While a few were rich, most people seldom even had enough to eat. The 20th century was incredible. We acquired the ability to produce food and goods to satisfy the needs of everyone on earth, though we
did not make them available to everyone.
We have had two major power struggles during the 20th century. At the beginning, production was 'difficult', so those who could produce were able to 'call the shots'. WW II was a war of production and it was won by the side that was able to produce the most bombs and bullets.
Since then, productivity has continued to improve. Production is no longer the 'hard part'. The challenge during the past few decades has been to convince people to buy. Hence marketing has become king. Between 3rd world labor and automation, production costs have fallen dramatically. For most products, the major costs are Marketing & Distribution and R&D.
But the smart folks have recognized that the 21st century will be even more unsettling than the 20th century. Computer controlled extraction of natural resources and production (including nanotechnology) can drive manufacturing costs to almost zero. (Go read 'A for Anything' , by Damon Knight) With the Internet, we will be able to distribute the knowledge of how to produce. This will eliminate most of the challenges associated with distribution (since it will be possible to do
most production locally) so there will be little money to be made there either, unless artificial controls and impediments are implemented.
This is why there's such a fight for intellectual property rights. Only by controlling the knowledge of how and what to produce can power be maintained by those who value it. By the middle of the 21st century, the major cost of any material item will be the 'intellectual property' charge.
With production automated, almost everyone who is employed will be working in service jobs by 2050. And then it gets more interesting.
As AI research progresses, we will be able to build robots capable of doing service jobs. The health care crisis will be 'solved' during the second half of the 21st century. Robots will replace, not only orderlies and nurses, but physicians and surgeons, too. The cost of producing these robots will be minimal. The valuable commodity will be the knowledge of how to program them to do what you want them to do.
By the end of the 21st century, creativity -- the creation of intellectual property -- will be the only currently known role that will still be the domain of us humans. And the control of that creativity is what is being fought for now.
That's the power struggle going on now. It's just started.
One more thing. By the end of the 21st century, molecular genetics will have progressed to the point where most people will be able to live almost forever. Imagine living forever in a world where production and services basically cost nothing. The only thing of value will be control of the intellectual property behind it all. Imagine a world where material items sell for a dollar each and services are provided for ten cents an hour. It could be paradise if you have the money to pay for what you want. But if you don't, how do you compete against such prices?
The challenge as we approach the 22nd century will be to rethink the issues of access. How will we reward innovation while making it possible for most people to survive and live reasonably good lives?
Because, if most people cannot pay for those goods and services, there will be a revolution. If that revolution succeeds, those who were on top will be gone. If the revolution fails, the whole economic system will collapse from lack of customers.
"And Stahlkopf has launched a research collaboration with local water authorities to test a lower-tech, but potentially more capacious, option. The idea is to piggyback on the Big Island's existing infrastructure of water mains and reservoirs to fashion a pumped-storage system that would push water to higher-altitude reservoirs when the wind was strong, and then let it fall through hydroelectric turbines to produce power when the air was still."
That won't need a lot of research. Folks at Niagara Falls have been using pumped-storage for years to balance supply and demand.
"I deal with this situtation everyday as an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry. We ask for something and we get ignored because the amount we are willing to spend or the quantity we want is not worth their effort."
Depending upon what you need, you might consider looking to get it in Canada. Canada is a much smaller market (only 10% as large as the USA) so Canadian manufacturers have had to become very good at small production runs and custom orders.
The North American Free Trade Agreement makes it relatively painless to get things across the border and $1.00 US gets you about $1.50 Canadian, so you typically get more for your money, too.
As a young man, my uncle fought for, and helped win the 12 hour day and the 6 day week in the hospitality industry. He died a few years ago at age 88.
Hotel and restaurant managers argued that they'd go out of business if they allowed such a short work week.
I've done the 24 hour programming days. And years later I managed the production of defect-free code. We know how to do it right. But too many people don't want it done right. They want...
