I agree, that video looked rigged as hell. I've seen a lot more convincing animatronics in theme parks.
What exactly were the Hollywood-style "explosions" supposed to be anyway? Were we supposed to believe that they were something that that "robotic tank" was shooting, were they supposed to be smoke screens, or were they just added for ambiance?
You know, this didn't even occur to me.. that drone wingmen might not just be sensor and force augmentation, but dogfighters. But my understanding is that auto-dogfighting is actually getting very good these days, so the ability to auto-dogfight without G-limits is no insignificant argument in favour of the conversion.
A pre-assigned mission is great when you have something pre-assigned, rather than providing support or searching for targets of opportunity. And when the target isn't at risk of moving. And when there's a predictable and unimposing threat picture to deal with. Etc.
But you're absolutely right that a craft can carry out a "rote" mission on its own without any need for external communications.
Concerning this particular story, I actually called it a while back. It's a logical extension. The F-35 is focused about bringing a revolution not so much due to its physical design, but the level of fault-tolerant integrated information awareness that it brings to the battlefield. Having drone "wingmen" which are cheaper and not as stealthy but carry more sensors and payload to the battlefield is a natural way to augment the F-35's capabilities. At the same time it helps overcome one of the main weaknesses of drones - the ability to jam them (the main reason that humans are still considered important). When EW isn't in play, the "wingmen" can be kept at significant distance from lead craft, reducing the risk of exposing them; on the other hand, in the case of loss of signal, they can close ranks and improve the gain (since each craft, before loss of signal, knew the locations and flight plan / mission at the time of loss of signal).
It's really a natural synergy.
These days, there's nothing about stealth that makes a craft "invulnerable"; stealth craft can be targeted and hit, and the ability to do so keeps improving. But it comes at costs. Radar systems have to be shorter range and/or larger and more powerful (harder to move/conceal and easier to target), and are more sensitive to weather. The locks you get are poor, making it not just harder to get a usable lock, but increasing the effectiveness of countermeasures. Conversely, IRST and LIDAR can offer detection of stealth aircraft at good distance if you know right where to look, or short distances if you don't, but not both at the same time. And there are physical limits (aperture) in this regard, not just sensor / processing limits. And sensors are already highly chilled, so it's not like you can mimic an improved aperture by improving the signal to noise ratio with better cooling. It all comes down to how many photons you're receiving.
Countermeasures will continue to advance, and the vulnerability level will slowly tick up - but a stealth aircraft always starts out with an advantage in that measure. To top it off, F-35, by virtue of its relatively small size, is more innately resistant to advances in anti-stealth technologies than larger systems that have to rely more heavily on shape and materials technology to gain an equivalent level of stealth.
There's a long laundry list of things people are going to want to add to F-35 with time, and I know varying people will always complain about random things from the list that it doesn't have at present. And one by one, they'll trickle in. F-35 is not meant to be an endpoint, but a starting point.
However, Agence France-Presse news agency quoted a source close to the matter in Washington as saying that Mr Levashov's detention was "not tied to anything involving allegations of Russian interference with the US election".
The fact that Slashdot can't bother to read an article before writing its summary isn't the GP's fault.
RP-1/HTP works fine. The British Black Knight had over 20 successful (suborbital) launches with it,
And HTP was just fine aboard the Kursk, until it very suddenly wasn't.
The history of HTP rocketry is littered with it being just "fine" until something minor goes wrong, and then it explodes. Either in the rocket or on the ground. Even on things that most people wouldn't think of. For example, one of the claimed advantages of peroxide is that once it's well diluted, it's perfectly safe (easy cleanup). Yeah, tell that to the chemist who was killed when trying to do just that (pour it into the sink and rinse it down). There was some U-DETA in the sink's trap; the peroxide exploded on compact, converted the sink to shrapnel and killed him. Even if that hadn't been there, lead (still common in plumbing in many areas) is very much not compatible with HTP.
Given the number of first-rocket attempts which have failed (sometimes explosively) because of things like frozen LOX valves
If you're using a LOX compatible valve with LOX, it's not going to freeze. If you're not using a LOX compatible valve with LOX, you're a moron. If you're not using a HTP compatible valve with HTP, you're an even bigger moron.
