My bet, if Obama wins, given his pro-nuclear but anti-Yucca stance? I'm betting he'll do another nuclear fuel storage site proposal round. And this time it won't be a, "you can choose anywhere you want as long as it's Yucca Mountain" selection process like was used in '87. Which I think is a good idea.
If he were wise, after a new site were selected, he'd expedite development. Get it built and operational as quickly as possible so that it disappears from the political radar.
As for the article at hand, good riddance. The plant was initially to be making hydrogen, too, and the DOE has now said that they're only willing to cover capture and sequestration. Which is great, as hydrogen cars are a dumb idea.
Well, we don't usually shower with him any more; he's more comfortable on a hanging perch than on my shoulder or arm when it's slippery, and we installed a perch for him so he can shower on his own. However, as an amazon, he really enjoys showers, and they're good for him. His natural habitat is, after all, a rainforest.
[quote]Color has exactly one definition: the particular hue, not the intensity thereof. The color is determined by the color of the powdery scales.[/quote]
The article says nothing of the sort. In fact, it says just the opposite: "Blue light has a wavelength range from 400-480 nm, and is the only wavelength that is interfered with constructively by the slits of the morpho, which are 200 nm apart."
Why did you link an article that argued against your point? The article says that the bright color of the upper sides of the wings is due to interference, and that only the dull underside is due to pigments.
Most of the colors in my parrot are due to the same diffraction effect from the spacing of the barbs in his feathers. There are two interesting things you can observe. One, when you get him thoroughly soaked in a shower, he becomes all dull except for the yellow feathers on his head (which are pigmented); it's a pretty dramatic color change. Two, when the tips of a feather passes in front of another feather, you get neat Moire patterns.
Seriously? You didn't find anything like, say, this?
"The conflict between the host and the RM gene system may have contributed to the spread and maintenance of the RM gene complexes. In this way, they resemble proviruses and other genetic elements that are often called selfish genes or selfish genetic elements (8). In general, two homologous alleles in diploid eukaryotic cells segregate in a one-to-one ratio at meiosis. This Mendelian law of segregation is violated by some genes in a process called ?meiotic drive.? These selfish genes are preferentially transmitted over the other, nonself alleles (8). In particular, the action of maternal-effect selfish genes, which cause postfertilization killing (9), appears to be quite similar to the action of the RM gene complexes, i.e., the loss of the selfish gene leads to killing of the progeny by the residual gene product. Thus, the RM gene complexes warrant the term ?selfish genes? in the genetic sense of the term."
Not sure how that is a straw man.
Because sickle cell is not selfish, which was one of the conditions I listed. That'd be like you claiming that wearing lead shoes and being way out at sea without a boat is lethal, and me saying, "Hey, a man survived without a boat recently" while ignoring the lead shoes aspect.
Sickle cell anemia (two recessive genes) is 100% lethal if modern medicine is not available
From the Wikipedia article:
"The allele responsible for sickle-cell anaemia is autosomal recessive and can be found on the short arm of chromosome 11. A person who receives the defective gene from both father and mother develops the disease; a person who receives one defective and one healthy allele remains healthy, but can pass on the disease and is known as a carrier."
and...
"The disease is chronic and lifelong. Individuals are most often well, but their lives are punctuated by periodic painful attacks. Life-expectancy is shortened, but contemporary survival data is lacking. Older studies indicated that sufferers could live to an average of 40 to 50 years, with the average age for males being 42 and the average age for females being 48."
Thus, there is a production of hydrogen, a release of energy,
Where I come from, a fuel-air mixture of hydrogen inside a pressure-retaining enclosed structure is explosive, and "energy" (only a small amount) is needed to detonate it.
Of course, it'd be *illegal*, and any artist who was discovered to have a botnet voting for them would immediately end up under investigation themselves. And it's not like it'd be hard to tell; you could combine surveys with download measurements to look for anomalies.
As for surveys, why limit yourself to 1000 individuals? This would be a nationwide program with a revenue of over a hundred million dollars *per month*. It'd be easy to get a much more fine-grained survey than that. Furthermore, you could keep running averages to smooth out the numbers even more.
