Summary: The first stage/boosters failed to generate enough thrust to achieve the proper staging point, as shown by the planned plot on the broadcast and the actual track. Some speculation points at a failure of one the boosters during the initial flight phase (before the boosters separate). The second stage separated and fired considerably later than planned and at some point, the mission was declared to be unsuccessful, due to flight anomalies.
Politics aside, please note that the open broadcast of the launch is what enables this informed discussion, and for that, us space geeks can appreciate the access granted by the Chinese Space Agency to the live broadcast.
Opinion: this was not helpful for the Chinese launch program, but at least the vehicle didn't RUD (rapid unplanned disassembly). Analysis of the telemetry will assist them in determining the cause, and may help them to engineer a fix. It's still a setback to their heavy lift ambitions for this year.
Actually, I do know these things, but didn't bother to include all the sources, given it being Christmas and all. Since you are so insistent about it though...
Points 1 & 3 are taken from direct quotes by Elon Musk
Point 2 is taken from the design of the Falcon 9, available at spacex or nearby wikipedia.
"re-use without refurbishment" another direct E. Musk quote.
Spacex current launch rate (6 per year) and cadence and published launch costs and satellite weights for commercial space companies are just a google search away. Try this excellent site: http://www.spacelaunchreport.c... for starters
A very informative and useful place to find much of this information and discussion by knowledgeable space experts and enthusiasts is at: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com...
The rest is just simple math.
To sum up, I do have details, I'm not guessing, and I note where I make assumptions. Find fault with my assumptions if you like, but please explain why those assumptions are flawed with specifics, not generalities.
Interesting numbers. Let's try a variant case. Suppose in addition:
You're assuming that the non-reusable launch vehicle cost per launch is $60M. OK, let's start out by assuming 1/3 of that is fixed costs and operations costs, and 2/3 the vehicle cost, which is split evenly between the two stages (first stage is larger, but not proportionately more expensive). So, of the $60 million, $40 million is spent even if the vehicle first stage was free.
Now assume that re-usability increases the launch cost by, say, $5 million (launch operations are expensive! and the cost is not entirely the vehicle).
Assume that all the stuff needed to make the first stage reusable increases the stage cost by 25%, from $20M to $25M.
And assume that the delta-V and the added mass to do the fly-back decreases payload by 10%, and that the price you sell the launch for decreases a similar percentage (some payloads won't care, but some will.)
First off, the current cost of the rocket already includes the costs to do reusibilty, so the cost of the first stage will not increase- it is designed be reused up to 10 times right now with no change in hardware.
Secondly, the cost of the 2 stages are not even remotely close to equal; the first stage has 9 Merlin engines, the second stage only has 1. An estimate of 6 to 1 (first to second) for costs would be more reasonable.
Thirdly, the payloads currently quoted already include reusability (16MT to LEO and 4.5MT to GTO). No loss of earnings there.
So none your variant assumptions are useful for this discussion.
Let's look at some other factors you haven't considered.
Like the space shuttle, SpaceX now has a rocket for examination that has flown a full mission and hasn't had a 6G salt water landing. This means that they will be able to do full engineering analysis on what stresses the rocket actually experienced during a flight event that increase all steps necessary for re-use. The results of that analysis will allow them to determine what parts of the rocket need to be enhanced or reduced to meet the 10 tens re-use goal. SpaceX has the luxury of being to make changes to their rocket without Congressional approval, so this information can be used immediately to improve the vehicle. The design goal of the Falcon is that the rocket need not be "refurbished" after every flight, just put through some standard flight maintenance tests. Having the flown stages available for analysis will help them to meet this goal.
Additionally, SpaceX currently has launch costs based on 6 launches a year. As they have already demonstrated the ability to launch with a cadence of 2 weeks several times, being able to increase their launch rate to a minimum of 1 a month will cut their overall costs per launch.
Let's assume that a slight redesign based on analysis of real-world data let's them increase reliability of the Falcon 9 to 1 in 100 and increase the payload by 1MT to GTO. At 5.5MT to GTO, this let's them handle 90% of all GTO launches (6MT is at the current top end for commercial satellites to GeoSynchronous orbits) with the reuable design. 5MT is compable to $137M Ariane 5 capbility or $132M for an Atlas 5 launch for NASA with both the throw weight and reliability requirements necessary to get these flights.
$60M to launch the current, reusable Falcon 9 1.1FT.
33% is launch cost. - $20M
56% is first stage - $34M
11% is the second stage $6M
Assumption 1: increase in flight rate reduces launch costs by 25%
Assumption 2: landing/recovery/flight readiness check costs $5M a launch
Assumption 3: 10 flights reuse of the first stage = $3.5M a launch
Under these assumptions:
Launch cost $15M
Landing/recovery/checks $5M
First stage $3.5M
Second Stage: $6M
Total: $29.5M
I'm OK with those numbers given what they can charge and how quickly they can do regular launches. Where they will really rake in the cash is for a Facon Heavy launch (same vehicle with 3 first stages instead of 1) with 56MT to LEO for an asking price of $110M and a cost, by these assumptions of $35M. They could even reduce their price after a few launches of the Heavy to $56M, and start launching bulk cargo to space at a rate of $1000/Kg
"Late Thursday night, the Times published a story claiming that the Justice Department had been asked "to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account," only to quietly change the story to say that the Justice Department had been asked "to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used." As in, the story changed from being about a potential criminal investigation into Clinton's conduct to being about a potential criminal investigation into the mishandling of sensitive information by... someone not named. "
So, haven't you guys learned yet to ignore mass media reporting when it involves a Clinton? It's almost like someone with billions of dollars has been trying to smear the leading Democratic candidate for a few years now.