The 1975 light polution photo seems to be of Southern Ontario. Ottawa is in the upper right. Windsor/Detroit are in the lower left. Toronto is central, while Niagara Falls is at the bottom.
Fortran does not force you to write spaghetti code, any more than c forces you to generate buffer overflows or perl forces you to write unreadable code.
Design and structure your application.
If you are used to objects and methods, just use subroutine modules and entry points to the same effect.
Fortran was where I learned to use multiple entry points into one sequential file for recursive processing.
Didn't we recently have a story about Boeing trying to duplicate the research of a Russian physicist who claimed to be able to reduce gravity by about 2 percent? I know I read about it on Janes a few days ago.
Since no one claim to understand how or why his approach works (if it does), maybe this is an unexpected and unnoticed side effect?
I admit to writing spaghetti Fortran in my younger days. I subsequently wrote Fortran programs that were as clean as any that could be written in other languages. And I've written Perl programs that appear to be immune to buffer overflow.
I agree with your point about the need for solid software engineering.
My point is that, just as we use libraries to avoid having to reinvent everything from scratch, so too, we should not have to reimplement buffer overflow protection from scratch in each program. The application program should address application issues. Buffer overflow protection should be handled at a different level - probably in the compiler or interpreter.
My reference to low standards was not meant to refer to the application level. I meant, why were they ever tolerated at the compiler / interpreter level?
So, who's going to develop a compiler/interpreter that prevents buffer overflows? It would be very hard to justify using any tool that permitted buffer overflows when another is available that prevents them. Talk about a Marketing advantage.
For that matter, who set the standard so low that buffer overflows were ever tolerated?
In January, 1982, I was coordinating a symposium entitled "Moving Industry Into Space" for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
I had five speakers scheduled for a three hour session, starting at 9:00am, in WAshington, DC. One speaker had double booked himself and was speaking in Europe instead. The secretary of a second speaker called me real early, saying that both transponders on the communications satellite that was at the core of his business had failed during the night and he would have to miss the conference. A third speaker was delayed in transit. He'd been speaking in Spokane, WA the evening before and the best routing I'd been able to find, took him to Texas on a redeye and then up to Washington, DC.
So, at ten minutes before start time, I had two speakers for a three hour session. I walked into the meeting room and saw someone I'd never met (but thought I recognized), sitting in the second row of the audience.
I went up to him, introduced myself, and confirmed that he was, indeed, whom I thought he was. I explained the situation and asked if he'd be willing to speak. He said he wanted to think about it and listen to the other speakers.
So I started the session by introducing the two speakers who were present and the third one who was delayed in transit but expected shortly. Then I said, "and we may have a surprise, too."
Part was through the first presentation, the man in the second row waved me over and said he'd speak if he could go next. I agreed.
When the first speaker was finished, I introduced "the surprise". He was, Dr. Isaac Asimov.
He proceeded to give an excellent, twenty minute presentation about this very subject. His answer was Private Enterprise. He saw an opportunity to make money by collecting the debris in LEO (low earth orbit) and selling it as raw material to space based processing industries.
The major cost associated with anything in LEO is the cost of giving it 5 miles per second of velocity so that it will orbit the earth. The Space Shuttle was supposed to give us a transport cost of $100.00 per pound delivered to LEO. Last I heard, the cost is about $20,000 per pound. The debris already has the necessary energy and is available, free, as salvage.
The complicated part of this business is figuring your orbit changes correctly so you can pick the stuff up with minimum fuel expenditure. Using two ponds of fuel to collect a one pond wrench is not profitable.
Sorry, Gregory Tassey's 309 page report does not say "software bugs are a serious problem". It says that "Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing" is the problem, implying that better testing is the answer.
I'm curious why he commissioned "The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing".
I've just reviewed it. In spite of the title, the report really seems to be about "The Economic Impacts of Buggy Software."
