site "News for People with Knee Jerk Ideological Reactions While Patting Themselves on the Back Just Like Every Other Site on the Internet." God forbid we study the human condition and try to learn for fear that The Big Bad Government will use that information in a way we don't agree with.
Interestingly that article seems to imply you can be compelled to hand over a physical key, but not a combination as it is "contents of the mind." So if the key is stored on physical media it may not be considered "contents of the mind." And if it's stored in your mind, it can probably be brute forced fairly quickly.
This is slashdot, so I didn't read the article. I'm thrilled with this, but I wonder how encryption is any different than a safe. If the government has the legal authority (via a warrant) to open a safe, why wouldn't they have the same authority to decrypt your documents?
I'm not arguing that I like the idea, but I don't see how encrypted documents would be a 5th amendment right if documents locked in a safe are not. Can you be compelled to open a safe?
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was Goodwin?
Nope it's Godwin's Law. Admittedly my use of it was rather oblique as I was thinking of "grammar Nazis," the behavior of and label for are both ridiculous. Apologies if I'm missing a pun or something.
Why would a man join this site compared with dating sites that let him see photos and don't make him jump through silly hoops?
One advantage is that if you see a woman's profile, there is a good chance shell be interested in you since she filtered out all the profiles that she hates. So it could actually be a more pleasant experience for men as well since the number of ignored/rejected initiations should go down. More likely more men will create profiles and no women will be interested in them and they'll have no chance at all. But who knows, maybe it'll work to both parties advantage.
And right after hitting submit, the typos just pop out of the page at me. Why can't we edit our posts? Keep a history that people can review, I'm fine with that. But seriously, let he that has not ever typo'd cast the first Godwin.
...
Maybe you haven't read it in detail but in these texts were the first ever commandments that slaves be given rights, and eventually freed as well as punishmnets for mistreatment of slaves. ...
" Gay rights? Nope." In texts that propose that sexual perversion is evil and evil is bad, no i don't think it would champion "gay rights".
"Women's equality? Nope." the old testament gave women rights above what had existed previously, the new testament elevated women to equality with men in the eyes of god...
Religious freedom? "Religious freedom", wow ok, maybe the old testament but definitely not the new... the new testament forbids anything other than loving your neighbor so i don't see how anyone could associate anything else with christianity without blatantly overlooking the stated intent of it's founder.
Freedom of speech? wtf? i'm not even sure what you're talking about.. grasping at straws i guess...
"If you mean in some magical sense where the universe or reality at its core cares one way or another, no values are better than other values. But I assure you, some values lead to more flourishing and some values lead to more suffering."
the one value the universe holds which is pretty self evident, is one of balance, which is pretty much the core value of the old/new testament too.. so.. if i had to guess you hate anything religious and this attests to the slant and bias your post is full of...
You're right, I'm not found of religion in general, especially not when the literal interpretation of religious texts can be used to oppress people and suppress progress. And my post is in response to one claiming that all our modern values are specifically Judeo-Christian, so course it's "slanted." It's a counter-point. Now, to your points:
The Old Testament gives some rights to some slaves. I guess that's improvement. It does not require all slaves to be released eventually, as you imply. It's still OK to have slaves for their entire lives in both testaments. It's also OK to beat them though in certain circumstances the "owner" may be punished and/or the slave released. Nowhere in the bible is it clearly immoral to own another human being. That is a modern value that did not come from the texts.
We agree that the texts don't support gay rights. Clearly that that is a secular value, not a Judeo-Christian one.
At times, the New Testament does elevate women in the eyes of God. Unfortunately it also makes it clear that women are second class citizens on Earth, which is the life I care about. So women can pray, proselytize, and get to go to heaven (yay!), but must submit to their husbands, be silent in church, should not teach or "usurp" a man. Not a strong case for equal rights, female CEOs or even women's suffrage (boo!). Once again, equal rights for women on Earth is a secular one, not a Judeo-Christian one.