The thing is, I can put solar on my house, and I will be to able to generate enough power, on occasion, to have some extra to put back on the grid. With the right configuration and local storage, I can even go off the grid. As a consumer, the other options you mention are things I can't do. Sure, solar is more expensive per KWH, but at least it's doable for lots of homeowners.
Separately, you may not have noticed that the Republicans have held effective veto power over new legislation in the Senate until just yesterday. Thus, making the claim the Republicans (even with a minority in the Senate) can be held somewhat responsible for lack of progress in the area seems reasonable.
Sure, that's why I said that this is an advance. If you don't need HPC resources, this can work really well. But, you have educate scientists and researchers on the difference, and this article doesn't do that well enough.
While this a nice use of Amazon's EC to build a high throughput system, that doesn't translate as nicely to what most High Performance computing users need- high network bandwidth, low latency between nodes and large, fast shared filesystems on which to store and retrieve the massive amounts of data being used or generated. The cloud created here is only useful to the subset of researchers who don't need those things. I'd have a hard time calling this High Performance Computing.
Look at XSEDE's HPC resources page. While each of those supercomputers has something special about the services they offer (GPU's SSD's, fast access, etc), they all spent a significant portion of their build budget on a high performance network to link the nodes for parallel codes. They also spent money on high performance parallel filesystems instead of more cores. Their users can't get their research done effectively on systems or clouds without those important elements.
I think that it's great that public cloud computing has advanced to the point where useful, large-scale science can be accomplished on it. Please note that it takes a separate company (CycleCloud) to make it possible to use Amazon EC in this way (lowest cost and webapp access) for your average scientist, but it's still an advance.
Disclaimer: I work for XSEDE, so do your own search on HPC to verify what I'm saying.
At work I need to install several different types/versions of linux OS's for testing. I always torrent the ISO as a way of "paying" for the image that I'm using.
A few years back, we did some experimenting with torrents over the Teragrid 10GBe backbone, to see how well that worked over the long haul between IL and CA. With just 2 endpoints, even on GBe, it wasn't better than a simple rsync. We did some small scale test with less than 10 cluster nodes on one side, but still not as useful as a Wide Area filesystem we were testing against. Bittorrent protocols just aren't optimized for a few nodes with a fat pipe between them.
I am interested in looking at the new Bitorrent Sync client to see how thanks for our setup. We have many users with 10's of TB's of data to push around on a weekly basis.
If the purpose of patents is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" then no, I don't see how restricting patents to physical implementations (not software on a general purpose computing device) utterly defeats that purpose. Nothing restricts the author from enforcing his patent on physical reproductions, he just can't claim that a non-physical implementation is a violation.
Can you give any examples where this change would stop or slow scientific progress?
I take some relief in noting that these are "ex-NASA" employees.
Per the article, it seems that these guys mostly worked at the Texas-based Johnson space center:
"Keith Cowing, editor of the website NASA Watch, noted that the undersigners, most of whom have engineering backgrounds, worked almost exclusively at the Houston-based Johnson Space Centre, a facility almost entirely removed from NASA's climate change arm."
Figures.
Why is it that there are so many amateur climatologists in Texas who know so much, but publish so little? I wonder if these gentlemen even bothered to visit the site of the "Plants Need CO2" sponsor, Leighton Steward, to see who also agreed with their opinions. I'm not linking to that site, and I'd surely want to avoid association with anyone with ideas like that.
Maybe Steward just punked them. Yep, that's go to be it.
Don't overlook positions in government or higher education. Besides being OS agnostic in many cases, there are universities all over the country, not just the SF area.
Want to travel a lot, have a nice career path and instant usefulness due to linux knowledge? Try DISA. I'm not sure if they are still hiring for their intern program (the Army uses intern in a different way than business IT), but it was great opportunity for some people I know. DOE is another area that looks for reliable linux knowledgeable sysadmins.
Look at the top500 list and see how many big clusters are run by Universities and their affiliates. Then check out how many of those systems use windows- and then laugh. Higher education also runs a lot of smaller systems on linux. Lots of positions starting to open up there. if you have cluster admin knowledge, you're a shoo-in. If not, take a lower position where they do run clusters and let them know that you'd be interested in moving up.
Disclaimer- yes, I work at NCSA at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and yes, we have some linux positions open. Do the legwork yourself, however- it'll make you look smarter.
My boss suggested that I attend a weekly "geek lunch" that a group of the older computer savvy fellows held at the U of I's Beckman Institute and met him there. I was aware of Project Gutenberg before that but hadn't used it much. Michael was a good advocate for ebooks before anyone got around to coining that particular terminology. The last few times we met, I remember him being very excited as he had samples of various new ebook readers to try out. He was testing them to see well they integrated the Gutenberg Project and was glad that more people would have easy access to it.
Over last fall, the group met weekly and I helped him with the process of making digital copies of the Gutenberg archive on different filesystems on individual drives. The entire Gutenberg archive is about 300GB with everything extracted and we could dual format a 750GB drive to fit a copy on NTFS and another one on ext3. That was a fun experience; most people don't get to play with a real life 300GB data set.
I hadn't been to a meeting in a while, darn it. I'll miss him.
I've heard that the Merlin 1-c engines are about $1M a piece. And that SSME's run $50M each at the current production rates.
Hard to verify pricing for components, especially for SpaceX, as they do so much in house. Who outside of the company knows what the actual production costs of each part are? Hmmm, perhaps we can estimate the max possible cost of each engine based on launch prices and the assumption that SpaceX is not taking a loss on each launch.