There are three approaches to avoiding the costs associated with buggy software:
1. Don't use software.
2. Test it to get (most of) the bugs out.
3. Design and develop it in such a way as to minimize bugs.
This report seems to assume (and we know how sales people parse that word) that the problem is in the testing. Let me argue that the major problem is really in the design and development stages.
I know, because I've managed the design, development, testing and support of commercial software which was licensed to major firms with a MONEY BACK GUARANTEE, and we were never asked for a refund.
Yes, bugs were found in our software. Two of them. Each was fixed within 24 hours of being reported by users.
Software design & creation is a craft, not a science. (My first degree in in Physics).
I have managed the production of software that we provided with a money back guarantee, and none of the companies (which paid large licence fees) ever asked for a refund. It can be done right, if you know how and choose to do so. But I'm not seeing a lot of interest in the production of quality software these days. It would appear that there isn't much call for it.
As far as the comment, "project managers don't", I'm currently writing a book on how to manage complex projects. Project management involves much more than keeping track of 'hour spent'. Complex projects involve delving into the unknown. That requires keen observation & people skills, in addition to judgement, wisdom and flexibility/adaptability. It's really a lot like wilderness exploration.
For a simple, beautiful experiment that students of almost any age can do (and see a result that is both elegant and non-obvious), nothing beats Archimedes floatation experiment, showing that a floating body diplaces it's own weight of liquid.
Several of you recognized a similarity to the song recorded by Cash in '76. My father's experience goes back a lot earlier than that.
Cash's lyrics were written by Kemp and refer to his going to work in an auto plant in Detroit in '49. That's about the time of my father's story, only he was not in Detroit.
Do you folks think song lyrics come 'from thin air'? Just like today, most of them have a grounding in reality. I don't doubt that quite a few cars were carried out "One Piece at a Time".
The "biggest threat to security" is almost always the folks working in the Security Department. This has been the case for more than 50 years.
There could be a good research paper here. Is it because these folks have too much idle time on their hands? Is it because the line of work keeps them focusing on negative activities? Is it because they are exposed to the company's weaknesses and become tempted by them? Is it because this line of work attracts thieves? Is it because companies use the 'it takes a thief to catch a thief' philosophy? Do 'Heads of Security' purposely hire thieves to keep levels of theft up, so as to justify bigger budgets? Outsourcing 'Security' does not solve the problem, it just makes it into someone else's profit center.
My father tells the story of a guy working at an auto assembly plant who took home an entire car -- piece by piece!
This 'article' is not News. Look at it's source. It's a marketing piece. Slashdot fell for someone's FUD marketing. I know it's Monday morning, but still...
But that was just a tiny part of the problem. It was just the culmination of more than 10 years of bad decisions.
The boosters should have used liquid fuel, rather than solid. But a budget cut forced the decission to use solid fuel.
Then, for political reasons, the contract for them had to go to Morton Thiocol.
Having been awarded the contract, Morton Thiocol wanted to build a manufacturing plant in Florida to make the boosters but were told they had to build out west.
The boosters were too big to be transported in one piece, so they had to built in sections, transported and then assembled in Florida.
Sectional rockets need a flange, where one section fits into the next. This had been done once before. The folks who designed the first sectional rocket did it right. They designed it so the "female" part fit down onto the "male" part. That way, if it rained. water would just run down the outside of the assembled rocket. A lot like siding on a house.
Morton Thiocol designers were working in a desert, where it seldom rains. They designed the sections upside down. Structurally just as good, but they built a rain catcher.
For the first few launches, a midget was hired whose job it was to crawl up into the assembled solid tocket boosters and putty the joints between the sections, as a backup to the O-rings. He was fired in a cost-cutting measure before the Challenger disaster.
The original test plan called for testing down to 20 degrees F. As a cost saving measure, that was reduced to testing down to 50F, since "it never gets cold in south Florida".
