Sadly not. Updating the manuals and charts and other paperwork is the responsiblity of the pilots themselves, who are only paid for (can't recall which it is right now) either time airborn or time from doors close to doors open.
Doubly so when you consider that they are about to launch application distribution, and even more so if (as I suspect) the hints at a "Steam OS" turn out to be a WINE installation rolled into the Linux Steam client that puts WINE installs into the same client install and interface, and makes the WINE layer transparent to the user. It's certainly the only way to have any shot at approaching the vision of the entire steam catalog being Linux compatible and would give a nice boost to Mac sales as well.
So what you're saying is that we should kill the funded program because a massively more expensive program might be better if we were to ever convince congress to fund it a level unprecedented even compared to Apollo. And that is for a distinctly specific vision of "better" that doesn't involve any concept of going beyond the moon and does involve lots of people stationed on the moon with little in the way of specific purpose.
Aside from being a convenient place to stick telescope arrays I have yet to see any proposals for anything we can do on the moon that aren't simpler, cheaper and more usefully done on Mars. Sure, going back is worthwhile, but we hardly going to be settling the thing, and without settlement we aren't going to getting any savings out of the massive orbital infrastructure needed for things like reusable lunar shuttles and small payloads.
And that mission profile required not a few more billion, but tens of billion more. Moreover, any conceivable savings, that are only available assuming it all works properly (and since when has first generation equipment ever been that perfect), is based on high flight rates. Seeing as the shuttle never could find enough payloads to justify its originally intended rate even before Challenger showed that rate as impossible I see no reason to believe we are suddenly going to need a weekly shuttle to the moon.
Don't forget what a spectacularly high failure rate Gemini Agena had.
If the ISS taught us anything it's that we CAN assemble thing on orbit, but it isn't cheap, easy or problem free. I've never understood the hostility in some quarters to anything much larger than an ICBM. With every single proposed design the larger vehicles ARE cheaper on per kg, let alone per mission, basis. Some hypothetical SSTO is all well and good if you can go out and get me the funding for it, but don't tell me we shouldn't be building better equipment today because someone might, someday, get around to funding a project that we aren't even entirely sure will work. And if the argument hinges on mass production, show me a "small dumb booster" that can't be made simpler by scaling up.
And I haven't even touched on how difficult a lot of these things are to split. Just how do you intend to launch the heat shield for a Mars lander separately from the actual payload? For anything going much beyond what was proposed for Orion/Altair multiple launches, let alone multiple launches in the 20ish ton rnage, we're very much talking orbital assembly, not mere docking. This nonsense is how we ended up with the idea a Mars mission would cost $100 billion and need a freaking spaceport in orbit.
Not the first time I've seen something like this actually. I've heard of a few cases where emergency agencies have run training scenarios based on a zombie apocalypse, not for the likelihood of the event but to get their command personnel thinking outside the conventional scenarios. Pretty valuable IMO given that effective response is not so much dependant on having pre planned scenarios for predictable events as in being able to respond to unexpected ones.
The main ones I can think of are a few cases of heat damage, where fires have been allowed to burn in more or less direct contact with them for several hours (one of the recorders on Comair had this happen, and there have been a few others).
My own scepticism on his target is mostly about SpaceX developing a soft landing capability in the time frame he's given. I fully expect to see Falcon XX flying by then (X will, IMO, fall by the wayside to a Falcon 9 Heavy variant with a Merlin 2 in each core, only disadvantage is loss of engine out capability), but soft land, particularly of any significant payload is another larger development project at least on the scale of building and flying Merlin 2 and Falcon XX. There is a limit to SpaceX's resources, and I think soft land in ten years goes beyond what they can realistically expect to afford in terms of engineering capacity.
Now, if Blue Origin does everything Bezos is promising I think we have a very interesting possibility for a SpaceX powered Blue Origin developed lander... That said, while NASA seems satisfied I do have big questions about the reasons for Blue Origins' extreme secrecy. That said, I was among the people wondering about SpaceX's true capabilities after the early Falcon 1s all failed.
Been said already, but he's not saying design isn't real work, he's saying that design reviews aren't. Moreover, a design review or two makes sense, but for a supposedly minor program with not very much money at stake 60% of the actual MILESTONES being reviews is crazy. I grant that what may be happening is that NASA is reviewing the designs at these points to ensure reasonable progress, but as Quantum said, that is never what I have heard of these things being, and beyond that, a reasonable process would fix the actual targest before hand rather than saying "we'll have a review at this point and decide if we're happy with where you are then".