A Falcon 9 launch costs $54M, and has 10 Merlin 1c engines. I'm going to ignore the cost differences between the upper stage (vacuum) and lower stage engines. If every thing else (fuel, lower & upper stages, facility lease, profit) were $0, each engine would cost at most $5.4M. In fact, looking at the announced pricing for Falcon Heavy, $110M max, with 27+1 engines, you're looking at less than $4M an engine, max.
Given the costs of the rest of the launch, and number of engines (production scaling efficiencies) involved, I don't think that a $1M per engine estimate is too far off. That puts engines at 25% of the launch costs, and I'm OK with that estimate. I know that the Shuttle SRB's are a higher percentage of the cost of a SLS, but those are an outlier. You can buy 4 Atlas CCB's (with 8 engines) for the price of 1 SRB. Given that pricing, I'm not sure that any $10M engine out there has 10x the thrust of a Merlin 1c.
So SpaceX is probably good with the whole multiple engine thing, at least on price.
I'm an alumni of the U of I, and I work here as well. I get these notifications. I thought I'd bring up 2 points:
Fortunately, given the spring break, the actual number of people on campus able to read this was was quite low.
Unfortunately, we just had a fire on Green street 2 days ago, and we got an alert from the same system informing us about it. So this warning was probably taken very seriously for those 12 minutes.
Overall, I'm satisfied with the system and I was impressed by the very explicit letter from the chief both explaining the error and accepting the blame for the mistake. She also detailed the upcoming efforts to address the error. I'd like to see the same level of accountability from my ISP or phone company.
Hmmm, can't say that my first attempt to use Bing gave me any Lindsay L. results, but noscript did put up a cross site scripting hijack after I attempted to "disable" a helpful toolbar with my facebook info proudly displayed.
I'm positive I don't need any search provider tapping into my facebook info- and I certainly don't want to be reminded of it on the front page! That's like, TSA scary.
Ignoring the blatant invasion of my privacy for a moment, I'm happy to say my (small sample size, insert disclaimer here) test of Google vs Bing revealed that the "best all mountain skis" works differently in Google versus Bing. Google gave a list of places to buy "the best all mountain skis" as the top listings, whereas Bing gave a set of review sites telling me which ones were the best.
Not sure how to rate one result as better than the other, they're just different. Perhaps Google feels that their users know what they want, so they just point them at it. Perhaps Bing believes that their users want to learn what is the best choice for them. Hard to put a metric on that. I'd hazard an informed guess that both search providers weigh their results according to desires of their users, as measured by click through rates. Bing users might want more hand holding, whereas Google users might want less distractions before they learn the location of something.
All that being said, I'm still not using a search engine that displays my facebook account info. Yuck. I don't care if this is Facebook's fault, I don't want to see it on a random search page as part of the interface.
Terraforming is great, if you have someplace else to practice. Trying to terraform the earth with our current level of knowledge about the process and possible side effects is like doing experimental brain surgery on yourself. If we screw it up, we have no place else to go. Paraphrasing the Tick, I like the Earth, I keep all my stuff there. Let's practice terraforming on Mars, first, to get the bugs out. Until then, let's not make things worse here by accident.
My biggest gripe about this whole debate are the countless numbers of people who fail to think at all, and believe that we can ignore the mounting evidence that there even is an issue. Until they recognize the warning signs the scientists keep point out, we really can't have a debate about the issue and what to do about it. Humanocentric or not, the planet seems to be getting hotter. Perhaps all those scientists are reading things incorrectly, or drawing the wrong conclusions, but even with a chance that they are on to something ought to cause all of us to be very concerned. And not just about the gas mileage for SUV's.
Um, I was referring to Direct, the "SSTS without the space shuttle" design, not the Ares I "Stick". I was looking at the actual design for Direct's J-130 model right here. It's a stage 1.5 design with all engines ground lit and the boosters jettisoned during flight, just like the SSTS. I do agree with your statement about the Ares I:
I worked on Ares and know what the design is. That thing was a gigantic piece of crap just waiting to fail. Badly. From the barely stable structural dynamics of a 400ft long pencil flying at mach 6, to the ugliest, most disaster prone separation sequence; that design was doomed to fail.
But that's not what I was talking about.:)
Also, the very first class you take in Aerospace Engineering teaches you exactly why SSTO (single stage to orbit) is not as cost-effective as multiple stages. So your argument that this design is better because it doesn't need a second stage is not a good one. The design might be simpler and easier to build, but it requires so much more fuel per launch that it isn't worth it.
As my argument about "single stage", I was referring to the fact that the design already gets 77mT to orbit with just a single (OK, 1.5 stage counting the SRB's) stage and that there was room for more growth, like a second stage, if you needed more lift and were willing to pay extra for it. Did I mention the option to use 5 segment SRB's? I could go on... It's just that the J-130 is the cheapest option for a new HLV, and it leverages all the work and research that went into the SSTS program, rather than throwing it away.
Per the official design from the Direct team (sorry for the pdf, that's what they have), it's 77,835kg to 30nmx100nm orbit for the regular NASA GR&A's. It's only down to 70mt if you arbitrarily factor in an additional 10% margin. Which doesn't account for their own internal 15% margin that isn't documented. I like engineers who give themselves leeway.
Short answer, yes, the 1.5 stage J-130 does 77mT to orbit per NASA rules.
This potential bill means congressional support behind a Direct version of a shuttle replacement or something close enough not to matter. Direct is a design to replace the space shuttle with a rocket that puts the cargo and capsule on top of the tank, and moves the shuttle engines on the bottom of the tank. Without having to lift the load of the space shuttle itself, the rocket gets 77mT of cargo to orbit.