Freedom of speech is a core value in modern democratic societies, which is why I mentioned it. Not that the BIble has much to say one way or another (yes, blasphemy will be forgiven, for the most part so I guess that's nice.) The same for religious freedom, it's a value of modern secular society not the Bible. I'm not saying the Bible should support it, just that it's a modern secular value not a Judeo-Christian value.
The whole point of my original post was that modern values are not the obvious result of Judeo-Christian sacred texts, they are the result of external pressures (Greek philosophy, The Enlightenment, etc.) or at best a cherry-picking of those texts by people who's moral values have thankfully evolved.
P.S. On the whole Old Testament vs. New Testament argument where supposedly the New Testament makes everything better. As far as I can tell, actual Bible scholars are still arguing whether the New Testament replaces all of the Old Testament's laws, or just some of them and if some of them exactly which ones. This is unfortunate when debating
Why should she not be simply because she is friends with the President? We see again that our Republican rulers do not treat us fairly.
Republican rulers?
Why should she not be simply because she is friends with the President?
Republican - I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I don't know, I've often joked that Obama is one of the better Republican presidents we've had in recent memory. And not to disparage Republicans or even Obama. [1] If he had any actual socialist tendencies he would have pushed for a single payer option instead of the insurance company windfall that was passed. You know the political system is screwed up when you miss Richard Nixon.
The political compass summarizes the absurdity of the left-right divide in US politics: http://www.politicalcompass.or...
[1] I say it for shock value. I don't think that the Republicans represent my interests. Neither does Obama. Nor the other Democrats.
We should thank secular values for keeping religion in check and forcing its reformation. BTW islam needs a deep reformation too ASAP if you didn't notice.
lol In the West, secular values are Judea-Christian values. You can't separate one from the other, no matter how hard you try.
Sorry, but the arrow of progress usually comes from ideas outside of religion or at least outside of the fundamental, literal interpretation of religious texts. Democracy is not a Judea-Christian value, we got that from the greeks. And not from their religious beliefs, but rather from their philosophers. While there were Christians who fought slavery, the idea that slavery is immoral is not based on the Jewish nor Christian sacred texts which explain in detail who can be a slave, and how to treat slaves. 10 commandments, none of them even hint that slavery is bad. Gay rights? Nope. Women's equality? Nope. Religious freedom? Nope? Freedom of speech? Nope. Secular western society is a direct result of The Enlightenment which was not based on Christian theology, even though many of the participants were Christian. The Enlightenment was based on the belief that humans were capable of understanding how the world works and that we could and should use that knowledge to improve life before death. The Enlightenment encouraged questioning long held beliefs and assumptions.
Modern society is built upon The Enlightenment. So called Judeo-Christian values have evolved in response to The Enlightenment. Not the other way around.
But suppose you could. Why would one group's secular values be any better or worse than another's? Why would your secular values be better than Islam's religious values?
If you mean in some magical sense where the universe or reality at its core cares one way or another, no values are better than other values. But I assure you, some values lead to more flourishing and some values lead to more suffering.
Leaving out Boeing would be budget suicide for NASA.
No one should be left out because there should be no contract. Instead, NASA should be fostering a spot market for launches. They should have a separate bid for each launch: "We want X satellite in Y orbit, and insured for Z dollars." Then give the launch to the lowest bidder. That way each company can work continuously to cut costs and improve services, knowing that if they leapfrog the competition, they can win the next launch, instead of being locked out for years.
Except there is not an existing manned spaceflight market, just like prior to the commercial cargo contracts their was not a commercial cargo market. If you award a contract to the lowest bidder (or for that matter, any other criteria) before any hardware exists, then only one company will develop the hardware. This is how it used to work, and is exactly what these contracts are meant to avoid. If you only have a single winner, and that winner is developing the hardware based on the contract they won, then when there are cost overruns they will simply tell you they ran out of money. Give us more, or we quit. Or, they will go out of business. You can't run a company in the red forever, even if you signed a contract.