It rained in the days before that fatal launch. Then, the night before the launch the temperatures dropped below freezing. Rain water in the up-side-down connecting flange that should not have existed turned to ice -- and expanded in doing so. This bent the flange and created the gap that was not protected by putty. The O-ring certainly got hot as flames passed around it on the way to the liquid hydrogen tank in the Shuttle.
The engieers said don't launch and the PR folks said "let's go"... You know the rest.
The real issue isn't the funding of NASA, it's the funding and managing of Space initiatives.
When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, the US government felt challenged to respond. The result was NASA receiving about 1% of US government revenue to land the first men on the Moon.
But there was another way that was overlooked. A consortium of Bechtel Engineering (builders of the Hoover Dam and other massive projects) and Disney (Walt was in charge in those days) could have done the Apollo Project without government funding -- and made money by doing so.
I applaud this as an attempt to come up with an imaginative approach to Space funding. That said, I'd suggest folks keep looking.
Science fiction has been subsidizing Space development for years by giving it ideas. Consider then extreme case of Arthur C. Clarke, who gave the world the concept of telecommunication satellites. Rather than patent the idea, Clarke included the idea in a science fiction story. By putting the concept into public domain in this way, Clarke personally subsidized the Space sector to the tune of billions of dollars by not requiring royalties from everyone who uses them.
Yes, it was an inflatable. Imagine six soccerballs, each 10 meters in diameter, arranged in a Benzine ring and connected by short tubes. Each 'soccerball' was a double wall of Kevlar fabric with foam-in-place closed cell foam sandwiched between the two walls.
Strong, stiff, resiliant, but subject to degradation by UV radiation. That's why there's a layer of aluminium on the outside. Nothing stops the UV completely, but we slow it down.
Eventually the space station degrades. Folks move next door to a new one and use the old one as a hydrocarbon raw material source. How long is it usable? No one knows. We have to experiment to find out.
1. I was chairing an AAAS conference in Washington on Moving Industry Into Space, in January of 1982, and only 2 of the 5 speakers had shown up at 10 minutes before the start of the 3 hour session. The third was delayed in transit and the forth cancelled because both transponders had failed the night before on the communications satellite that was his business. The fifth turned out to be speaking at a conference in Europe and had not even told me he would not be coming.
Sitting in the second row was someone I had never met but thought I recognized. I introduced mself, confirmed that he was whom I though he was, explained the situation and asked if he would speak. He agreed and gave a 15 minute adlib on the need for and value of a garbage collection business to clean up Low Earth Orbit. His name was Dr. Isaac Asimov. So, this is not a new issue.
2. Years ago I studied the opportunities for space commecialization and came to the conclusion that Communications Satellites (given to us by Arthur C. Clarke, no patent applied for) and LEO Tourism were the only two that were practical in the forseeable future.
Power transmission and manufacturing of pharmaceutical, etc have been talked about and even tried, but, much as I'd like to see them happen, they don't seem practical. Communications and Tourism still seem to be the only things with commerial potential for LEO.
If NASA stops tracking the garbage, FUD will keep most people from considering a trip to LEO, even when the costs come down somewhat.
3. NASA has never wanted competition. When they submitted the original tender for the original (post Skylab) Space Station, one of the firm provisions was that all items had to be transported via their Space Shuttle. Space is theirs and theirs alone. All others are NOT WELCOME.
Twenty years ago I submitted a proposal to them that would give them a space station with 25,000 cubic foot of 'shirtsleeve living room', using only 2 Shuttle Launches. The "artist's sketch" (actually, an acrylic) still hangs on my wall and is dated 1982. I'm not expecting a call any time soon. When I tried to pay NASA to launch a "proof of concept", I was told, "We are not ready yet. Maybe some time in the future."
Congratulations (belatedly) on your team's accomplishment. HASP was no small product. I once (early 1970s) had a copy of a foot-thick HASP technical document.
Slashdot Mirror
While a few were rich, most people seldom even had enough to eat. The 20th century was incredible. We acquired the ability to produce food and goods to satisfy the needs of everyone on earth, though we did not make them available to everyone.