Re-using all the major shuttle components provides the cheapest possible option for a Heavy Lift Vehicle, not to mention the quickest, as a Direct design could be flying by 2013. The current plan from the administration doesn't even decide on a HLV design until 2015, let alone start the process of building and testing it. This is not a barrel of pork. Yes, somebody will make some money, but this is the cheapest option at the moment to keep a US heavy lift capability in the near future, and it will be built here in the US.
Current US lift capability stops at only 25mT in the Shuttle cargo bay to Low Earth Orbit. By funding a Direct style vehicle, we get a minimum of 75 mT to orbit without a second stage. This a very good thing. With further development of a second stage, the payload capacity increases to 115mT+. Not only that, but by putting the payload on top of the vehicle, a direct style rocket can support a payload as wide as 12m across (shuttle can only do 5m). So we get the ability to send more per launch and save over the life of a large project. For example, five flights of Direct would have been sufficient to build the ISS, versus the 40 shuttle launches it actually took.
By re-using the same engines and boosters as the space shuttle, we save billions (maybe $10 billion over time) in research and launch facility changes necessary for other designs (Ares would have required 2 new pad designs and new crawlers at a $1 billion a pop). The cost per launch for Direct will be less expensive as well. For comparison, recovery of the shuttle SRB's, refurbishment of the shuttle and launch costs per launch have averaged out to about $1.3 billion per launch. A Direct will cost somewhere north of $200 million for the launch vehicle, plus operating costs, but won't include refurbishment or recovery operations. For the immediate future NASA says it will launch the last shuttle in 2011, and after we'll be paying the Russians $20-30 million per seat for rides in a Soyuz
We save time in that we can have an un-manned cargo version of the vehicle doing test flights by 2013, whereas the engine testing alone for a liquid-fueled booster would take 5 years by the current plan. as all the parts are already man-rated (save for the modified ET), we could be launching Orion capsules on a Direct as soon as the Orions finish development in 2015 or so.
I/O includes a minimum or 8 gige or 2 10-gige, which can be increased to 64 gige or 16 10-gige links per chassis.
This unit runs as 512 system images using stock 32 bit OS's. Each CPU may have 1 or 2 GB's of ram and up to 64 local drives may be installed and divided among the CPU's with the included management software. The unit supports PXE boot, so the system images may run off local disk or from a ram image.
Just to note, the Atom z530 is a single core, 32 bit only CPU, if that matters.
I couldn't tell you if the 16 10-gige links would seriously limit this box or not. You'd have to show me a data center with more than 160 Gbps of internet connectivity first.:) And that's assuming you only purchased one of these suckers, because you'd need that much per chassis.
Possible Harware reasons to upgrade to Win 7
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Time To Dump XP?
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· Score: 1
Here are some possible reasons to consider the upgrade to win 7 from a hardware perspective...
support for more than 3.2GB of ram with 64 bit with Win 7
native USB 3 support planned
native support for 4k sections on new drives, which is needed for drives larger than 2TB
better support for multiple cpus, especially as number of cpu cores goes past 4
native support for SSD's (TRIM, 4k offset, etc)
Win 7 install via usb and no drivers on floppy (or need to slipstream)
Do these mean that Win 7 is a no-brainer for businesses? Probably not, as most of these hardware issues aren't relevant for all those old systems.
New purchases however, would definitely merit a look. Give it a year, and Win 7 becomes much more obvious.
The article comparing values uses the highest price motherboard available for AMD for a "midrange" system, then claims that the Intel-based total system is a value. If you spend $350 on a 6-core processor, then spending $140 on a high-end motherboard is reasonable. If you're spending $99 for a low end AMD quad, you're probably in the market for more reasonably priced motherboard (~$100) to go with it. The comparison is valid for the high-end AMD cpus, but not their budget stuff, as a $40 drop in price is a big deal for a system with a $100 cpu.
That being said, being able to overclock this thing is directly aimed at the enthusiast market. "I got 6 cores, w00t!" "Yeah, well I'm at 4GHZ on a quad, so there!" It definitely improves the competition between the high end AMD hexa-cores and the midrange Intel quads, and makes the Intel option more appealing to the enthusisast.
The Constellation program was supposed to re-use as many of the space shuttle components to design and build launch system to get us back to the moon. The Program of record was severely flawed in several ways-
$20 billion already spent since 2005 with just 1 test flight (and nothing flew on that test that would have flown operationally)
$3 billion a year for the next 8 years for more development before the system was ready for a moon shot
2 separate launch vehicles, with completely different stages, engines and boosters, none of which came directly from the Space Shuttle.
The Ares 1 didn't have the lift capability to loft the Orion, and the Orion had to lose capability in an attempt to make it lighter
The Ares 5 was so heavy and big, that all of the launch equipment (lauch towers, crawlers, VAB, etc) had to be rebuilt, costing billions
Most damning was that serious safety issues exist with the crew launch vehicle ARES 1 (dead zones, Thrust Oscillation) which haven't been solved
I'm all for going back to the moon and the US creating a Heavy lift Space program under NASA's guidance. But Constellation is not the right program.
I'd be all for something along the lines of DIRECT heavy lift system to continue the US presence in manned space flight.
From paragraph 0 of the GPL v2, thanks for the link, btw.
"This License applies to any program or other work which contains
a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License."
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope."
So the GPL doesn't limit your rights for things outside of copying, distro and mods.
Section 4 then steps in-
"You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License.
GPL code doesn't have additional restrictions on it. Once you accept GPL as the basis for your work, you don't get to distribute the modified work with extra terms. So GPL code doesn't have restrictions on things other than copy, distro, and mods. And since it expressly doesn't restrict you in areas other than those 3, you're free to examine and study it to your heart's content.