Don't get me wrong, LOX can be dangerous in its own right. It doesn't undergo accelerating self-decomposition when faced with contaminants, but it can make some contaminants explosive - which if present in large enough quantities, can be dangerous. But the whole claimed point of using HTP is to avoid the problems of cryogenics. Yet it comes with problems that are even bigger. And in exchange, you get lousy ISP.
And for what it's worth, the mass ratio of an aluminum beer can (12 fl oz size) is a hair under 28:1.;-)
Ignoring the whole pesky issue of "engines", let me know how it fares at max Q and/or entry;)
Ed: self-pressurization was in reference to MON, not IRFNA. Also, these aren't the only examples, there's quite a few that have been used, and continue to be researched. Nytrox seems to be the new trendy one.
- Net propellant densities are very similar to many others, such as MON, IRFNA, etc. - The others are non-cryogenic as well. - No difference on staged combustion for the others
Versus:
- Not self-pressurizing
- Detonates if it gets too hot
- Detonates if there's any contamination in the tank, the plumbing, fittings, anything. The cleanliness requirements can be extreme.
- You can load it up with stabilizers to prevent explosion, but then they hinder combustion as well, as well as lowering performance.
It doesn't even win on a "health hazard" perspective, as one may think when they think of alternatives. HTP isn't like household peroxide - it burns your skin, your lungs, causes blindness if it gets in your eyes in tiny quantities, etc. You not only have to wear protective suits, but you have to make sure that they're made of a material that it won't explode on contact with. It's easier to clean up than some of its competitors, but that's about it.
Everyone tries it. Then subsequently gives up on it.
The rocket equation works out for those figures. But those figures are insanely optimistic. A nearly 30:1 mass ratio? That's nuts. I mean, if they really can do it, go them! But let's just say I'm not holding my breath.
Also: why oh why does every last rocket startup and their cousin start off with HTP as their oxidizer? It never works out well. Performance is bad, and density is no better than a number of other alternatives, and the latter are less likely to kill you if you look at them funny.
Sorry, nice try, but that's not what the United Nations, which investigated the issue had to say. What the UN determined about the incident is that it was most likely a Syrian friendly fire incident. And specifically that the claim that rebels had captured or weaponized these materials is highly implausible given the data. Khan al-Assal (an incident, it should be noted, from four years ago - the government has been attacking rebel-held areas several times a month with chemical weapons since then, with only a brief respite during the "inspection" period) was a situation where rebels were holed up outside the town and advancing on it. One of the downsides of chemical weapons is that if used improperly, they end up blowing into your own troops.
And just to head you off here, in case you want to try the "well what if it blew in accidentally in this case?" - Khan Shaykun is far from any Assad position (although is an area that Assad has been trying to take over). The nearest Assad positions are just northeast of Kurnaz 12km to the west, and Maan 15km to the east.
Given that Russia is reporting 6 jets destroyed, a radar system, a supply warehouse, hangars, and other facilities - and other sources reporting even more (including 3 additional jets) - getting hit wasn't exactly cheap either.
As for your false flag conspiracy stuff, why are you spending time over here when you could be actively contributing at forums.911wasaninsidejob.net?
Since September 2012, Del Ponte has been a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic,[9] under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In May 2013 she accused the Syrian rebels of using chemical weapons, a view diametrically opposed by the majority of Western government officials. She stated, "We still have to deepen our investigation, verify and confirm (the findings) through new witness testimony, but according to what we have established so far, it is at the moment opponents of the regime who are using sarin gas."[10] The following day, in an apparent reaction to Del Ponte’ comments, the Commission issued a press release clarifying that it “has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties in the conflict”.[11] In March 2014, the Commission published a report that stated that the chemical agents used in the Khan-al-Assal chemical attack bore "the same unique hallmarks as those used in Al-Ghouta" in the August 2013 chemical attack. The report also indicated, based on "evidence available concerning the nature, quality and quantity of the agents used" that the perpetrators of the Al-Ghouta attack "likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military". In none of the incidents, however, was the commission’s "evidentiary threshold" met in regards to identifying the perpetrators of the chemical attacks.[12]
But I know that nothing that you say to a "false flag conspiracy" theorist will ever be listened to.
What does someone gain by flushing people out of the defensible locations that they've been sheltering in, in a manner that they've been doing to good effect without international repercussions at regular intervals for the past several years? Do you have to actually ask that?