It is so easy to fake traffic if the share is based on traffic
Well, one obvious advancement over that scheme is weighting it by unique individuals. I.e., it's not how much a person downloads, but what percent of what they download belongs to what artist. Since this is tied into purchased net connections, not handles or anything else that could be Sybiled, you can pull it off pretty effectively.
You're still subject to artificial weighting, such as "Hey, everyone who likes this song, download it a whole bunch!" But, if you have enough fans that dedicated to your music to do it enough to actually make a difference, then you're probably pretty darn popular anyways;) The only type of effective artificial skewing I could picture would be hacking -- using compromised machines to "vote" with downloads.
Another possible system would be to simply phone poll a random percentage of the Canadian population and ask them what they've downloaded recently (perhaps give them a refund on that month's taxes as an incentive to take part in the poll). You'd need a sizable polling base, but it should still be an effective system.
You'll find that the genome developed resistance to that kind of attack a long time ago
You'll find that you're wrong. They're mimicking a "selfish gene" found in starfish, but there are selfish genes found in many species. Do a google search on pubmed for "selfish gene" (and, perhaps, add "recombination" to your search).
Plus the situation you describe (a lethal recessive gene)
Thanks for the straw man, but no thanks. You left out "selfish" from your list. There are no lethal, recessive, selfish genes in humans, or, as far as anyone knows, in any species. Namely, because they're a good way to destroy the species among interbreeding populations. Furthermore, sickle cell anemia is only rarely lethal before reproductive age, so it's irrelevant.
Siiiigh again... sodium reacts explosively with concrete. The concrete that the entire containment structure was made out of. The concrete that had a layer of steel over it to prevent sodium, in the event of a leak, from reaching the concrete (they thought the sodium couldn't corrode it). The steel that the sodium nearly ate its way through.
What, exactly, do you think the energy of a 2,000 pound bomb going off in the middle of a reactor will do in terms of letting more sodium leak? What do you think letting more sodium leak will do in terms of further explosions? What do you think all of this will do to the primary?
This was a Very Bad Thing (TM), but could have been far worse.
Seriously, it won't work unless its done every year
Well, there's an easy solution for that. Genetically engineer them to make them go extinct.
This article on Slashdot is proposing something a *lot* more tame than the specicide proposal. Basically, most genes have a 50% chance of passing on to offspring, but certain "selfish" genes game the system and all but guarantee that they're passed along. So, you make a selfish, lethal, recessive gene -- that is, a mosquito can have one copy and survive just fine. When it mates with a wild mosquito, it'll produce offspring that almost all have the recessive, lethal gene. This will continue until most of the wild population now has the gene -- and then they all start dying off. They can no longer interbreed.
Because it sweeps through so fast, there's no chance to adapt resistance. The only thing that can save the species is isolated pockets that manage not to interbreed with the outside world, then escape after all of the others are dead. Hence, effective, widespread distribution of the engineered individuals is critical for complete specicide. As for side-effects, not only has localized extinction of the Anopheles mosquito not had any adverse impact on the ecosystem (other insects fill in the gap on the food chain), but current control attempts are not mosquito-specific; they kill *many* species in large numbers, and we do it every year.
with the possibility of incrementally improving their performance until they can reach orbit.
No, they are not. Google OTRAG, and then think about the fact that SS1/SS2 have about the same performance as the OTRAG stages. And you can't just change out fuel/oxidizer (i.e., improve the performance, the ISP) without redoing the entire craft from engines to tanks. And the cockpit needs to be redesigned for the TPS, so that really leaves nothing left.
Scaled knows this. Anyone involved in rocketry does. But they're playing on the public's lack of awareness of the extreme difference between "getting to space" and "getting to orbit" to get themselves publicity.
Goal: Demo launches to flight-prove Falcon 1 systems by Q1 2007 in preparation for upcoming commercial and military launches Result: 90% of systems flight-proven by Q1 2007. Not only has its craft been seen as reliable enough by its partners to continue on with its military and commercial payloads, but helped earn them an huge contract with the USAF. All but one of the eight anomalies in the second flight were minor. The non-minor one, upper stage roll, has been dealt with in two different manners, each of which on its own would be sufficient to address it.