We have had two major power struggles during the 20th century. At the beginning, production was 'difficult', so those who could produce were able to 'call the shots'. WW II was a war of production and it was won by the side that was able to produce the most bombs and bullets.
Since then, productivity has continued to improve. Production is no longer the 'hard part'. The challenge during the past few decades has been to convince people to buy. Hence marketing has become king. Between 3rd world labor and automation, production costs have fallen dramatically. For most products, the major costs are Marketing & Distribution and R&D.
But the smart folks have recognized that the 21st century will be even more unsettling than the 20th century. Computer controlled extraction of natural resources and production (including nanotechnology) can drive manufacturing costs to almost zero. (Go read 'A for Anything' , by Damon Knight) With the Internet, we will be able to distribute the knowledge of how to produce. This will eliminate most of the challenges associated with distribution (since it will be possible to do most production locally) so there will be little money to be made there either, unless artificial controls and impediments are implemented.
This is why there's such a fight for intellectual property rights. Only by controlling the knowledge of how and what to produce can power be maintained by those who value it. By the middle of the 21st century, the major cost of any material item will be the 'intellectual property' charge.
With production automated, almost everyone who is employed will be working in service jobs by 2050. And then it gets more interesting.
As AI research progresses, we will be able to build robots capable of doing service jobs. The health care crisis will be 'solved' during the second half of the 21st century. Robots will replace, not only orderlies and nurses, but physicians and surgeons, too. The cost of producing these robots will be minimal. The valuable commodity will be the knowledge of how to program them to do what you want them to do.
By the end of the 21st century, creativity -- the creation of intellectual property -- will be the only currently known role that will still be the domain of us humans. And the control of that creativity is what is being fought for now.
That's the power struggle going on now. It's just started.
One more thing. By the end of the 21st century, molecular genetics will have progressed to the point where most people will be able to live almost forever. Imagine living forever in a world where production and services basically cost nothing. The only thing of value will be control of the intellectual property behind it all. Imagine a world where material items sell for a dollar each and services are provided for ten cents an hour. It could be paradise if you have the money to pay for what you want. But if you don't, how do you compete against such prices?
The challenge as we approach the 22nd century will be to rethink the issues of access. How will we reward innovation while making it possible for most people to survive and live reasonably good lives?
Because, if most people cannot pay for those goods and services, there will be a revolution. If that revolution succeeds, those who were on top will be gone. If the revolution fails, the whole economic system will collapse from lack of customers.
Hang onto your hat. It's going to be a wild ride.
That won't need a lot of research. Folks at Niagara Falls have been using pumped-storage for years to balance supply and demand.
He covers the whole range of science and technology in a clear, well-organized presentation. There's even a short appendix on math.
It's a few years old and so it doesn't cover the most recent discoveries, but it should be perfect for your needs.
Morris
"I deal with this situtation everyday as an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry. We ask for something and we get ignored because the amount we are willing to spend or the quantity we want is not worth their effort."
Depending upon what you need, you might consider looking to get it in Canada. Canada is a much smaller market (only 10% as large as the USA) so Canadian manufacturers have had to become very good at small production runs and custom orders.
The North American Free Trade Agreement makes it relatively painless to get things across the border and $1.00 US gets you about $1.50 Canadian, so you typically get more for your money, too.
If you can't find what you want on your own, check us out at www.ProjectsDoneRight.com
We have contacts that may be able to help.
Morris
How about doing a Slashdot Pole on how long your laptop battery lasted? Let's get some real data.
As a young man, my uncle fought for, and helped win the 12 hour day and the 6 day week in the hospitality industry. He died a few years ago at age 88.
...
Hotel and restaurant managers argued that they'd go out of business if they allowed such a short work week.
I've done the 24 hour programming days. And years later I managed the production of defect-free code. We know how to do it right. But too many people don't want it done right. They want
They may not have been there to show anything.
At many conferences, exhibitors have access to the names and other information about ALL the registered attendees.
