and not once have I read or heard anyone saying it's a ridiculous or laughable idea.
It is a ridiculous or laughable idea.
Even if we had a material suitable, a space elevator is a hideously wasteful design. Much (much) shorter lengths of tether would be able to deliver all of the benefits at a fraction of the cost, and eliminating most of the problems (such as slow transit through the Van Allen belts, meteorite erosion, and powering the elevator cars). More importantly, such tethers become possible at material strengths below that necessary for a space elevator. (And again, at vastly shorter lengths.)
For the length of tether you need for a single Earth space elevator, you could build a robust network of rotating tethers across half the solar system. And unlikely a space elevator, we could start today, with current materials.
The minimum length for a space elevator is about 50,000km with an asteroidal counter-weight. With a more realistic counter-weight you are looking at around 80,000km.
When we have mere 1km lengths of nanotube ribbon in practical use on Earth (say, in bridges), we can start to talk about whether we might one day be able to build a space elevator. Until then, we do not have any materials sufficient for a space elevator, and such speculation is just nerd SF play.
That's because the comments are being loaded by a script after the page itself has loaded. A la Disqus and similar external comment hosts. Script-driven loaders are notoriously flaky.
It comes from treating the comments as an afterthought rather than the core of the site.
Aside: If Dice really wanted to develop something that brand-added value to Slashdot (and to themselves), they would have developed their own Slashdot-branded "Disqus" style comment server system for other sites to use. With all the Slashdotty goodness like moderation (hence spam and troll control), proper threads, and associated filtering. Few if any sites that have achieved even close to the capabilities of Slashdot's comment system, it would be an excellent way for Dice to get value out their purchase.
You are in someone else's house complaining about the coffee.
That's because we made the coffee and they are pissing in it. And when we complain, they say "Hey let's slow down! [sound of urine flowing] Let's work together to solve this problem! [sound of urine flowing]"
yes, the community is what makes this site special, but
The "but" is unnecessary. Slashdot is its community of commenters. If Dice don't want the community, just the brand, okay, so be it. It sucks but it isn't a community owned site. If they do want the community, then pissing everyone off for no benefit seems stupid.
It's like someone coming into a sports league with hundreds of volunteer players (and fans), some of whom pay the club, and arbitrarily changing over to another type of sport, but being surprised when the players and fans threaten violence.
Okay, they've said they're applying the brakes so don't attack then for doing what you want.
That's not what Timothy said. He wants us to slow down.
Ie, "stop protesting and give us a chance to finish the upgrade."
They clearly have no intention of slowing down the changeover, let alone reconsidering the direction they are on. Once they reach what they feel is "feature parity", bam, Beta goes Main.
This is more of a classic "Ask Slashdot" story: "I've recently been put in charge of updating a dated, but beloved, website for its new owners..."
A poll would be worthless to assess features because it pre-supposes the devs already know the top six or seven choices. It's clear from Beta (and their reaction to the protest) that they've completely misunderstood what Slashdot is.
For example, commenters are clearly a small part of the "audience". Most of the "audience" are indeed as passive as the name suggests. The conclusion that Dice has made is that the commenters (and hence the protesters especially) are a tiny part of the "audience" and it doesn't matter if you drive them away because you'll still have the millions who come for the articles...
What they miss, of course, is that that passive audience is only on Slashdot to read the comments. The articles themselves are crap, worse than most news aggregators, the only thing that makes Slashdot different is the commenting community. Kill that, kill Slashdot.
And I suspect the reason is that the "upgrade" to Beta isn't actually upgrading anything. There's not a single new feature or improvement.
The change to the current UI added things like collapsible threads, reply windows within the thread, etc. Beta is struggling merely to keep standard features like threads, moderation, or even the most basic stuff like displaying fonts correctly. Once they have code which broadly replicates most of the current functions, but in the new idiotic blog-style they've chosen, they'll call it done and push it out. All that effort and hatred for what amounts to - if we're lucky - a re-skinning.
It could be a little of both. If you were an investigator/prosecutor/advisor/etc and the case is against a genuine criminal, you care about catching/convicting them; this is why you became an investigator/prosecutor/etc. You are going to push for an effective investigation, follow every lead, and try to prevent screw-ups which will harm the investigation/prosecution.