If you are proposing that companies should build functional hardware and then bid, it's not going to happen (except maybe with SpaceX eventually, but they are the crazy exception with a non-financial goal. But it would not happen on NASAs timetable.) It's not going to happen because the risk to reward is off the charts. Spend billions of dollars developing a manned rated launch vehicle, capsule and infrastructure hoping to win a contract? No sane company would do that.
Now, once there is a real market for spaceflight, then investors may take a shot at entering it if they think they can win a piece of the pie. But that market can't exist until there are commercial manned launch vehicles. You have to prime the pump, at least if you want something on a timetable.
They couldn't give it to SpaceX because SpaceX didn't win according to the terms of the competition. From Bloomberg a few weeks ago, "Boeing was the only competitor to meet all of the required milestones". SpaceX was a giveaway to reduce political pressure, and hopefully SNC's protest is against the SpaceX award, which could be overturned, not Boeing's award, which is solid.
SpaceX did win based on terms of the competition and they did complete all of their milestones before the announcement. Furthermore, each company had different milestones based on their proposals and SpaceX's milestones where much more aggressive than Boeing's. For instance, SpaceX already has hardware off of their production line that will be used in a pad abort test in November and an in-flight abort test this coming January. Boeing isn't anywhere near that far along even though they "met all their milestones" sooner.
I am not saying that Boeing did anything wrong, they have farther to go to build a usable capsule and their proposal and milestones reflect this. That's why Boeing is being awarded more money, they have more development to do to finish including developing a new second stage for use with the Atlas V launch vehicle. Contrary to all the frantic arm waving, it is actually a fairly sane process. Competitors are required to make plausible proposals and then show progress against those proposals.
This time, they launched without the landing legs, but since they are still testing above water that does not matter a lot. Deploying the legs and soft landing on water have been tried successfully already, so I imagine they could test other things like partially flying back to the launching site, fuel permitting. The twitters are silent, so far, however.
At the NASA pre-launch press conference, Hans Koenigsmann said that they would be doing the first boost back burn, as well as a re-entry and "landing" burn. At the SpaceX CRS-4 Post Launch Briefing he said that it looked like all the burns wear successful, but they had to wait for the boat that collected telemetry to return.
I feel like I've seen some confirmation on good telemetry on twitter, but I can't find it now and this story is old enough that no one will likely see my post anyway...
SpaceX is already in the process of man-rating Dragon. NASA is, apparently, perfectly willing to let SpaceX run through the man-rating checklists as long as NASA doesn't have to pay for it.
This is true, you can lose funding but continue to participate in meeting various milestones. I believe that Blue Origin already falls into this category.
But NASAs "manned rating" only applies to flying NASA missions. NASA has no control over non-NASA missions - think Bigelow private funded space stations, MarsOne, etc...
There is no purpose to manned spaceflight.
If we want to settle Mars and generally expand into space, you need manned spaceflight. I know not everyone thinks that is important. But some people, myself included, do believe that is a worthwhile endeavor.
The scientific return comes from unmanned spaceflight. Manned spaceflights are stunts to keep the pork flowing to Congressionally powerful districts. There is nothing done by manned spaceflight that could not be done unmanned for one tenth or one hundredth the cost as an unmanned mission.
This is true, if the only reason for spaceflight is pure science. I am a huge fan of pure science, but I don't think that is the only purpose of spaceflight.
The problem is that NASA is run by ex-flyboys and astronauts. There is an internal battle between the manned spaceflight directorate and the science directorate (NASA/JPL). The former do maned pork and are always trying to steal funds away from the science guys. The manned fighter-jocks tried to kill planetary science many times, the last time was earlier this year. At one point they allocated more for a Space Toilet (30 mil) than they did for a Europa mission (15 mi). NASA needs a shakeup and the science guys need equal control at the top.