Agreed. There may well be (no, never mind, there definitely is) a failing in the teaching things like method and reasoning, but this is the great failing. The whole system is tailored to teach detail and intricacy, and to largely do so by rote. The only thing this will teach is the regurgitation of specific facts and techniques - it certainly won't impart any kind of understanding.
Exactly. The fact that there are supposedly MILLIONS of people with access to this network is the real problem. If it is really too much trouble to have any kind of need to know mechanism on this data it's time for a major review of what actually needs to be classified. The reality is that if the system hadn't been wide open to anyone with a need for any part of it this never would have happened.
The power utilities are probably the only industry that can get away with charging the customer for the ability to sell the customer more product--most other industries require that the producer build infrastructure on spec, and then recoup that cost through sales
Isn't that exactly what ISPs are trying to pull, at least on the consumer end?
Ugh, its the same damn story in every infrastructure heavy industry these days. The ISPs need to upgrade, and suddenly it's 'abusive' to be a heavy user. The power companies need to generate and supply more, and the solution is 'concern', subsidy and rolling blackouts. There was a time when any of these things would have been seen as a positive for the industry, an opportunity to sell more products. Now it seems that anything that costs any capital whatsoever is treated as a negative, whatever the actual result is. What the hell is going on when supposedly profit seeking firms no longer see their own growth as a positive? Wasn't privatization supposed to avoid this kind of crap?
Wrong. It is both. This is an issue that can be addressed EITHER through regulation or deregulation. We have too much regulation for new competitors to really be free to enter the market, but at the same time not enough to force the existing operators to provide what is needed. Frankly, I don't give a shit at this point, but it needs to change either way. While my own inclination on infrastructure would probably be to regulate a near monopoly as we did with phone companies and railroads in the past, the political situation is such TRUE deregulation probably makes more sense (and it's not like regulation doesn't have its own massive set of problems).
But it's entirely artificial. One tax funded budget gets funds transferred to another tax funded budget. Its also not as if the IRS (or any agency) has funds sitting in a bank account somewhere, if they have to pay a fine they're just going to have to have a correspondingly bigger requisition to cover the fine and their own operations.
Truth be told things are for the most part a lot better in the US, take a look at some of the rates that Rogers and Bell try and foist on us in Canada. You end up with numbers like $70 for 80gb or $100 for 175, and $10/gb overage being competitive - things are getting better with the resellers like teksavy, but the network owners are putting significant effort into killing them, and won't give them access to the full network speeds (although this seems likely to be changed b the CRTC eventually).
I'm all for efficieny gains, andthe work being done in TFA is great, we just shouldn't try to convince ourselves that we do t need further infrastructure, and pretty soon at that. Bear in mind that the strategy of a lot of the telecos lately seems to have been declaring that increased usage of he network, rather than bein a sign of technological maturity is 'abusive', and needs to be stopped. For that matter, the fact hey male these claims is a pretty good sign that there isn't enough competition, seein as increased bandwidth usage, far from being a threatto network integrity is a chance for the providers to sell more product.
Nice work they're doing, but nothing is going to get us around the need for new infrastructure. As much as the telecos are trying to deny it, we are going to need another major round of long distance fiber installations before the global network anything like stabilizes.
Actually, I would draw a comparison to the British railway system in the 19th century (flawed but some interesting points in it), particularly with reference to the boom bust cycle (including apparent over construction early on that actually goes over capacity quite soon, and eventual REAL massive over investment and big collapses and consolidation). Not really sure if we want that outcome, but it seems like a reasonable parallel in some ways; on the one hand massive overbuilding would be nice for users, for awhile at least, but as it is we need to be breaking telecom monopolies, not creating more through collapses and consolidtation...
Canadian quasi socialist (NDP member and campaign worker) and I see a lot of truth to this. Traditional activism has pretty much become a tool of the right, while the left tries to debate in a way that makes for very nice academic discussion and gets almost nowhere. So where do we go from here?
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Sadly not. Updating the manuals and charts and other paperwork is the responsiblity of the pilots themselves, who are only paid for (can't recall which it is right now) either time airborn or time from doors close to doors open.