Goal: Meet all COTS milestones on schedule. Result: So far, has met all COTS milestones on or ahead of schedule
Not bad for having to move aside whenever someone else wants their launch facilities. What goals are you thinking that they haven't met, exactly?
and they haven't been able to get the much simpler Falcon I flying regularly and reliably.
That's what the demo launches are for. Look at the track records of other new rocket families in their initial testing launches (*orbital* rockets -- the ones that actually have to deal with the challenges of orbital rocketry). 1 failure and one near success during testing is reasonably good. They're paralleling Ariane V's track record currently.
Delta v is the correct way to analyze getting to orbit. You're wasting your time when you talk about energy here.
It's all about getting gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy to your spacecraft. I'm not talking about the energy of the fuel. The delta-V for launch involves the gravitational potential energy, the kinetic energy, and the gravity losses. As noted, the first two are only 3% of that on an orbital craft. Gravity losses are a few hundred m/s. Summary: the performance of SS1 is pathetic.
I assume you're acknowledging your mistake in assuming that SS1 had relevant horizontal velocity at the top of its nearly vertical ballistic trajectory?
As it turns out, the Falcon 1 needs an upper stage baffle. And as you keep ignoring, that lax performance envelope is a feature of SS1. They solved other things that the two problems you keep noting.
It's not a feature of SS1; it's a feature of only being capable of suborbital joyrides.
So yes, they'll use a propellant choice with higher ISP and they'll have a greater mass ratio.
Sorry, doesn't work that way. You can't just swap out your fuel and oxidizer in a rocket and be done with it. It requires a complete redesign, engines to tankage (and becomes far more complicated). Meanwhile, the TPS require a complete redesign of the cockpit. Net result: complete redesign of the entire craft.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The problem is that the space industry is locked in a vicious cycle: launch rates are down due to high prices, but mass production and many competing design options can't exist with low launch rates. We need a breakthrough, which will take investment and incentives.
You also know your stuff with balloon reentry. Did you read about that or come up with it on your own? The Russians have been experimenting with it, as it lets you lose velocity in the extreme upper reaches of the atmosphere and gives you a huge surface area to radiate the heat (like you note). Hopefully this research goes somewhere. Another option I've read about is gas/plasma injection on the craft's skin to help restore laminar flow and thus reduce heat transfer to the craft. Of course, better spacecraft design alone would help; smaller, less dense spacecraft (i.e., opposite of the shuttle) is good, as is using a frame that can run hot (titanium alloys, for example).
ummm... SpaceX has barely gotten off the pad much less into space.
~300km/~5000m/s is "barely off the pad"? In what universe? It'd have easily been 7,800 m/s if they just had an upper stage baffle.
Who do you think came up with and has built and flown a throttleable solid rocket engine? (I'll give you a hint, It wasn't SpaceX.)
I'll give you a hint: It wasn't Scaled. They flew a hybrid rocket. One that got them a mere 3% of the energy of an equivalent mass in orbit and cannot scale to orbit.
They've also come up with some interesting canopy (window) designs that are fairly novel and structurally as well as visually better than what is commonly used today.
Read: Pretty and unscalable. That won't work with a TPS.
Oh also there is the little thing I bet you didn't know. Scaled Composites helps build the Pegasus air launched vehicle which regularly puts 1/2 ton satalites into low orbit
Yes, they make its tail fins. Color me impressed.
and a few simulated launch videos and a few ground test as achievements.
Wow, you really know absolutely nothing about SpaceX, don't you?
You simply don't put all your money into cutting edge research unless you're willing to lose it all.
You simply don't put all your money into something that you know will go nowhere unless you find "nowhere" (joyrides) to be a desirable destination. If your goal is orbital rocketry, then start on the *right* path, not the wrong one.
SeaLaunch and Orbital already *have* made successful rockets, and regularly launch them for profit. They based theirs on existing rockets, mind you, but the point is still the same. SpaceX is essentially proven; were it not for a lack of an upper stage baffle, the last launch would have been picture perfect.