So there ya go- have fun studying, examining reduplicating the functionality, style and format of the code in question.
Just don't copy the code verbatim, or in such as a fashion as to be considered a direct copy.
A reasonable person could see the GPL as encouraging the re-use of ideas, whether by modifying the original code and redistributing it, or by re-implementing those ideas in new code.
Slashdot Mirror
There's some reasonable, in-depth analysis on the failure here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42798.200. Be warned, if you like rockets and spaceflight, going to that site will cost you time.
Summary: The first stage/boosters failed to generate enough thrust to achieve the proper staging point, as shown by the planned plot on the broadcast and the actual track. Some speculation points at a failure of one the boosters during the initial flight phase (before the boosters separate). The second stage separated and fired considerably later than planned and at some point, the mission was declared to be unsuccessful, due to flight anomalies.
Politics aside, please note that the open broadcast of the launch is what enables this informed discussion, and for that, us space geeks can appreciate the access granted by the Chinese Space Agency to the live broadcast.
Opinion: this was not helpful for the Chinese launch program, but at least the vehicle didn't RUD (rapid unplanned disassembly). Analysis of the telemetry will assist them in determining the cause, and may help them to engineer a fix. It's still a setback to their heavy lift ambitions for this year.
Actually, I do know these things, but didn't bother to include all the sources, given it being Christmas and all. Since you are so insistent about it though...
Points 1 & 3 are taken from direct quotes by Elon Musk
Point 2 is taken from the design of the Falcon 9, available at spacex or nearby wikipedia.
"re-use without refurbishment" another direct E. Musk quote.
Spacex current launch rate (6 per year) and cadence and published launch costs and satellite weights for commercial space companies are just a google search away. Try this excellent site: http://www.spacelaunchreport.c... for starters
A very informative and useful place to find much of this information and discussion by knowledgeable space experts and enthusiasts is at: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com...
The rest is just simple math.
To sum up, I do have details, I'm not guessing, and I note where I make assumptions. Find fault with my assumptions if you like, but please explain why those assumptions are flawed with specifics, not generalities.
Interesting numbers. Let's try a variant case. Suppose in addition: You're assuming that the non-reusable launch vehicle cost per launch is $60M. OK, let's start out by assuming 1/3 of that is fixed costs and operations costs, and 2/3 the vehicle cost, which is split evenly between the two stages (first stage is larger, but not proportionately more expensive). So, of the $60 million, $40 million is spent even if the vehicle first stage was free. Now assume that re-usability increases the launch cost by, say, $5 million (launch operations are expensive! and the cost is not entirely the vehicle). Assume that all the stuff needed to make the first stage reusable increases the stage cost by 25%, from $20M to $25M. And assume that the delta-V and the added mass to do the fly-back decreases payload by 10%, and that the price you sell the launch for decreases a similar percentage (some payloads won't care, but some will.)
First off, the current cost of the rocket already includes the costs to do reusibilty, so the cost of the first stage will not increase- it is designed be reused up to 10 times right now with no change in hardware.
Secondly, the cost of the 2 stages are not even remotely close to equal; the first stage has 9 Merlin engines, the second stage only has 1. An estimate of 6 to 1 (first to second) for costs would be more reasonable.
Thirdly, the payloads currently quoted already include reusability (16MT to LEO and 4.5MT to GTO). No loss of earnings there.
So none your variant assumptions are useful for this discussion.
Let's look at some other factors you haven't considered.
Like the space shuttle, SpaceX now has a rocket for examination that has flown a full mission and hasn't had a 6G salt water landing. This means that they will be able to do full engineering analysis on what stresses the rocket actually experienced during a flight event that increase all steps necessary for re-use. The results of that analysis will allow them to determine what parts of the rocket need to be enhanced or reduced to meet the 10 tens re-use goal. SpaceX has the luxury of being to make changes to their rocket without Congressional approval, so this information can be used immediately to improve the vehicle. The design goal of the Falcon is that the rocket need not be "refurbished" after every flight, just put through some standard flight maintenance tests. Having the flown stages available for analysis will help them to meet this goal.
Additionally, SpaceX currently has launch costs based on 6 launches a year. As they have already demonstrated the ability to launch with a cadence of 2 weeks several times, being able to increase their launch rate to a minimum of 1 a month will cut their overall costs per launch.
Let's assume that a slight redesign based on analysis of real-world data let's them increase reliability of the Falcon 9 to 1 in 100 and increase the payload by 1MT to GTO. At 5.5MT to GTO, this let's them handle 90% of all GTO launches (6MT is at the current top end for commercial satellites to GeoSynchronous orbits) with the reuable design. 5MT is compable to $137M Ariane 5 capbility or $132M for an Atlas 5 launch for NASA with both the throw weight and reliability requirements necessary to get these flights.
$60M to launch the current, reusable Falcon 9 1.1FT.
33% is launch cost. - $20M
56% is first stage - $34M
11% is the second stage $6M
Assumption 1: increase in flight rate reduces launch costs by 25%
Assumption 2: landing/recovery/flight readiness check costs $5M a launch
Assumption 3: 10 flights reuse of the first stage = $3.5M a launch
Under these assumptions:
Launch cost $15M
Landing/recovery/checks $5M
First stage $3.5M
Second Stage: $6M
Total: $29.5M
I'm OK with those numbers given what they can charge and how quickly they can do regular launches. Where they will really rake in the cash is for a Facon Heavy launch (same vehicle with 3 first stages instead of 1) with 56MT to LEO for an asking price of $110M and a cost, by these assumptions of $35M. They could even reduce their price after a few launches of the Heavy to $56M, and start launching bulk cargo to space at a rate of $1000/Kg
"Late Thursday night, the Times published a story claiming that the Justice Department had been asked "to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account," only to quietly change the story to say that the Justice Department had been asked "to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used." As in, the story changed from being about a potential criminal investigation into Clinton's conduct to being about a potential criminal investigation into the mishandling of sensitive information by ... someone not named. "
So, haven't you guys learned yet to ignore mass media reporting when it involves a Clinton? It's almost like someone with billions of dollars has been trying to smear the leading Democratic candidate for a few years now.