The 1975 light polution photo seems to be of Southern Ontario. Ottawa is in the upper right. Windsor/Detroit are in the lower left. Toronto is central, while Niagara Falls is at the bottom.
Fortran does not force you to write spaghetti code, any more than c forces you to generate buffer overflows or perl forces you to write unreadable code.
Design and structure your application.
If you are used to objects and methods, just use subroutine modules and entry points to the same effect.
Fortran was where I learned to use multiple entry points into one sequential file for recursive processing.
Since no one claim to understand how or why his approach works (if it does), maybe this is an unexpected and unnoticed side effect?
First Law: Actions Have Consequences
I admit to writing spaghetti Fortran in my younger days. I subsequently wrote Fortran programs that were as clean as any that could be written in other languages. And I've written Perl programs that appear to be immune to buffer overflow.
I agree with your point about the need for solid software engineering.
My point is that, just as we use libraries to avoid having to reinvent everything from scratch, so too, we should not have to reimplement buffer overflow protection from scratch in each program.
The application program should address application issues. Buffer overflow protection should be handled at a different level - probably in the compiler or interpreter.
My reference to low standards was not meant to refer to the application level. I meant, why were they ever tolerated at the compiler / interpreter level?
So, who's going to develop a compiler/interpreter that prevents buffer overflows? It would be very hard to justify using any tool that permitted buffer overflows when another is available that prevents them. Talk about a Marketing advantage.
For that matter, who set the standard so low that buffer overflows were ever tolerated?
In January, 1982, I was coordinating a symposium entitled "Moving Industry Into Space" for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
I had five speakers scheduled for a three hour session, starting at 9:00am, in WAshington, DC. One speaker had double booked himself and was speaking in Europe instead. The secretary of a second speaker called me real early, saying that both transponders on the communications satellite that was at the core of his business had failed during the night and he would have to miss the conference. A third speaker was delayed in transit. He'd been speaking in Spokane, WA the evening before and the best routing I'd been able to find, took him to Texas on a redeye and then up to Washington, DC.
So, at ten minutes before start time, I had two speakers for a three hour session. I walked into the meeting room and saw someone I'd never met (but thought I recognized), sitting in the second row of the audience.
I went up to him, introduced myself, and confirmed that he was, indeed, whom I thought he was. I explained the situation and asked if he'd be willing to speak. He said he wanted to think about it and listen to the other speakers.
So I started the session by introducing the two speakers who were present and the third one who was delayed in transit but expected shortly. Then I said, "and we may have a surprise, too."
Part was through the first presentation, the man in the second row waved me over and said he'd speak if he could go next. I agreed.
When the first speaker was finished, I introduced "the surprise". He was, Dr. Isaac Asimov.
He proceeded to give an excellent, twenty minute presentation about this very subject. His answer was Private Enterprise. He saw an opportunity to make money by collecting the debris in LEO (low earth orbit) and selling it as raw material to space based processing industries.
The major cost associated with anything in LEO is the cost of giving it 5 miles per second of velocity so that it will orbit the earth. The Space Shuttle was supposed to give us a transport cost of $100.00 per pound delivered to LEO. Last I heard, the cost is about $20,000 per pound. The debris already has the necessary energy and is available, free, as salvage.
The complicated part of this business is figuring your orbit changes correctly so you can pick the stuff up with minimum fuel expenditure. Using two ponds of fuel to collect a one pond wrench is not profitable.
You ask "what's left to do?"
How about a perl processor that handles buffer overflows safely. Not glamorous, but very practical.
Sorry, Gregory Tassey's 309 page report does not say "software bugs are a serious problem". It says that "Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing" is the problem, implying that better testing is the answer.
I'm curious why he commissioned "The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing".
I've just reviewed it. In spite of the title, the report really seems to be about "The Economic Impacts of Buggy Software."