I think your assessment in general is right on the mark (delays always spring up -- although at least with the Falcons, there's a pretty fast turnaround, so I wouldn't expect launch any later than July or August, but you have to expect that not everything will run perfectly). I do think, however, that the problems with Ares I, the classic topheavy stick, are just beginning. I've always felt it was a bad design, and the vibration's hardly the start of it. They've had to keep reducing its payload as they've run into one problem after another, and this is going to lower it further. I can't imagine what this is going to do to Orion.:P
1) I thought it was pretty obvious I was referring to the Ares I, since I was discussing docking Orion vs. Dragon. 2) All but for a baffle. Do you really think that's going to be an issue? In terms of testing success/failure compared to number of launches in a new rocket family, I'd say SpaceX is currently running above average. 3a) Yes, it'll be at least a year. But Orion's not scheduled to fly until 2014 or 2015. 3b) Yes, it's not in competition with NASA. But it's fair to say that it's in competition with Orion. Do you honestly think that with Dragons having spent four to five years docking with ISS that there will be any need for Orion? 4) Plenty of doomed projects keep going on momentum -- especially when congressionally mandated.
I don't see the vehicle requiring a major redesign, after all delta v is fixable by better ISP engines and a larger mass ratio.
With an ISP this low, you need an OTRAG approach to get to orbit. Which is essentially impossible with a carrier-launched aircraft. Also, composites don't lend themselves to an OTRAG approach.
As to taking a higher ISP approach, that means turbopumps and completely different propellants, which means completely different engines and completely different tankage, which means a completely different craft.
And still always problematic. Ablative or tile, they're brittle, high maintenance, expensive systems.
Slashdot Mirror
My bet, if Obama wins, given his pro-nuclear but anti-Yucca stance? I'm betting he'll do another nuclear fuel storage site proposal round. And this time it won't be a, "you can choose anywhere you want as long as it's Yucca Mountain" selection process like was used in '87. Which I think is a good idea.
If he were wise, after a new site were selected, he'd expedite development. Get it built and operational as quickly as possible so that it disappears from the political radar.
CO2 doesn't have a radioactive half-life, but it lasts a long time.
Please don't confuse running out of light, sweet crude with running out of oil.
As for the article at hand, good riddance. The plant was initially to be making hydrogen, too, and the DOE has now said that they're only willing to cover capture and sequestration. Which is great, as hydrogen cars are a dumb idea.
Well, we don't usually shower with him any more; he's more comfortable on a hanging perch than on my shoulder or arm when it's slippery, and we installed a perch for him so he can shower on his own. However, as an amazon, he really enjoys showers, and they're good for him. His natural habitat is, after all, a rainforest.
[quote]Color has exactly one definition: the particular hue, not the intensity thereof. The color is determined by the color of the powdery scales.[/quote]
The article says nothing of the sort. In fact, it says just the opposite: "Blue light has a wavelength range from 400-480 nm, and is the only wavelength that is interfered with constructively by the slits of the morpho, which are 200 nm apart."
Your article completely undercuts your argument.
Why did you link an article that argued against your point? The article says that the bright color of the upper sides of the wings is due to interference, and that only the dull underside is due to pigments.
Most of the colors in my parrot are due to the same diffraction effect from the spacing of the barbs in his feathers. There are two interesting things you can observe. One, when you get him thoroughly soaked in a shower, he becomes all dull except for the yellow feathers on his head (which are pigmented); it's a pretty dramatic color change. Two, when the tips of a feather passes in front of another feather, you get neat Moire patterns.
Indeed. It's a fine day. People open windows. They leave the houses just for a short walk.
Seriously? You didn't find anything like, say, this?