The thing is, I can put solar on my house, and I will be to able to generate enough power, on occasion, to have some extra to put back on the grid. With the right configuration and local storage, I can even go off the grid. As a consumer, the other options you mention are things I can't do. Sure, solar is more expensive per KWH, but at least it's doable for lots of homeowners.
Separately, you may not have noticed that the Republicans have held effective veto power over new legislation in the Senate until just yesterday. Thus, making the claim the Republicans (even with a minority in the Senate) can be held somewhat responsible for lack of progress in the area seems reasonable.
Sure, that's why I said that this is an advance. If you don't need HPC resources, this can work really well. But, you have educate scientists and researchers on the difference, and this article doesn't do that well enough.
While this a nice use of Amazon's EC to build a high throughput system, that doesn't translate as nicely to what most High Performance computing users need- high network bandwidth, low latency between nodes and large, fast shared filesystems on which to store and retrieve the massive amounts of data being used or generated. The cloud created here is only useful to the subset of researchers who don't need those things. I'd have a hard time calling this High Performance Computing.
Look at XSEDE's HPC resources page. While each of those supercomputers has something special about the services they offer (GPU's SSD's, fast access, etc), they all spent a significant portion of their build budget on a high performance network to link the nodes for parallel codes. They also spent money on high performance parallel filesystems instead of more cores. Their users can't get their research done effectively on systems or clouds without those important elements.
I think that it's great that public cloud computing has advanced to the point where useful, large-scale science can be accomplished on it. Please note that it takes a separate company (CycleCloud) to make it possible to use Amazon EC in this way (lowest cost and webapp access) for your average scientist, but it's still an advance.
Disclaimer: I work for XSEDE, so do your own search on HPC to verify what I'm saying.
At work I need to install several different types/versions of linux OS's for testing. I always torrent the ISO as a way of "paying" for the image that I'm using.
A few years back, we did some experimenting with torrents over the Teragrid 10GBe backbone, to see how well that worked over the long haul between IL and CA. With just 2 endpoints, even on GBe, it wasn't better than a simple rsync. We did some small scale test with less than 10 cluster nodes on one side, but still not as useful as a Wide Area filesystem we were testing against. Bittorrent protocols just aren't optimized for a few nodes with a fat pipe between them.
I am interested in looking at the new Bitorrent Sync client to see how thanks for our setup. We have many users with 10's of TB's of data to push around on a weekly basis.
If the purpose of patents is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" then no, I don't see how restricting patents to physical implementations (not software on a general purpose computing device) utterly defeats that purpose. Nothing restricts the author from enforcing his patent on physical reproductions, he just can't claim that a non-physical implementation is a violation.
Can you give any examples where this change would stop or slow scientific progress?
I take some relief in noting that these are "ex-NASA" employees.
Per the article, it seems that these guys mostly worked at the Texas-based Johnson space center:
"Keith Cowing, editor of the website NASA Watch, noted that the undersigners, most of whom have engineering backgrounds, worked almost exclusively at the Houston-based Johnson Space Centre, a facility almost entirely removed from NASA's climate change arm."
Figures.
Why is it that there are so many amateur climatologists in Texas who know so much, but publish so little? I wonder if these gentlemen even bothered to visit the site of the "Plants Need CO2" sponsor, Leighton Steward, to see who also agreed with their opinions. I'm not linking to that site, and I'd surely want to avoid association with anyone with ideas like that.
Maybe Steward just punked them. Yep, that's go to be it.
Don't overlook positions in government or higher education. Besides being OS agnostic in many cases, there are universities all over the country, not just the SF area.
Want to travel a lot, have a nice career path and instant usefulness due to linux knowledge? Try DISA. I'm not sure if they are still hiring for their intern program (the Army uses intern in a different way than business IT), but it was great opportunity for some people I know. DOE is another area that looks for reliable linux knowledgeable sysadmins.
Look at the top500 list and see how many big clusters are run by Universities and their affiliates. Then check out how many of those systems use windows- and then laugh. Higher education also runs a lot of smaller systems on linux. Lots of positions starting to open up there. if you have cluster admin knowledge, you're a shoo-in. If not, take a lower position where they do run clusters and let them know that you'd be interested in moving up.
Disclaimer- yes, I work at NCSA at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and yes, we have some linux positions open. Do the legwork yourself, however- it'll make you look smarter.
My boss suggested that I attend a weekly "geek lunch" that a group of the older computer savvy fellows held at the U of I's Beckman Institute and met him there. I was aware of Project Gutenberg before that but hadn't used it much. Michael was a good advocate for ebooks before anyone got around to coining that particular terminology. The last few times we met, I remember him being very excited as he had samples of various new ebook readers to try out. He was testing them to see well they integrated the Gutenberg Project and was glad that more people would have easy access to it.
Over last fall, the group met weekly and I helped him with the process of making digital copies of the Gutenberg archive on different filesystems on individual drives. The entire Gutenberg archive is about 300GB with everything extracted and we could dual format a 750GB drive to fit a copy on NTFS and another one on ext3. That was a fun experience; most people don't get to play with a real life 300GB data set.
I hadn't been to a meeting in a while, darn it. I'll miss him.