But if you feel the case is due to political pressure by the US and obsequious douches in government, you just don't really try very hard. That "I don't care" factor amplifies the apparent incompetence, even if there isn't active sabotage.
[Plus the people who want to be assigned to political case are usually the most suck-up-kick-down douchebags. And they are often that specific type of arrogant-incompetence that causes things like this.]
and then a few million speculators and more squatters
At the ICANN application price ($185k) that would be a few hundred billion dollars worth of "speculators". And at my "$million/yr fee", that would be a trillion dollars every year to maintain their squat. So I suspect not.
Then of course Coke will have to register coke.coke, and IBM ibm.ibm -- just because.
You're being stupid now. If Coke buys.coke, they'd set up coke.coke (and everything.else.coke) on their own registry. They own the TLD.
look again. A-3 was built for a vacuum testing. IOW, upper stage.
However, it only works with a specific engine. As soon as you change the engine profile, you risk backpressure from the exhaust and chamber interaction, which is then the equivalent of launching in an (increasing) atmosphere. You'd need to modify the stand for every engine you used, and this is not an easy stand to modify precisely because it is designed to create a soft vacuum (equivalent to 80-100km or so.) Unlike conventional test stands, it's not just a matter of changing the attachment points, fuel feeds, cooling systems and sensor arrays. You'd have to redesign the entire vacuum system, possibly including the main chamber itself. (For example, I'd expect the temperature of the exhaust at specific points in the extraction system to be finely tuned. Get a phase change or overheat at the wrong point in the system and...)
There's a reason that NASA's plan is to immediately mothball the stand, and not offer it for lease. Think about it, if there was any interest in it, any at all, wouldn't they be offering it for lease now while there's still a few tens of millions of dollars left in the budget to pay for modifications to suit the lessee? Instead they are continuing to develop a specific specialised stand, suitable only for the also-cancelled-when-finished J-2X, then mothball both programs, rather than work with say SpaceX on converting the A-3 to handle Raptor before the money runs out.
The psychology you are displaying ("build it and they will come", "it's big and expensive therefore someone will want it") is the same justification that is often made for the bloated and worthless SLS program. "Sure it's expensive, but look at the capability it offers!... if one day we can ever afford to use it." It ignores the capability that could be developed if that same money was better directed. In the case of A-3, that $350m could have paid to upgrade every single existing stand, restore the Apollo monument, upgrade their tourist facilities, and still have enough to throw tens of $millions of funding and personnel at every single company currently developing new rocket engines, from SpaceX to Orbital, to Virgin, to XCOR. Hell, even the remaining $50m or so could provide a huge benefit to private engine development, which would also make Stennis a hub of private engine development and expertise, create vast cross-pollination of expertise, all of which would ensure the long term health of the Mississippi facility.
And when you think of it in those terms, you realise that the Senator is not actually worried about jobs in his state, nor about creating facilities, he is trying to protect the specific contractor for the A-3 who has obviously contributed to his reelection PACs.
But I'm not saying that deleveraging by the public isn't good, I'm just saying that you have to have economic policies that understand the effect and protect the economy from the negatives. Just as you need to understand the effects of the original leveraging, and the effects of that; which people didn't.
Even J-2X (which this stand was built for) used other stands at Stennis before it is also cancelled. A-3 was for one very specific test of J-2X (ignition at a specific altitude) which will no longer be carried out. To use it for any other engine, or any other test, you'll need to redesign the stand.
Show me where that $100 million ends up in someone's savings account.
Show me where the government got the "$100 million worth of cars". Chances are that's who has the $100m.
(In the case of the actual cash-for-clunkers program, the money was paid to the car owners who turned in their cars. Which, in practice, meant it actually went to the auto and dealer industry. And it was $3 billion, not $100m.)
Don't forget the $1.2 billion spent on the J-2X Constellation upper-stage rocket-engine which will also be cancelled as soon as it is developed. And which was the only reason for the A-3 test stand being built in the first place.