"The conflict between the host and the RM gene system may have contributed to the spread and maintenance of the RM gene complexes. In this way, they resemble proviruses and other genetic elements that are often called selfish genes or selfish genetic elements (8). In general, two homologous alleles in diploid eukaryotic cells segregate in a one-to-one ratio at meiosis. This Mendelian law of segregation is violated by some genes in a process called ?meiotic drive.? These selfish genes are preferentially transmitted over the other, nonself alleles (8). In particular, the action of maternal-effect selfish genes, which cause postfertilization killing (9), appears to be quite similar to the action of the RM gene complexes, i.e., the loss of the selfish gene leads to killing of the progeny by the residual gene product. Thus, the RM gene complexes warrant the term ?selfish genes? in the genetic sense of the term."
Not sure how that is a straw man.
Because sickle cell is not selfish, which was one of the conditions I listed. That'd be like you claiming that wearing lead shoes and being way out at sea without a boat is lethal, and me saying, "Hey, a man survived without a boat recently" while ignoring the lead shoes aspect.
Sickle cell anemia (two recessive genes) is 100% lethal if modern medicine is not available
From the Wikipedia article:
"The allele responsible for sickle-cell anaemia is autosomal recessive and can be found on the short arm of chromosome 11. A person who receives the defective gene from both father and mother develops the disease; a person who receives one defective and one healthy allele remains healthy, but can pass on the disease and is known as a carrier."
and...
"The disease is chronic and lifelong. Individuals are most often well, but their lives are punctuated by periodic painful attacks. Life-expectancy is shortened, but contemporary survival data is lacking. Older studies indicated that sufferers could live to an average of 40 to 50 years, with the average age for males being 42 and the average age for females being 48."
40-50 years isn't past reproductive age why?
Thus, there is a production of hydrogen, a release of energy,
Where I come from, a fuel-air mixture of hydrogen inside a pressure-retaining enclosed structure is explosive, and "energy" (only a small amount) is needed to detonate it.
Of course, it'd be *illegal*, and any artist who was discovered to have a botnet voting for them would immediately end up under investigation themselves. And it's not like it'd be hard to tell; you could combine surveys with download measurements to look for anomalies.
As for surveys, why limit yourself to 1000 individuals? This would be a nationwide program with a revenue of over a hundred million dollars *per month*. It'd be easy to get a much more fine-grained survey than that. Furthermore, you could keep running averages to smooth out the numbers even more.
You mean "using compromised machines" like I already said?
It is so easy to fake traffic if the share is based on traffic
;) The only type of effective artificial skewing I could picture would be hacking -- using compromised machines to "vote" with downloads.
Well, one obvious advancement over that scheme is weighting it by unique individuals. I.e., it's not how much a person downloads, but what percent of what they download belongs to what artist. Since this is tied into purchased net connections, not handles or anything else that could be Sybiled, you can pull it off pretty effectively.
You're still subject to artificial weighting, such as "Hey, everyone who likes this song, download it a whole bunch!" But, if you have enough fans that dedicated to your music to do it enough to actually make a difference, then you're probably pretty darn popular anyways
Another possible system would be to simply phone poll a random percentage of the Canadian population and ask them what they've downloaded recently (perhaps give them a refund on that month's taxes as an incentive to take part in the poll). You'd need a sizable polling base, but it should still be an effective system.
Of course the world is packed full of militant, proselytizing atheists. That's why you see this going on all the time, right? ;)
(Hint: What you've been observing is a phenomenon called selection bias)
You'll find that the genome developed resistance to that kind of attack a long time ago
You'll find that you're wrong. They're mimicking a "selfish gene" found in starfish, but there are selfish genes found in many species. Do a google search on pubmed for "selfish gene" (and, perhaps, add "recombination" to your search).
Plus the situation you describe (a lethal recessive gene)
Thanks for the straw man, but no thanks. You left out "selfish" from your list. There are no lethal, recessive, selfish genes in humans, or, as far as anyone knows, in any species. Namely, because they're a good way to destroy the species among interbreeding populations. Furthermore, sickle cell anemia is only rarely lethal before reproductive age, so it's irrelevant.
Siiiigh again... sodium reacts explosively with concrete. The concrete that the entire containment structure was made out of. The concrete that had a layer of steel over it to prevent sodium, in the event of a leak, from reaching the concrete (they thought the sodium couldn't corrode it). The steel that the sodium nearly ate its way through.