I think the bigger problem is that NASA funding (and therefore mission selection) is completely hostage to election cycles of Congressmen, Senators and the President. It's impossible to have a coherent long term plan.
While commercial corporations interested in launching their product into space may go with the best price/performance ratio, the chances of a USG contract even being written in a vendor-agnostic manner are slim. It's all about whose district or state the potential money will go.
Actually the commercial cargo and commercial crew contracts were written specifically to avoid those sorts of shenanigans. Congress has no say in who wins. Of course Senators and Congressmen are still trying to play games for their constituents (like the latest accusations that SpaceX has had unreasonable flight anomalies from senators in competitors states.) They are also trying to starve the entire program of money specifically because it is a threat to ULA. But all in all, the commercial contract approach is a huge improvement and it looks likely that SpaceX or SNC will win the bid (possibly both, if Congress will fund that. It makes sense to have two launch providers so an "incident" doesn't completely halt flights - like the shuttle disasters did.) Funny that the article doesn't even mention SNA (Dream Chaser.)
One of the reasons that SpaceX and/or SNC will likely win is that they both are dedicated to developing their spacecraft regardless of the outcome of the bidding process. Losing the contract would slow development, but not stop it. Where as Boeing, with all their money and resources, has publicly stated that they will mothball development if they don't win. (This is a strange attitude given the fact Boeing and Bigelow are partners in the commercial crew competition.) One of the criteria for winning is the commercial viability of the spacecraft. NASA does not want to be in the position of being financially black mailed with threats like "we need more money or we can't survive". The fact that SpaceX and SNC are pursuing non-NASA missions is seen as a major advantage according to insiders.
There is nothing in there that low grade code monkeys, which is the vast majority of the software industry, need to know. I mean, how much skills do you have to have to run a mom and pop web store, publish the jillionth fart app, or maintain a payroll system?
Of course, these code monkeys get swamped whenever the next major technology change comes along but, hey, we can't all be good enough to work for Google or Apple, etc.
Slashdot, where egotistical rants (by someone to lazy to create an account and log in) about other people being idiots is modded insightful.
..., not to mention that Texas has no income tax; what moron would build a factory in California? Elon was just being nice when he didn't categorically rule it out when asked.
You realize that both the Tesla factory and the SpaceX factory are in California, right? So I guess Elon Musk is a moron...
If negative mass and positive mass collide, what would happen? ...
I'm not positive...
If I were Malaysian Air I would not be surprised if passengers start asking for flights on some other model plane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'd be asking to fly an airline that can stay on course...
We Americans need to remember what war is and what it is not. It's not about winning hearts and minds, it's about fragging hearts and minds. If we kept this in mind we would resume winning wars again ala 1945, but there are too many bleeding heart liberals who couldn't handle this brutal variety of truth. Therefore those who can't handle this sort of truth should STFU re: foreign intervention.
Maybe a better lesson would be not to invade countries that pose no serious threat to the US and not to believe the fantasy that if you destroy a country's infrastructure that a thankful democracy will emerge from a sea of sectarian hatred.
George Bush left Obama a stable Iraq. It didn't have to go down the tubes.
Actually, he invaded a stable Iraq (admittedly run by a ruthless dictator). He left Obama an occupied Iraq with 157,000 US troops in it.
I'd rather have seas 30 feet higher in 100-300 years and living with (say) 2314-year tech than current seas and year 2200 tech in 2314...or 2214. Hech, a 10% slowdown, miserably easy for an overbearing government to achieve, would yield a 30 year delta at the end. Hell, I'd rather have 2014 tech than 1984-tech.
Proposed solutions matter and should be judged in the context of tech advancement, or lack thereof. That's what saves lives.
You seem to be creating a false dichotomy, implying that addressing climate change would slow technological growth. Modernizing the power grid, storing energy from non-greenhouse gas generating power sources, better power management, electric cars, solar power, nuclear power, fusion, etc are all technologies that would make life better. Besides reducing green house gasses, energy ultimately becomes cheaper and pollution is reduced worldwide.