Every major siege (most recently Aleppo) that Assad has won has involved the use of chemical weapons to do so.
Amazing how the rebels keep bombing themselves with chemical weapons while never hitting Assad-controlled areas with them. And how they keep simultaneously destroying their hospitals at the same time. Silly rebels!
That would be a neat magic trick considering that there have been chemical weapons attacks against rebel-held areas in almost every area Assad has been assaulting several times per month for the past several years. Mainly chlorine (which Assad never declared, and was never made to), but occasionally other agents. And of the other agents, Assad never met the 30 June deadline for CW destruction. 92,5% of Assad's known CW stockpile was removed from the country, but the remaining 7,5% never was, and Assad has more than enough industrial base to reproduce stocks.
It's amazing how many people would rather live in conspiracy theory that insists that people dying of sarin are "fake".
FYI, it actually was a milk factory. Although Iraq did put up a big sign reading "Baby Milk Factory" after the bombing and other such things for PR purposes. Iraq actually was using milk byproducts for BW research, but at al-Hakam, not Abu Ghuraib.
Baghdad took early steps to protect what remained of the BW physical plant and equipment. During the first Gulf war, the only facilities directly relevant to Iraq’s BW program that were destroyed were the research laboratories at Al Salman and the munitions filling station at Al Muthanna. Neither was critical to the BW program that was centered on Al Hakam. Al Hakam at that time was unknown to the Coalition and therefore was not attacked during the war, unlike the Abu Ghurayb Infant Formula Plant (the Baby Milk Factory) that the Coalition destroyed by bombing in the mistaken belief that it was a key BW facility.
I wouldn't expect judges to be Social Justice Warriors. Surely that's more of a position for Social Justice Paladins. Social Justice Warriors would be more likely in the military, or at least the police.
Social Justice Clerics of course would be in the church. Jesuits perhaps. Social Justice Mages... probably researchers, working on renewable energy and the like. Social Justice Bards... I'd imagine that there's not enough musical work for them, but they'd probably feel at home in the media. Social Justice Rogues.. out on protests. Social Justice Barbariasn... hmm... fighting internet trolls. Social Justice Druids... out on some hippie commune. Social Justice Sorcerers.... probably in the maker community. Social Justice Rangers... forestry service? Social Justice Warlocks... members of Anonymous maybe? Social Justice Monks... actually, yeah, literal monks. Buddhist, not Christian.
No. But it's not graphene either. Graphene oxide has been around since the 1850s. Graphene (isolated planes of graphite). The first single-layers of graphene were grown in small amounts in the 1970s, but it wasn't really until the 2000s that sizeable amounts produced by macroscopic means were achieved.
This article is playing on graphene hype to try to play up graphene oxide, which is a more mundane substance. Don't get me wrong, it's neat and has uses (due to how planar its membranes are), but it doesn't have the properties of graphene itself. And it's been used in this particular application (desalination membranes) since the 1960s. Lockheed has had them on the market since 2013.
It requires the release of all data. It says nothing about anonymized data being fine.
I've worked in medical research before, schizophrenia studies based on MRI and fMRI. So you take scans and questionaires, and then you run them through a variety of anonymization processes. Because it's not just enough to hide someone's name from a MRI scan; you can take the DICOM and render it and show what the person's face actually looks like. So we used skull stripping algorithms. These were ANNs that were trained based on human manual skull stripping, because it's too much work (read: expensive) to have humans trim the skull of every single scan. So we get stripped brains out of it. We also used the ANNs to segment the brain into different regions - and from that you can do size, shape, etc studies.
But of course someone could contest whether the ANNs overstripped the skull. So what then? The skull stripping - the anonymization itself - was an algorithm. According to the bill, the raw data would either have to be released, or we couldn't do the research.
The raw (identifiable) data is always kept. It's compartmentalized, with each stage of the pipeline only passing on the data needed for its section. But you can't just get rid of the data. You can't get rid of the data on things like the questionaires either because these things almost always involve patient followups, crossreferencing records, and all sorts of other things. You compartmentalize, but you don't toss data. And you absolutely do not release it just because some random person wants to play amateur scientist rather than doing their own study and following HIPAA rules.