What, exactly, do you think the energy of a 2,000 pound bomb going off in the middle of a reactor will do in terms of letting more sodium leak? What do you think letting more sodium leak will do in terms of further explosions? What do you think all of this will do to the primary?
This was a Very Bad Thing (TM), but could have been far worse.
Seriously, it won't work unless its done every year
Well, there's an easy solution for that. Genetically engineer them to make them go extinct.
This article on Slashdot is proposing something a *lot* more tame than the specicide proposal. Basically, most genes have a 50% chance of passing on to offspring, but certain "selfish" genes game the system and all but guarantee that they're passed along. So, you make a selfish, lethal, recessive gene -- that is, a mosquito can have one copy and survive just fine. When it mates with a wild mosquito, it'll produce offspring that almost all have the recessive, lethal gene. This will continue until most of the wild population now has the gene -- and then they all start dying off. They can no longer interbreed.
Because it sweeps through so fast, there's no chance to adapt resistance. The only thing that can save the species is isolated pockets that manage not to interbreed with the outside world, then escape after all of the others are dead. Hence, effective, widespread distribution of the engineered individuals is critical for complete specicide. As for side-effects, not only has localized extinction of the Anopheles mosquito not had any adverse impact on the ecosystem (other insects fill in the gap on the food chain), but current control attempts are not mosquito-specific; they kill *many* species in large numbers, and we do it every year.
with the possibility of incrementally improving their performance until they can reach orbit.
No, they are not. Google OTRAG, and then think about the fact that SS1/SS2 have about the same performance as the OTRAG stages. And you can't just change out fuel/oxidizer (i.e., improve the performance, the ISP) without redoing the entire craft from engines to tanks. And the cockpit needs to be redesigned for the TPS, so that really leaves nothing left.
Scaled knows this. Anyone involved in rocketry does. But they're playing on the public's lack of awareness of the extreme difference between "getting to space" and "getting to orbit" to get themselves publicity.
Goal: Demo launches to flight-prove Falcon 1 systems by Q1 2007 in preparation for upcoming commercial and military launches
Result: 90% of systems flight-proven by Q1 2007. Not only has its craft been seen as reliable enough by its partners to continue on with its military and commercial payloads, but helped earn them an huge contract with the USAF. All but one of the eight anomalies in the second flight were minor. The non-minor one, upper stage roll, has been dealt with in two different manners, each of which on its own would be sufficient to address it.
Goal: Meet all COTS milestones on schedule.
Result: So far, has met all COTS milestones on or ahead of schedule
Not bad for having to move aside whenever someone else wants their launch facilities. What goals are you thinking that they haven't met, exactly?
and they haven't been able to get the much simpler Falcon I flying regularly and reliably.
That's what the demo launches are for. Look at the track records of other new rocket families in their initial testing launches (*orbital* rockets -- the ones that actually have to deal with the challenges of orbital rocketry). 1 failure and one near success during testing is reasonably good. They're paralleling Ariane V's track record currently.
Delta v is the correct way to analyze getting to orbit. You're wasting your time when you talk about energy here.
It's all about getting gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy to your spacecraft. I'm not talking about the energy of the fuel. The delta-V for launch involves the gravitational potential energy, the kinetic energy, and the gravity losses. As noted, the first two are only 3% of that on an orbital craft. Gravity losses are a few hundred m/s. Summary: the performance of SS1 is pathetic.
I assume you're acknowledging your mistake in assuming that SS1 had relevant horizontal velocity at the top of its nearly vertical ballistic trajectory?
As it turns out, the Falcon 1 needs an upper stage baffle. And as you keep ignoring, that lax performance envelope is a feature of SS1. They solved other things that the two problems you keep noting.
It's not a feature of SS1; it's a feature of only being capable of suborbital joyrides.
So yes, they'll use a propellant choice with higher ISP and they'll have a greater mass ratio.