Doubly so when you consider that they are about to launch application distribution, and even more so if (as I suspect) the hints at a "Steam OS" turn out to be a WINE installation rolled into the Linux Steam client that puts WINE installs into the same client install and interface, and makes the WINE layer transparent to the user. It's certainly the only way to have any shot at approaching the vision of the entire steam catalog being Linux compatible and would give a nice boost to Mac sales as well.
So what you're saying is that we should kill the funded program because a massively more expensive program might be better if we were to ever convince congress to fund it a level unprecedented even compared to Apollo. And that is for a distinctly specific vision of "better" that doesn't involve any concept of going beyond the moon and does involve lots of people stationed on the moon with little in the way of specific purpose. Aside from being a convenient place to stick telescope arrays I have yet to see any proposals for anything we can do on the moon that aren't simpler, cheaper and more usefully done on Mars. Sure, going back is worthwhile, but we hardly going to be settling the thing, and without settlement we aren't going to getting any savings out of the massive orbital infrastructure needed for things like reusable lunar shuttles and small payloads.
And that mission profile required not a few more billion, but tens of billion more. Moreover, any conceivable savings, that are only available assuming it all works properly (and since when has first generation equipment ever been that perfect), is based on high flight rates. Seeing as the shuttle never could find enough payloads to justify its originally intended rate even before Challenger showed that rate as impossible I see no reason to believe we are suddenly going to need a weekly shuttle to the moon.
Don't forget what a spectacularly high failure rate Gemini Agena had. If the ISS taught us anything it's that we CAN assemble thing on orbit, but it isn't cheap, easy or problem free. I've never understood the hostility in some quarters to anything much larger than an ICBM. With every single proposed design the larger vehicles ARE cheaper on per kg, let alone per mission, basis. Some hypothetical SSTO is all well and good if you can go out and get me the funding for it, but don't tell me we shouldn't be building better equipment today because someone might, someday, get around to funding a project that we aren't even entirely sure will work. And if the argument hinges on mass production, show me a "small dumb booster" that can't be made simpler by scaling up. And I haven't even touched on how difficult a lot of these things are to split. Just how do you intend to launch the heat shield for a Mars lander separately from the actual payload? For anything going much beyond what was proposed for Orion/Altair multiple launches, let alone multiple launches in the 20ish ton rnage, we're very much talking orbital assembly, not mere docking. This nonsense is how we ended up with the idea a Mars mission would cost $100 billion and need a freaking spaceport in orbit.
Not the first time I've seen something like this actually. I've heard of a few cases where emergency agencies have run training scenarios based on a zombie apocalypse, not for the likelihood of the event but to get their command personnel thinking outside the conventional scenarios. Pretty valuable IMO given that effective response is not so much dependant on having pre planned scenarios for predictable events as in being able to respond to unexpected ones.
The main ones I can think of are a few cases of heat damage, where fires have been allowed to burn in more or less direct contact with them for several hours (one of the recorders on Comair had this happen, and there have been a few others).
My own scepticism on his target is mostly about SpaceX developing a soft landing capability in the time frame he's given. I fully expect to see Falcon XX flying by then (X will, IMO, fall by the wayside to a Falcon 9 Heavy variant with a Merlin 2 in each core, only disadvantage is loss of engine out capability), but soft land, particularly of any significant payload is another larger development project at least on the scale of building and flying Merlin 2 and Falcon XX. There is a limit to SpaceX's resources, and I think soft land in ten years goes beyond what they can realistically expect to afford in terms of engineering capacity. Now, if Blue Origin does everything Bezos is promising I think we have a very interesting possibility for a SpaceX powered Blue Origin developed lander... That said, while NASA seems satisfied I do have big questions about the reasons for Blue Origins' extreme secrecy. That said, I was among the people wondering about SpaceX's true capabilities after the early Falcon 1s all failed.
Take a look at how well this has worked municipally. There are still essentially parties, but no one bothers to vote anymore.
Been said already, but he's not saying design isn't real work, he's saying that design reviews aren't. Moreover, a design review or two makes sense, but for a supposedly minor program with not very much money at stake 60% of the actual MILESTONES being reviews is crazy. I grant that what may be happening is that NASA is reviewing the designs at these points to ensure reasonable progress, but as Quantum said, that is never what I have heard of these things being, and beyond that, a reasonable process would fix the actual targest before hand rather than saying "we'll have a review at this point and decide if we're happy with where you are then".