Exactly the point. The most expensive part is never the part that goes to orbit. It's the part that launches the part that goes to orbit to an altitude and velocity where it can achieve orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, that video looked rigged as hell. I've seen a lot more convincing animatronics in theme parks.
What exactly were the Hollywood-style "explosions" supposed to be anyway? Were we supposed to believe that they were something that that "robotic tank" was shooting, were they supposed to be smoke screens, or were they just added for ambiance?
Seriously, I've seen better robotic gun platforms made by Syrian rebels living in rubble.
You know, this didn't even occur to me.. that drone wingmen might not just be sensor and force augmentation, but dogfighters. But my understanding is that auto-dogfighting is actually getting very good these days, so the ability to auto-dogfight without G-limits is no insignificant argument in favour of the conversion.
A pre-assigned mission is great when you have something pre-assigned, rather than providing support or searching for targets of opportunity. And when the target isn't at risk of moving. And when there's a predictable and unimposing threat picture to deal with. Etc.
But you're absolutely right that a craft can carry out a "rote" mission on its own without any need for external communications.
That's exactly it. You keep distance when jamming isn't an issue and you close ranks when it's problematic. The closer you are, the higher the gain.
Even with a complete loss of signal, the drone knows where you last were and your last flight plan, so it's not going to get lost from you.
I wonder how much you could realistically lighten a F-16 with a drone conversion.
Slashdot, the eternal home of F-35 trolling.
Concerning this particular story, I actually called it a while back. It's a logical extension. The F-35 is focused about bringing a revolution not so much due to its physical design, but the level of fault-tolerant integrated information awareness that it brings to the battlefield. Having drone "wingmen" which are cheaper and not as stealthy but carry more sensors and payload to the battlefield is a natural way to augment the F-35's capabilities. At the same time it helps overcome one of the main weaknesses of drones - the ability to jam them (the main reason that humans are still considered important). When EW isn't in play, the "wingmen" can be kept at significant distance from lead craft, reducing the risk of exposing them; on the other hand, in the case of loss of signal, they can close ranks and improve the gain (since each craft, before loss of signal, knew the locations and flight plan / mission at the time of loss of signal).
It's really a natural synergy.
These days, there's nothing about stealth that makes a craft "invulnerable"; stealth craft can be targeted and hit, and the ability to do so keeps improving. But it comes at costs. Radar systems have to be shorter range and/or larger and more powerful (harder to move/conceal and easier to target), and are more sensitive to weather. The locks you get are poor, making it not just harder to get a usable lock, but increasing the effectiveness of countermeasures. Conversely, IRST and LIDAR can offer detection of stealth aircraft at good distance if you know right where to look, or short distances if you don't, but not both at the same time. And there are physical limits (aperture) in this regard, not just sensor / processing limits. And sensors are already highly chilled, so it's not like you can mimic an improved aperture by improving the signal to noise ratio with better cooling. It all comes down to how many photons you're receiving.
Countermeasures will continue to advance, and the vulnerability level will slowly tick up - but a stealth aircraft always starts out with an advantage in that measure. To top it off, F-35, by virtue of its relatively small size, is more innately resistant to advances in anti-stealth technologies than larger systems that have to rely more heavily on shape and materials technology to gain an equivalent level of stealth.
There's a long laundry list of things people are going to want to add to F-35 with time, and I know varying people will always complain about random things from the list that it doesn't have at present. And one by one, they'll trickle in. F-35 is not meant to be an endpoint, but a starting point.
What "fake evidence"? According to the article:
The fact that Slashdot can't bother to read an article before writing its summary isn't the GP's fault.
And HTP was just fine aboard the Kursk, until it very suddenly wasn't.
The history of HTP rocketry is littered with it being just "fine" until something minor goes wrong, and then it explodes. Either in the rocket or on the ground. Even on things that most people wouldn't think of. For example, one of the claimed advantages of peroxide is that once it's well diluted, it's perfectly safe (easy cleanup). Yeah, tell that to the chemist who was killed when trying to do just that (pour it into the sink and rinse it down). There was some U-DETA in the sink's trap; the peroxide exploded on compact, converted the sink to shrapnel and killed him. Even if that hadn't been there, lead (still common in plumbing in many areas) is very much not compatible with HTP.
If you're using a LOX compatible valve with LOX, it's not going to freeze.