There are three approaches to avoiding the costs associated with buggy software:
1. Don't use software.
2. Test it to get (most of) the bugs out.
3. Design and develop it in such a way as to minimize bugs.
This report seems to assume (and we know how sales people parse that word) that the problem is in the testing. Let me argue that the major problem is really in the design and development stages.
I know, because I've managed the design, development, testing and support of commercial software which was licensed to major firms with a MONEY BACK GUARANTEE, and we were never asked for a refund.
Yes, bugs were found in our software. Two of them. Each was fixed within 24 hours of being reported by users.
Morris Schneiderman
morris@intrex.net
Software design & creation is a craft, not a science. (My first degree in in Physics).
I have managed the production of software that we provided with a money back guarantee, and none of the companies (which paid large licence fees) ever asked for a refund. It can be done right, if you know how and choose to do so. But I'm not seeing a lot of interest in the production of quality software these days. It would appear that there isn't much call for it.
As far as the comment, "project managers don't", I'm currently writing a book on how to manage complex projects. Project management involves much more than keeping track of 'hour spent'. Complex projects involve delving into the unknown.
That requires keen observation & people skills, in addition to judgement, wisdom and flexibility/adaptability. It's really a lot like wilderness exploration.
For a simple, beautiful experiment that students of almost any age can do (and see a result that is both elegant and non-obvious), nothing beats Archimedes floatation experiment, showing that a floating body diplaces it's own weight of liquid.
Several of you recognized a similarity to the song recorded by Cash in '76. My father's experience goes back a lot earlier than that.
Cash's lyrics were written by Kemp and refer to his going to work in an auto plant in Detroit in '49. That's about the time of my father's story, only he was not in Detroit.
Do you folks think song lyrics come 'from thin air'? Just like today, most of them have a grounding in reality. I don't doubt that quite a few cars were carried out "One Piece at a Time".
The "biggest threat to security" is almost always the folks working in the Security Department. This has been the case for more than 50 years.
There could be a good research paper here. Is it because these folks have too much idle time on their hands? Is it because the line of work keeps them focusing on negative activities? Is it because they are exposed to the company's weaknesses and become tempted by them? Is it because this line of work attracts thieves? Is it because companies use the 'it takes a thief to catch a thief' philosophy? Do 'Heads of Security' purposely hire thieves to keep levels of theft up, so as to justify bigger budgets? Outsourcing 'Security' does not solve the problem, it just makes it into someone else's profit center.
My father tells the story of a guy working at an auto assembly plant who took home an entire car -- piece by piece!
This 'article' is not News. Look at it's source. It's a marketing piece. Slashdot fell for someone's FUD marketing. I know it's Monday morning, but still...
Yes, the O-ring was stiff due to the cold.
But that was just a tiny part of the problem. It was just the culmination of more than 10 years of bad decisions.
The boosters should have used liquid fuel, rather than solid. But a budget cut forced the decission to use solid fuel.
Then, for political reasons, the contract for them had to go to Morton Thiocol.
Having been awarded the contract, Morton Thiocol wanted to build a manufacturing plant in Florida to make the boosters but were told they had to build out west.
The boosters were too big to be transported in one piece, so they had to built in sections, transported and then assembled in Florida.
Sectional rockets need a flange, where one section fits into the next. This had been done once before. The folks who designed the first sectional rocket did it right. They designed it so the "female" part fit down onto the "male" part. That way, if it rained. water would just run down the outside of the assembled rocket. A lot like siding on a house.
Morton Thiocol designers were working in a desert, where it seldom rains. They designed the sections upside down. Structurally just as good, but they built a rain catcher.
For the first few launches, a midget was hired whose job it was to crawl up into the assembled solid tocket boosters and putty the joints between the sections, as a backup to the O-rings. He was fired in a cost-cutting measure before the Challenger disaster.
The original test plan called for testing down to 20 degrees F. As a cost saving measure, that was reduced to testing down to 50F, since "it never gets cold in south Florida".