Sounds horrible. It's interesting to me that many opposed to AGW (not saying you), complain about the AGW alarmists, but they themselves are economic alarmists. As if addressing climate change will destroy the economy.
SpaceX is not competing with NASA, because NASA doesn't make rockets. NASA has input on the design requirements, but all the real work is done by private contractors, like Lockheed and Boeing. SpaceX is just a new contractor and they operate just like the others. They have some interesting new engineering approaches that may reduce costs, but it's not any fundamentally new business model.
Actually, it is a fundamentally different business model. You are correct that it was always private companies that did the final design and construction of the rockets, but historically Congress forced many decisions on NASA based largely on spreading the money around. For instance, NASA wanted the Space Shuttle to use liquid fueled boosters, but Congress insisted on the SRBs specifically so Thiokol Corporation of Utah would get the business. The same thing is happening with the STS under development now. Congress is forcing NASA to use Shuttle components in the first generation STS specifically to funnel money into certain congressional districts. Under the non-commercial contracts, Congress and NASA actually make design decisions that may not be optimum from an engineering perspective.
The rules under which SpaceX performs NASA missions, are much different. NASA does not get involved in the design of the rocket/spacecraft beyond listing requirements that must be met. Some seed money is provided, for companies that win bids to compete. But ultimately the winners are paid a fixed price - which is also a big difference. Historically, these contracts were cost plus. This new approach does appear to be saving money and it is also leading to competing designs which is interesting as well. For instance with commercial crew, Boeing is building a fairly conventual capsule that lands under parachute, Sierra Nevada is building a lifting body that will reenter and glide like the shuttle, and SpaceX is building a capsule that will land propulsively (parahutes will only be deployed if there is a malfunction in the engines.)
Musk strikes me as a lot of things... Carnegie and Franklin aren't among them.
He's an emerging master at PR and managing public opinion, and his fan base (very prevalent here on Slashdot) just laps it up.
His rockets get to orbit with RP-1, not PR. You don't get a $5 billion launch manifest with PR.
Yes, there are delays and difficulties with both Tesla and SpaceX. Now show me someone that is building more compelling electric cars than Tesla. Owner's of Tesla's love them. If it wasn't a good car, it wouldn't have the satisfaction ratings it does. Car magazines wouldn't be raving about it.
Show me a "new space" company that is delivering cargo to the the ISS, returning mass to Earth, developing a manned capsule, self-funding reusability development, self-funding development of seriously big rocket engines for Saturn V size rockets.
I'm an unabashed fan because he's making interesting shit happen. The main reasons I've seen for people bagging on him are envy or ideology (Tesla got a government loan - that they paid back, SpaceX got NASA money - to deliver cargo cheaper than any competitor, etc...)
Time to rename this site "News for People with Knee Jerk Ideological Reactions While Patting Themselves on the Back Just Like Every Other Site on the Internet." God forbid we study the human condition and try to learn for fear that The Big Bad Government will use that information in a way we don't agree with.
> Can you be compelled to open a safe?
Probably not, if it has a combination lock. With a warrant they can always break open a physical safe. But that method does not compel the owner to do anything.
Interestingly that article seems to imply you can be compelled to hand over a physical key, but not a combination as it is "contents of the mind." So if the key is stored on physical media it may not be considered "contents of the mind." And if it's stored in your mind, it can probably be brute forced fairly quickly.
I am not thrilled with this and I wish that slashdot allowed editing (with an edit history.)
This is slashdot, so I didn't read the article. I'm thrilled with this, but I wonder how encryption is any different than a safe. If the government has the legal authority (via a warrant) to open a safe, why wouldn't they have the same authority to decrypt your documents? I'm not arguing that I like the idea, but I don't see how encrypted documents would be a 5th amendment right if documents locked in a safe are not. Can you be compelled to open a safe?