(Stennis has other more general purpose test stands, some of which go back to before the Apollo program. The A-3 was a specialised single-purpose stand for one specific test of the J-2X. Essentially it simulates the ignition for a single specific sized engine at a single specific altitude. The main testing of the J-2X (now the only testing before it too is cancelled) was done on existing general-purpose stands (such as A-1).)
could test the J-2X, rs-68a, RD-180, rs-25e, merlin 1d, or whatever
Except it was specialised to test the J-2X. (Which, like the stand, will be cancelled this year after being developed at a cost of $1.2 billion.).
To turn it into a general purpose test-stand, it would need to be redesigned at great cost, and there's no additional funding. It's possible they could have done that in 2010, when Constellation was cancelled, but that's not what was in the budget language... thanks to Senator Dipshit.
It's specially designed for Constellation's J-2X upper stage. Stennis already has other rocket testing stands which are used by private developers and are more suited to their needs.
It may be that the A-3 stand could have been redesigned in 2010 to make it more general purpose, but presumably that sort of common-sense isn't allowed.
Why not spend the same $350 million to hire the workers directly to dig ditches and fill them in, or break rocks? (Or how about repairing crumbling bridges and other infrastructure that is actually useful, for christ's sake.) In effect, that's what you are doing. Building single-purpose infrastructure that isn't going to be used. The only difference is that you are paying wealthy contractors a 20% premium to subcontract out the work to less wealthy subcontractors, who take 15% and to subcontract out the work to the guys who actually do the work.
The only reason you do it this way is that those wealthy contractors kick-back some of their cut into the Senator's reelection PACs. Whereas if you directly hired $350m worth of workers, they wouldn't give the Senator anything.
Slashdot Mirror
and not once have I read or heard anyone saying it's a ridiculous or laughable idea.
It is a ridiculous or laughable idea.
Even if we had a material suitable, a space elevator is a hideously wasteful design. Much (much) shorter lengths of tether would be able to deliver all of the benefits at a fraction of the cost, and eliminating most of the problems (such as slow transit through the Van Allen belts, meteorite erosion, and powering the elevator cars). More importantly, such tethers become possible at material strengths below that necessary for a space elevator. (And again, at vastly shorter lengths.)
For the length of tether you need for a single Earth space elevator, you could build a robust network of rotating tethers across half the solar system. And unlikely a space elevator, we could start today, with current materials.
The minimum length for a space elevator is about 50,000km with an asteroidal counter-weight. With a more realistic counter-weight you are looking at around 80,000km.
When we have mere 1km lengths of nanotube ribbon in practical use on Earth (say, in bridges), we can start to talk about whether we might one day be able to build a space elevator. Until then, we do not have any materials sufficient for a space elevator, and such speculation is just nerd SF play.
So you think outer space is a more beautiful place to live than on the very planet your species evolved on? Why?
It's the wrong shape.
Turn on a light bulb and watch what the filament does. It's in a vacuum.
It's not if the bulb was made in the last hundred years.
or got the color wrong
Although just to be clear, they did that too.
That's because the comments are being loaded by a script after the page itself has loaded. A la Disqus and similar external comment hosts. Script-driven loaders are notoriously flaky.
It comes from treating the comments as an afterthought rather than the core of the site.
Aside: If Dice really wanted to develop something that brand-added value to Slashdot (and to themselves), they would have developed their own Slashdot-branded "Disqus" style comment server system for other sites to use. With all the Slashdotty goodness like moderation (hence spam and troll control), proper threads, and associated filtering. Few if any sites that have achieved even close to the capabilities of Slashdot's comment system, it would be an excellent way for Dice to get value out their purchase.
You are in someone else's house complaining about the coffee.
That's because we made the coffee and they are pissing in it. And when we complain, they say "Hey let's slow down! [sound of urine flowing] Let's work together to solve this problem! [sound of urine flowing]"
yes, the community is what makes this site special, but
The "but" is unnecessary. Slashdot is its community of commenters. If Dice don't want the community, just the brand, okay, so be it. It sucks but it isn't a community owned site. If they do want the community, then pissing everyone off for no benefit seems stupid.
It's like someone coming into a sports league with hundreds of volunteer players (and fans), some of whom pay the club, and arbitrarily changing over to another type of sport, but being surprised when the players and fans threaten violence.
The real travesty has been the constant hijacking of threads with redesign whine.