It rained in the days before that fatal launch. Then, the night before the launch the temperatures dropped below freezing. Rain water in the up-side-down connecting flange that should not have existed turned to ice -- and expanded in doing so. This bent the flange and created the gap that was not protected by putty. The O-ring certainly got hot as flames passed around it on the way to the liquid hydrogen tank in the Shuttle.
The engieers said don't launch and the PR folks said "let's go"... You know the rest.
The real issue isn't the funding of NASA, it's the funding and managing of Space initiatives.
When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, the US government felt challenged to respond. The result was NASA receiving about 1% of US government revenue to land the first men on the Moon.
But there was another way that was overlooked. A consortium of Bechtel Engineering (builders of the Hoover Dam and other massive projects) and Disney (Walt was in charge in those days) could have done the Apollo Project without government funding -- and made money by doing so.
I applaud this as an attempt to come up with an imaginative approach to Space funding. That said, I'd suggest folks keep looking.
Science fiction has been subsidizing Space development for years by giving it ideas. Consider then extreme case of Arthur C. Clarke, who gave the world the concept of telecommunication satellites. Rather than patent the idea, Clarke included the idea in a science fiction story. By putting the concept into public domain in this way, Clarke personally subsidized the Space sector to the tune of billions of dollars by not requiring royalties from everyone who uses them.
Yes, it was an inflatable. Imagine six soccerballs, each 10 meters in diameter, arranged in a Benzine ring and connected by short tubes. Each 'soccerball' was a double wall of Kevlar fabric with foam-in-place closed cell foam sandwiched between the two walls.
Strong, stiff, resiliant, but subject to degradation by UV radiation. That's why there's a layer of aluminium on the outside. Nothing stops the UV completely, but we slow it down.
Eventually the space station degrades. Folks move next door to a new one and use the old one as a hydrocarbon raw material source. How long is it usable? No one knows. We have to experiment to find out.
Morris
Three points here.
1. I was chairing an AAAS conference in Washington on Moving Industry Into Space, in January of 1982, and only 2 of the 5 speakers had shown up at 10 minutes before the start of the 3 hour session. The third was delayed in transit and the forth cancelled because both transponders had failed the night before on the communications satellite that was his business. The fifth turned out to be speaking at a conference in Europe and had not even told me he would not be coming.
Sitting in the second row was someone I had never met but thought I recognized. I introduced mself, confirmed that he was whom I though he was, explained the situation and asked if he would speak. He agreed and gave a 15 minute adlib on the need for and value of a garbage collection business to clean up Low Earth Orbit. His name was Dr. Isaac Asimov. So, this is not a new issue.
2. Years ago I studied the opportunities for space commecialization and came to the conclusion that Communications Satellites (given to us by Arthur C. Clarke, no patent applied for) and LEO Tourism were the only two that were practical in the forseeable future.
Power transmission and manufacturing of pharmaceutical, etc have been talked about and even tried, but, much as I'd like to see them happen, they don't seem practical. Communications and Tourism still seem to be the only things with commerial potential for LEO.
If NASA stops tracking the garbage, FUD will keep most people from considering a trip to LEO, even when the costs come down somewhat.
3. NASA has never wanted competition. When they submitted the original tender for the original (post Skylab) Space Station, one of the firm provisions was that all items had to be transported via their Space Shuttle. Space is theirs and theirs alone. All others are NOT WELCOME.
Twenty years ago I submitted a proposal to them that would give them a space station with 25,000 cubic foot of 'shirtsleeve living room', using only 2 Shuttle Launches. The "artist's sketch" (actually, an acrylic) still hangs on my wall and is dated 1982. I'm not expecting a call any time soon. When I tried to pay NASA to launch a "proof of concept", I was told, "We are not ready yet. Maybe some time in the future."
Congratulations (belatedly) on your team's accomplishment. HASP was no small product. I once (early 1970s) had a copy of a foot-thick HASP technical document.
I left Toronto about 6 years ago and they had flown this (or something similar) before then.