Sorry, doesn't work that way. You can't just swap out your fuel and oxidizer in a rocket and be done with it. It requires a complete redesign, engines to tankage (and becomes far more complicated). Meanwhile, the TPS require a complete redesign of the cockpit. Net result: complete redesign of the entire craft.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The problem is that the space industry is locked in a vicious cycle: launch rates are down due to high prices, but mass production and many competing design options can't exist with low launch rates. We need a breakthrough, which will take investment and incentives.
You also know your stuff with balloon reentry. Did you read about that or come up with it on your own? The Russians have been experimenting with it, as it lets you lose velocity in the extreme upper reaches of the atmosphere and gives you a huge surface area to radiate the heat (like you note). Hopefully this research goes somewhere. Another option I've read about is gas/plasma injection on the craft's skin to help restore laminar flow and thus reduce heat transfer to the craft. Of course, better spacecraft design alone would help; smaller, less dense spacecraft (i.e., opposite of the shuttle) is good, as is using a frame that can run hot (titanium alloys, for example).
ummm... SpaceX has barely gotten off the pad much less into space.
~300km/~5000m/s is "barely off the pad"? In what universe? It'd have easily been 7,800 m/s if they just had an upper stage baffle.
Who do you think came up with and has built and flown a throttleable solid rocket engine? (I'll give you a hint, It wasn't SpaceX.)
I'll give you a hint: It wasn't Scaled. They flew a hybrid rocket. One that got them a mere 3% of the energy of an equivalent mass in orbit and cannot scale to orbit.
They've also come up with some interesting canopy (window) designs that are fairly novel and structurally as well as visually better than what is commonly used today.
Read: Pretty and unscalable. That won't work with a TPS.
Oh also there is the little thing I bet you didn't know. Scaled Composites helps build the Pegasus air launched vehicle which regularly puts 1/2 ton satalites into low orbit
Yes, they make its tail fins. Color me impressed.
and a few simulated launch videos and a few ground test as achievements.
Wow, you really know absolutely nothing about SpaceX, don't you?
You simply don't put all your money into cutting edge research unless you're willing to lose it all.
You simply don't put all your money into something that you know will go nowhere unless you find "nowhere" (joyrides) to be a desirable destination. If your goal is orbital rocketry, then start on the *right* path, not the wrong one.
SeaLaunch and Orbital already *have* made successful rockets, and regularly launch them for profit. They based theirs on existing rockets, mind you, but the point is still the same. SpaceX is essentially proven; were it not for a lack of an upper stage baffle, the last launch would have been picture perfect.
I think your assessment in general is right on the mark (delays always spring up -- although at least with the Falcons, there's a pretty fast turnaround, so I wouldn't expect launch any later than July or August, but you have to expect that not everything will run perfectly). I do think, however, that the problems with Ares I, the classic topheavy stick, are just beginning. I've always felt it was a bad design, and the vibration's hardly the start of it. They've had to keep reducing its payload as they've run into one problem after another, and this is going to lower it further. I can't imagine what this is going to do to Orion. :P
1) I thought it was pretty obvious I was referring to the Ares I, since I was discussing docking Orion vs. Dragon.
2) All but for a baffle. Do you really think that's going to be an issue? In terms of testing success/failure compared to number of launches in a new rocket family, I'd say SpaceX is currently running above average.
3a) Yes, it'll be at least a year. But Orion's not scheduled to fly until 2014 or 2015.
3b) Yes, it's not in competition with NASA. But it's fair to say that it's in competition with Orion. Do you honestly think that with Dragons having spent four to five years docking with ISS that there will be any need for Orion?
4) Plenty of doomed projects keep going on momentum -- especially when congressionally mandated.
I don't see the vehicle requiring a major redesign, after all delta v is fixable by better ISP engines and a larger mass ratio.
With an ISP this low, you need an OTRAG approach to get to orbit. Which is essentially impossible with a carrier-launched aircraft. Also, composites don't lend themselves to an OTRAG approach.
As to taking a higher ISP approach, that means turbopumps and completely different propellants, which means completely different engines and completely different tankage, which means a completely different craft.
And still always problematic. Ablative or tile, they're brittle, high maintenance, expensive systems.