Why? You can still read the stories. Surely that's what's important about Slashdot, isn't it?
No?
Perhaps that is the point the protesters were trying to make.
Okay, they've said they're applying the brakes so don't attack then for doing what you want.
That's not what Timothy said. He wants us to slow down.
Ie, "stop protesting and give us a chance to finish the upgrade."
They clearly have no intention of slowing down the changeover, let alone reconsidering the direction they are on. Once they reach what they feel is "feature parity", bam, Beta goes Main.
And can you name a single thing about Beta that addresses any of those critiques?
This is more of a classic "Ask Slashdot" story: "I've recently been put in charge of updating a dated, but beloved, website for its new owners..."
A poll would be worthless to assess features because it pre-supposes the devs already know the top six or seven choices. It's clear from Beta (and their reaction to the protest) that they've completely misunderstood what Slashdot is.
For example, commenters are clearly a small part of the "audience". Most of the "audience" are indeed as passive as the name suggests. The conclusion that Dice has made is that the commenters (and hence the protesters especially) are a tiny part of the "audience" and it doesn't matter if you drive them away because you'll still have the millions who come for the articles...
What they miss, of course, is that that passive audience is only on Slashdot to read the comments. The articles themselves are crap, worse than most news aggregators, the only thing that makes Slashdot different is the commenting community. Kill that, kill Slashdot.
Looks like running AdBlock on Slashdot and turning off ads may soon be the cause of their demise
So instead of just hosting their own ads, their solution is to set fire to their own hair?
having clicking
I'd fix that if there was a way to edit comments after submission. But that would mean creating a change users have asked for.
http://slashdot.org/submission/3320177/slashdot-beta-discussion To avoid having clicking on the beta-infested link.
Mugnyte (and others), clean your links. Most are going to be beta-ised now.
I agree that the hatred here is much deeper.
And I suspect the reason is that the "upgrade" to Beta isn't actually upgrading anything. There's not a single new feature or improvement.
The change to the current UI added things like collapsible threads, reply windows within the thread, etc. Beta is struggling merely to keep standard features like threads, moderation, or even the most basic stuff like displaying fonts correctly. Once they have code which broadly replicates most of the current functions, but in the new idiotic blog-style they've chosen, they'll call it done and push it out. All that effort and hatred for what amounts to - if we're lucky - a re-skinning.
It could be a little of both. If you were an investigator/prosecutor/advisor/etc and the case is against a genuine criminal, you care about catching/convicting them; this is why you became an investigator/prosecutor/etc. You are going to push for an effective investigation, follow every lead, and try to prevent screw-ups which will harm the investigation/prosecution.
But if you feel the case is due to political pressure by the US and obsequious douches in government, you just don't really try very hard. That "I don't care" factor amplifies the apparent incompetence, even if there isn't active sabotage.
[Plus the people who want to be assigned to political case are usually the most suck-up-kick-down douchebags. And they are often that specific type of arrogant-incompetence that causes things like this.]
and then a few million speculators and more squatters
At the ICANN application price ($185k) that would be a few hundred billion dollars worth of "speculators". And at my "$million/yr fee", that would be a trillion dollars every year to maintain their squat. So I suspect not.
Then of course Coke will have to register coke.coke, and IBM ibm.ibm -- just because.
You're being stupid now. If Coke buys .coke, they'd set up coke.coke (and everything.else.coke) on their own registry. They own the TLD.
look again. A-3 was built for a vacuum testing. IOW, upper stage.
However, it only works with a specific engine. As soon as you change the engine profile, you risk backpressure from the exhaust and chamber interaction, which is then the equivalent of launching in an (increasing) atmosphere. You'd need to modify the stand for every engine you used, and this is not an easy stand to modify precisely because it is designed to create a soft vacuum (equivalent to 80-100km or so.) Unlike conventional test stands, it's not just a matter of changing the attachment points, fuel feeds, cooling systems and sensor arrays. You'd have to redesign the entire vacuum system, possibly including the main chamber itself. (For example, I'd expect the temperature of the exhaust at specific points in the extraction system to be finely tuned. Get a phase change or overheat at the wrong point in the system and...)