If you're not using a LOX compatible valve with LOX, you're a moron.
If you're not using a HTP compatible valve with HTP, you're an even bigger moron.
Don't get me wrong, LOX can be dangerous in its own right. It doesn't undergo accelerating self-decomposition when faced with contaminants, but it can make some contaminants explosive - which if present in large enough quantities, can be dangerous. But the whole claimed point of using HTP is to avoid the problems of cryogenics. Yet it comes with problems that are even bigger. And in exchange, you get lousy ISP.
Ignoring the whole pesky issue of "engines", let me know how it fares at max Q and/or entry ;)
Ed: self-pressurization was in reference to MON, not IRFNA. Also, these aren't the only examples, there's quite a few that have been used, and continue to be researched. Nytrox seems to be the new trendy one.
- Net propellant densities are very similar to many others, such as MON, IRFNA, etc.
- The others are non-cryogenic as well.
- No difference on staged combustion for the others
Versus:
- Not self-pressurizing
- Detonates if it gets too hot
- Detonates if there's any contamination in the tank, the plumbing, fittings, anything. The cleanliness requirements can be extreme.
- You can load it up with stabilizers to prevent explosion, but then they hinder combustion as well, as well as lowering performance.
It doesn't even win on a "health hazard" perspective, as one may think when they think of alternatives. HTP isn't like household peroxide - it burns your skin, your lungs, causes blindness if it gets in your eyes in tiny quantities, etc. You not only have to wear protective suits, but you have to make sure that they're made of a material that it won't explode on contact with. It's easier to clean up than some of its competitors, but that's about it.
Everyone tries it. Then subsequently gives up on it.
The rocket equation works out for those figures. But those figures are insanely optimistic. A nearly 30:1 mass ratio? That's nuts. I mean, if they really can do it, go them! But let's just say I'm not holding my breath.
Also: why oh why does every last rocket startup and their cousin start off with HTP as their oxidizer? It never works out well. Performance is bad, and density is no better than a number of other alternatives, and the latter are less likely to kill you if you look at them funny.
Sorry, nice try, but that's not what the United Nations, which investigated the issue had to say. What the UN determined about the incident is that it was most likely a Syrian friendly fire incident. And specifically that the claim that rebels had captured or weaponized these materials is highly implausible given the data. Khan al-Assal (an incident, it should be noted, from four years ago - the government has been attacking rebel-held areas several times a month with chemical weapons since then, with only a brief respite during the "inspection" period) was a situation where rebels were holed up outside the town and advancing on it. One of the downsides of chemical weapons is that if used improperly, they end up blowing into your own troops.
And just to head you off here, in case you want to try the "well what if it blew in accidentally in this case?" - Khan Shaykun is far from any Assad position (although is an area that Assad has been trying to take over). The nearest Assad positions are just northeast of Kurnaz 12km to the west, and Maan 15km to the east.
Given that Russia is reporting 6 jets destroyed, a radar system, a supply warehouse, hangars, and other facilities - and other sources reporting even more (including 3 additional jets) - getting hit wasn't exactly cheap either.
As for your false flag conspiracy stuff, why are you spending time over here when you could be actively contributing at forums.911wasaninsidejob.net?
From the (referenced) Wikipedia article on Carla:
Since September 2012, Del Ponte has been a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic,[9] under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In May 2013 she accused the Syrian rebels of using chemical weapons, a view diametrically opposed by the majority of Western government officials. She stated, "We still have to deepen our investigation, verify and confirm (the findings) through new witness testimony, but according to what we have established so far, it is at the moment opponents of the regime who are using sarin gas."[10] The following day, in an apparent reaction to Del Ponte’ comments, the Commission issued a press release clarifying that it “has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties in the conflict”.[11]
In March 2014, the Commission published a report that stated that the chemical agents used in the Khan-al-Assal chemical attack bore "the same unique hallmarks as those used in Al-Ghouta" in the August 2013 chemical attack. The report also indicated, based on "evidence available concerning the nature, quality and quantity of the agents used" that the perpetrators of the Al-Ghouta attack "likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military". In none of the incidents, however, was the commission’s "evidentiary threshold" met in regards to identifying the perpetrators of the chemical attacks.[12]
But I know that nothing that you say to a "false flag conspiracy" theorist will ever be listened to.