I've heard that the Merlin 1-c engines are about $1M a piece. And that SSME's run $50M each at the current production rates.
Hard to verify pricing for components, especially for SpaceX, as they do so much in house. Who outside of the company knows what the actual production costs of each part are? Hmmm, perhaps we can estimate the max possible cost of each engine based on launch prices and the assumption that SpaceX is not taking a loss on each launch.
A Falcon 9 launch costs $54M, and has 10 Merlin 1c engines. I'm going to ignore the cost differences between the upper stage (vacuum) and lower stage engines. If every thing else (fuel, lower & upper stages, facility lease, profit) were $0, each engine would cost at most $5.4M. In fact, looking at the announced pricing for Falcon Heavy, $110M max, with 27+1 engines, you're looking at less than $4M an engine, max.
Given the costs of the rest of the launch, and number of engines (production scaling efficiencies) involved, I don't think that a $1M per engine estimate is too far off. That puts engines at 25% of the launch costs, and I'm OK with that estimate. I know that the Shuttle SRB's are a higher percentage of the cost of a SLS, but those are an outlier. You can buy 4 Atlas CCB's (with 8 engines) for the price of 1 SRB. Given that pricing, I'm not sure that any $10M engine out there has 10x the thrust of a Merlin 1c.
So SpaceX is probably good with the whole multiple engine thing, at least on price.
I'm an alumni of the U of I, and I work here as well. I get these notifications. I thought I'd bring up 2 points:
Overall, I'm satisfied with the system and I was impressed by the very explicit letter from the chief both explaining the error and accepting the blame for the mistake. She also detailed the upcoming efforts to address the error. I'd like to see the same level of accountability from my ISP or phone company.
Hmmm, can't say that my first attempt to use Bing gave me any Lindsay L. results, but noscript did put up a cross site scripting hijack after I attempted to "disable" a helpful toolbar with my facebook info proudly displayed.
I'm positive I don't need any search provider tapping into my facebook info- and I certainly don't want to be reminded of it on the front page! That's like, TSA scary.
Ignoring the blatant invasion of my privacy for a moment, I'm happy to say my (small sample size, insert disclaimer here) test of Google vs Bing revealed that the "best all mountain skis" works differently in Google versus Bing. Google gave a list of places to buy "the best all mountain skis" as the top listings, whereas Bing gave a set of review sites telling me which ones were the best.
Not sure how to rate one result as better than the other, they're just different. Perhaps Google feels that their users know what they want, so they just point them at it. Perhaps Bing believes that their users want to learn what is the best choice for them. Hard to put a metric on that. I'd hazard an informed guess that both search providers weigh their results according to desires of their users, as measured by click through rates. Bing users might want more hand holding, whereas Google users might want less distractions before they learn the location of something.
All that being said, I'm still not using a search engine that displays my facebook account info. Yuck. I don't care if this is Facebook's fault, I don't want to see it on a random search page as part of the interface.
Terraforming is great, if you have someplace else to practice. Trying to terraform the earth with our current level of knowledge about the process and possible side effects is like doing experimental brain surgery on yourself. If we screw it up, we have no place else to go. Paraphrasing the Tick, I like the Earth, I keep all my stuff there. Let's practice terraforming on Mars, first, to get the bugs out. Until then, let's not make things worse here by accident.
My biggest gripe about this whole debate are the countless numbers of people who fail to think at all, and believe that we can ignore the mounting evidence that there even is an issue. Until they recognize the warning signs the scientists keep point out, we really can't have a debate about the issue and what to do about it. Humanocentric or not, the planet seems to be getting hotter. Perhaps all those scientists are reading things incorrectly, or drawing the wrong conclusions, but even with a chance that they are on to something ought to cause all of us to be very concerned. And not just about the gas mileage for SUV's.
Um, I was referring to Direct, the "SSTS without the space shuttle" design, not the Ares I "Stick". I was looking at the actual design for Direct's J-130 model right here. It's a stage 1.5 design with all engines ground lit and the boosters jettisoned during flight, just like the SSTS.
I do agree with your statement about the Ares I:
I worked on Ares and know what the design is. That thing was a gigantic piece of crap just waiting to fail. Badly. From the barely stable structural dynamics of a 400ft long pencil flying at mach 6, to the ugliest, most disaster prone separation sequence; that design was doomed to fail.
But that's not what I was talking about. :)
Also, the very first class you take in Aerospace Engineering teaches you exactly why SSTO (single stage to orbit) is not as cost-effective as multiple stages. So your argument that this design is better because it doesn't need a second stage is not a good one. The design might be simpler and easier to build, but it requires so much more fuel per launch that it isn't worth it.
As my argument about "single stage", I was referring to the fact that the design already gets 77mT to orbit with just a single (OK, 1.5 stage counting the SRB's) stage and that there was room for more growth, like a second stage, if you needed more lift and were willing to pay extra for it. Did I mention the option to use 5 segment SRB's? I could go on... It's just that the J-130 is the cheapest option for a new HLV, and it leverages all the work and research that went into the SSTS program, rather than throwing it away.
That's a good thing, in my opinion.
Per the official design from the Direct team (sorry for the pdf, that's what they have), it's 77,835kg to 30nmx100nm orbit for the regular NASA GR&A's. It's only down to 70mt if you arbitrarily factor in an additional 10% margin. Which doesn't account for their own internal 15% margin that isn't documented. I like engineers who give themselves leeway.
Short answer, yes, the 1.5 stage J-130 does 77mT to orbit per NASA rules.