There's a reason that NASA's plan is to immediately mothball the stand, and not offer it for lease. Think about it, if there was any interest in it, any at all, wouldn't they be offering it for lease now while there's still a few tens of millions of dollars left in the budget to pay for modifications to suit the lessee? Instead they are continuing to develop a specific specialised stand, suitable only for the also-cancelled-when-finished J-2X, then mothball both programs, rather than work with say SpaceX on converting the A-3 to handle Raptor before the money runs out.
The psychology you are displaying ("build it and they will come", "it's big and expensive therefore someone will want it") is the same justification that is often made for the bloated and worthless SLS program. "Sure it's expensive, but look at the capability it offers!... if one day we can ever afford to use it." It ignores the capability that could be developed if that same money was better directed. In the case of A-3, that $350m could have paid to upgrade every single existing stand, restore the Apollo monument, upgrade their tourist facilities, and still have enough to throw tens of $millions of funding and personnel at every single company currently developing new rocket engines, from SpaceX to Orbital, to Virgin, to XCOR. Hell, even the remaining $50m or so could provide a huge benefit to private engine development, which would also make Stennis a hub of private engine development and expertise, create vast cross-pollination of expertise, all of which would ensure the long term health of the Mississippi facility.
And when you think of it in those terms, you realise that the Senator is not actually worried about jobs in his state, nor about creating facilities, he is trying to protect the specific contractor for the A-3 who has obviously contributed to his reelection PACs.
Total US non-govt public debt
Quarterly changes in US public debt
But I'm not saying that deleveraging by the public isn't good, I'm just saying that you have to have economic policies that understand the effect and protect the economy from the negatives. Just as you need to understand the effects of the original leveraging, and the effects of that; which people didn't.
SpaceX uses other test-stands at Stennis.
Even J-2X (which this stand was built for) used other stands at Stennis before it is also cancelled. A-3 was for one very specific test of J-2X (ignition at a specific altitude) which will no longer be carried out. To use it for any other engine, or any other test, you'll need to redesign the stand.
Show me where that $100 million ends up in someone's savings account.
Show me where the government got the "$100 million worth of cars". Chances are that's who has the $100m.
(In the case of the actual cash-for-clunkers program, the money was paid to the car owners who turned in their cars. Which, in practice, meant it actually went to the auto and dealer industry. And it was $3 billion, not $100m.)
Don't forget the $1.2 billion spent on the J-2X Constellation upper-stage rocket-engine which will also be cancelled as soon as it is developed. And which was the only reason for the A-3 test stand being built in the first place.
(Stennis has other more general purpose test stands, some of which go back to before the Apollo program. The A-3 was a specialised single-purpose stand for one specific test of the J-2X. Essentially it simulates the ignition for a single specific sized engine at a single specific altitude. The main testing of the J-2X (now the only testing before it too is cancelled) was done on existing general-purpose stands (such as A-1).)
AC said:
could test the J-2X, rs-68a, RD-180, rs-25e, merlin 1d, or whatever
Except it was specialised to test the J-2X. (Which, like the stand, will be cancelled this year after being developed at a cost of $1.2 billion.).
To turn it into a general purpose test-stand, it would need to be redesigned at great cost, and there's no additional funding. It's possible they could have done that in 2010, when Constellation was cancelled, but that's not what was in the budget language... thanks to Senator Dipshit.
It's specially designed for Constellation's J-2X upper stage. Stennis already has other rocket testing stands which are used by private developers and are more suited to their needs.
It may be that the A-3 stand could have been redesigned in 2010 to make it more general purpose, but presumably that sort of common-sense isn't allowed.
Why not spend the same $350 million to hire the workers directly to dig ditches and fill them in, or break rocks? (Or how about repairing crumbling bridges and other infrastructure that is actually useful, for christ's sake.) In effect, that's what you are doing. Building single-purpose infrastructure that isn't going to be used. The only difference is that you are paying wealthy contractors a 20% premium to subcontract out the work to less wealthy subcontractors, who take 15% and to subcontract out the work to the guys who actually do the work.
The only reason you do it this way is that those wealthy contractors kick-back some of their cut into the Senator's reelection PACs. Whereas if you directly hired $350m worth of workers, they wouldn't give the Senator anything.