What does someone gain by flushing people out of the defensible locations that they've been sheltering in, in a manner that they've been doing to good effect without international repercussions at regular intervals for the past several years? Do you have to actually ask that?
Every major siege (most recently Aleppo) that Assad has won has involved the use of chemical weapons to do so.
Amazing how the rebels keep bombing themselves with chemical weapons while never hitting Assad-controlled areas with them. And how they keep simultaneously destroying their hospitals at the same time. Silly rebels!
That would be a neat magic trick considering that there have been chemical weapons attacks against rebel-held areas in almost every area Assad has been assaulting several times per month for the past several years. Mainly chlorine (which Assad never declared, and was never made to), but occasionally other agents. And of the other agents, Assad never met the 30 June deadline for CW destruction. 92,5% of Assad's known CW stockpile was removed from the country, but the remaining 7,5% never was, and Assad has more than enough industrial base to reproduce stocks.
It's amazing how many people would rather live in conspiracy theory that insists that people dying of sarin are "fake".
FYI, it actually was a milk factory. Although Iraq did put up a big sign reading "Baby Milk Factory" after the bombing and other such things for PR purposes. Iraq actually was using milk byproducts for BW research, but at al-Hakam, not Abu Ghuraib.
CIA's own assessment.
Assad is not making such claims. It's a joke from the AC.
Nobody, from any side, has disputed that what was hit was Shayrat Airbase.
I wouldn't expect judges to be Social Justice Warriors. Surely that's more of a position for Social Justice Paladins. Social Justice Warriors would be more likely in the military, or at least the police.
Social Justice Clerics of course would be in the church. Jesuits perhaps.
Social Justice Mages... probably researchers, working on renewable energy and the like.
Social Justice Bards... I'd imagine that there's not enough musical work for them, but they'd probably feel at home in the media.
Social Justice Rogues.. out on protests.
Social Justice Barbariasn... hmm... fighting internet trolls.
Social Justice Druids... out on some hippie commune.
Social Justice Sorcerers.... probably in the maker community.
Social Justice Rangers... forestry service?
Social Justice Warlocks... members of Anonymous maybe?
Social Justice Monks... actually, yeah, literal monks. Buddhist, not Christian.
Extreme vetting for the win!
No. But it's not graphene either. Graphene oxide has been around since the 1850s. Graphene (isolated planes of graphite). The first single-layers of graphene were grown in small amounts in the 1970s, but it wasn't really until the 2000s that sizeable amounts produced by macroscopic means were achieved.
This article is playing on graphene hype to try to play up graphene oxide, which is a more mundane substance. Don't get me wrong, it's neat and has uses (due to how planar its membranes are), but it doesn't have the properties of graphene itself. And it's been used in this particular application (desalination membranes) since the 1960s. Lockheed has had them on the market since 2013.
It requires the release of all data. It says nothing about anonymized data being fine.
I've worked in medical research before, schizophrenia studies based on MRI and fMRI. So you take scans and questionaires, and then you run them through a variety of anonymization processes. Because it's not just enough to hide someone's name from a MRI scan; you can take the DICOM and render it and show what the person's face actually looks like. So we used skull stripping algorithms. These were ANNs that were trained based on human manual skull stripping, because it's too much work (read: expensive) to have humans trim the skull of every single scan. So we get stripped brains out of it. We also used the ANNs to segment the brain into different regions - and from that you can do size, shape, etc studies.
But of course someone could contest whether the ANNs overstripped the skull. So what then? The skull stripping - the anonymization itself - was an algorithm. According to the bill, the raw data would either have to be released, or we couldn't do the research.
The raw (identifiable) data is always kept. It's compartmentalized, with each stage of the pipeline only passing on the data needed for its section. But you can't just get rid of the data. You can't get rid of the data on things like the questionaires either because these things almost always involve patient followups, crossreferencing records, and all sorts of other things. You compartmentalize, but you don't toss data. And you absolutely do not release it just because some random person wants to play amateur scientist rather than doing their own study and following HIPAA rules.
Perhaps you have a different definition of backlog than me.
Exactly the point. The most expensive part is never the part that goes to orbit. It's the part that launches the part that goes to orbit to an altitude and velocity where it can achieve orbit.