"Thanks to the crew of Challenger, Columbia and Apollo 1." Lets not forget the crews of Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11.
Let me just say, as a fencer, that that sounds truly awesome. Albeit a complete waste of time and effort, but still awesome.
RTFA. They fully intend to ignore the ordinance.
Agreed. There may well be (no, never mind, there definitely is) a failing in the teaching things like method and reasoning, but this is the great failing. The whole system is tailored to teach detail and intricacy, and to largely do so by rote. The only thing this will teach is the regurgitation of specific facts and techniques - it certainly won't impart any kind of understanding.
Exactly. The fact that there are supposedly MILLIONS of people with access to this network is the real problem. If it is really too much trouble to have any kind of need to know mechanism on this data it's time for a major review of what actually needs to be classified. The reality is that if the system hadn't been wide open to anyone with a need for any part of it this never would have happened.
The power utilities are probably the only industry that can get away with charging the customer for the ability to sell the customer more product--most other industries require that the producer build infrastructure on spec, and then recoup that cost through sales
Isn't that exactly what ISPs are trying to pull, at least on the consumer end?
Ugh, its the same damn story in every infrastructure heavy industry these days. The ISPs need to upgrade, and suddenly it's 'abusive' to be a heavy user. The power companies need to generate and supply more, and the solution is 'concern', subsidy and rolling blackouts. There was a time when any of these things would have been seen as a positive for the industry, an opportunity to sell more products. Now it seems that anything that costs any capital whatsoever is treated as a negative, whatever the actual result is. What the hell is going on when supposedly profit seeking firms no longer see their own growth as a positive? Wasn't privatization supposed to avoid this kind of crap?
Wrong. It is both. This is an issue that can be addressed EITHER through regulation or deregulation. We have too much regulation for new competitors to really be free to enter the market, but at the same time not enough to force the existing operators to provide what is needed. Frankly, I don't give a shit at this point, but it needs to change either way. While my own inclination on infrastructure would probably be to regulate a near monopoly as we did with phone companies and railroads in the past, the political situation is such TRUE deregulation probably makes more sense (and it's not like regulation doesn't have its own massive set of problems).
But it's entirely artificial. One tax funded budget gets funds transferred to another tax funded budget. Its also not as if the IRS (or any agency) has funds sitting in a bank account somewhere, if they have to pay a fine they're just going to have to have a correspondingly bigger requisition to cover the fine and their own operations.
Pretty much. Welcome to government. And do note my username.
Truth be told things are for the most part a lot better in the US, take a look at some of the rates that Rogers and Bell try and foist on us in Canada. You end up with numbers like $70 for 80gb or $100 for 175, and $10/gb overage being competitive - things are getting better with the resellers like teksavy, but the network owners are putting significant effort into killing them, and won't give them access to the full network speeds (although this seems likely to be changed b the CRTC eventually).
I'm all for efficieny gains, andthe work being done in TFA is great, we just shouldn't try to convince ourselves that we do t need further infrastructure, and pretty soon at that. Bear in mind that the strategy of a lot of the telecos lately seems to have been declaring that increased usage of he network, rather than bein a sign of technological maturity is 'abusive', and needs to be stopped. For that matter, the fact hey male these claims is a pretty good sign that there isn't enough competition, seein as increased bandwidth usage, far from being a threatto network integrity is a chance for the providers to sell more product.
Nice work they're doing, but nothing is going to get us around the need for new infrastructure. As much as the telecos are trying to deny it, we are going to need another major round of long distance fiber installations before the global network anything like stabilizes. Actually, I would draw a comparison to the British railway system in the 19th century (flawed but some interesting points in it), particularly with reference to the boom bust cycle (including apparent over construction early on that actually goes over capacity quite soon, and eventual REAL massive over investment and big collapses and consolidation). Not really sure if we want that outcome, but it seems like a reasonable parallel in some ways; on the one hand massive overbuilding would be nice for users, for awhile at least, but as it is we need to be breaking telecom monopolies, not creating more through collapses and consolidtation...
Canadian quasi socialist (NDP member and campaign worker) and I see a lot of truth to this. Traditional activism has pretty much become a tool of the right, while the left tries to debate in a way that makes for very nice academic discussion and gets almost nowhere. So where do we go from here?
Or just give us Cablecard...