This potential bill means congressional support behind a Direct version of a shuttle replacement or something close enough not to matter. Direct is a design to replace the space shuttle with a rocket that puts the cargo and capsule on top of the tank, and moves the shuttle engines on the bottom of the tank. Without having to lift the load of the space shuttle itself, the rocket gets 77mT of cargo to orbit.
Re-using all the major shuttle components provides the cheapest possible option for a Heavy Lift Vehicle, not to mention the quickest, as a Direct design could be flying by 2013. The current plan from the administration doesn't even decide on a HLV design until 2015, let alone start the process of building and testing it. This is not a barrel of pork. Yes, somebody will make some money, but this is the cheapest option at the moment to keep a US heavy lift capability in the near future, and it will be built here in the US.
Current US lift capability stops at only 25mT in the Shuttle cargo bay to Low Earth Orbit. By funding a Direct style vehicle, we get a minimum of 75 mT to orbit without a second stage. This a very good thing. With further development of a second stage, the payload capacity increases to 115mT+. Not only that, but by putting the payload on top of the vehicle, a direct style rocket can support a payload as wide as 12m across (shuttle can only do 5m). So we get the ability to send more per launch and save over the life of a large project. For example, five flights of Direct would have been sufficient to build the ISS, versus the 40 shuttle launches it actually took.
By re-using the same engines and boosters as the space shuttle, we save billions (maybe $10 billion over time) in research and launch facility changes necessary for other designs (Ares would have required 2 new pad designs and new crawlers at a $1 billion a pop). The cost per launch for Direct will be less expensive as well. For comparison, recovery of the shuttle SRB's, refurbishment of the shuttle and launch costs per launch have averaged out to about $1.3 billion per launch. A Direct will cost somewhere north of $200 million for the launch vehicle, plus operating costs, but won't include refurbishment or recovery operations. For the immediate future NASA says it will launch the last shuttle in 2011, and after we'll be paying the Russians $20-30 million per seat for rides in a Soyuz
We save time in that we can have an un-manned cargo version of the vehicle doing test flights by 2013, whereas the engine testing alone for a liquid-fueled booster would take 5 years by the current plan. as all the parts are already man-rated (save for the modified ET), we could be launching Orion capsules on a Direct as soon as the Orions finish development in 2015 or so.
If this passes, I'll be one very happy space fan.
Hmmm, didn't see that. Given that it takes the place of two full racks, maybe you're supposed to put it on a pedestal in place of them.
Something like this for easy access.
Or, maybe you could rotate it 90 degrees and mount it CPU-access-side up. At 10U that's only 15", so it should fit in a 19" rack. :-)
Seriously, if you don't plan to do hot swap on the CPU boards, you'd be OK in a normal rack. I'm not sure I'd trust hot swap for CPU boards anyways.
This is a good start- SM10000 System Overview
Interconnect is 1.28 Tbps or 2.5 Gbps per core.
I/O includes a minimum or 8 gige or 2 10-gige, which can be increased to 64 gige or 16 10-gige links per chassis.
This unit runs as 512 system images using stock 32 bit OS's. Each CPU may have 1 or 2 GB's of ram and up to 64 local drives may be installed and divided among the CPU's with the included management software. The unit supports PXE boot, so the system images may run off local disk or from a ram image.
Just to note, the Atom z530 is a single core, 32 bit only CPU, if that matters.
I couldn't tell you if the 16 10-gige links would seriously limit this box or not. You'd have to show me a data center with more than 160 Gbps of internet connectivity first. :) And that's assuming you only purchased one of these suckers, because you'd need that much per chassis.
Here are some possible reasons to consider the upgrade to win 7 from a hardware perspective...
Do these mean that Win 7 is a no-brainer for businesses? Probably not, as most of these hardware issues aren't relevant for all those old systems.
New purchases however, would definitely merit a look. Give it a year, and Win 7 becomes much more obvious.
The article comparing values uses the highest price motherboard available for AMD for a "midrange" system, then claims that the Intel-based total system is a value. If you spend $350 on a 6-core processor, then spending $140 on a high-end motherboard is reasonable. If you're spending $99 for a low end AMD quad, you're probably in the market for more reasonably priced motherboard (~$100) to go with it. The comparison is valid for the high-end AMD cpus, but not their budget stuff, as a $40 drop in price is a big deal for a system with a $100 cpu.
That being said, being able to overclock this thing is directly aimed at the enthusiast market. "I got 6 cores, w00t!" "Yeah, well I'm at 4GHZ on a quad, so there!" It definitely improves the competition between the high end AMD hexa-cores and the midrange Intel quads, and makes the Intel option more appealing to the enthusisast.
The Constellation program was supposed to re-use as many of the space shuttle components to design and build launch system to get us back to the moon. The Program of record was severely flawed in several ways-
I'm all for going back to the moon and the US creating a Heavy lift Space program under NASA's guidance. But Constellation is not the right program.
I'd be all for something along the lines of DIRECT heavy lift system to continue the US presence in manned space flight.
From paragraph 0 of the GPL v2, thanks for the link, btw.
"This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License."
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope."
So the GPL doesn't limit your rights for things outside of copying, distro and mods.
Section 4 then steps in-
"You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License.
GPL code doesn't have additional restrictions on it. Once you accept GPL as the basis for your work, you don't get to distribute the modified work with extra terms. So GPL code doesn't have restrictions on things other than copy, distro, and mods. And since it expressly doesn't restrict you in areas other than those 3, you're free to examine and study it to your heart's content.
So there ya go- have fun studying, examining reduplicating the functionality, style and format of the code in question. Just don't copy the code verbatim, or in such as a fashion as to be considered a direct copy.
A reasonable person could see the GPL as encouraging the re-use of ideas, whether by modifying the original code and redistributing it, or by re-implementing those ideas in new code.