Often there is no successful design to work from. There is a lot of talk about the James Webb telescope in the news right now. That program pushes the boundaries of our engineering capabilities. Off the shelf isn't really an option.
But there was a successful design, Hubble. With Webb, you've got a bunch of new technology all shoe-horned onto a single mission, if you screw up just one of them, you fail the mission. That's why the cost blew out the way it did. Why not test the flower-petal mirror trick on an up-rated Hubble-clone first? Then add the IR sensitivity to the next version. One problem per mission.
A lot of the value of NASA comes directly from them inventing new things.
And this is part of NASA's problem, the contradiction between research and operations. They do great research, so they try to shoe-horn as much as possible into every operational mission.
People often try to criticise SpaceX's achievements (vs Constellation's non-achievements) by harping on about how much NASA research SpaceX used. What they ignore is that, by definition, the same research was available to the Constellation teams. So how was SpaceX able to fly two new rockets and a capsule for around half a billion dollars, while NASA has spent... what are they up to?... around eleven billion dollars, and have nothing to show for it.
Part of the reason the shuttle program was such a boondoggle was specifically because it took away much of the reason for NASA to think hard about solving new problems.
No, the reason the shuttle was such a boondoggle is because they had never built a space-plane before. And they built a 130-ton-to-orbit semi-reusable space-plane launch system as their first attempt. Hence new engines, new heat shield (actually two new heat shield technologies), new landing system, totally new type of launch (side-mount). And I'm sure, a bunch of other things I don't know about. All jammed into their prototype design, with not a single part tried on a smaller, more manageable spacecraft first. And even when they succeeded (I mean, they got the pig to fly!), they didn't do a damn thing with any of those systems while the development teams were still fresh.
And 30 years later, they've learnt nothing from their mistakes.
You miss the GP's point. MSL is a totally different beast to the MER rovers, there's no hardware or design overlap whatsoever. And it requires a totally new, totally unique landing system because of the weight. Consequently, it's over-budget, behind schedule, and after JWST gets cancelled, it may be next on the chopping block. And they are only building one of it, not even a pair like Spirit/Opportunity. So if it does work, they'll have thrown away all that work, and all that money, on a single rover.
(And that's the biggest lesson from MER, always have a spare. Spirit had problems (stuck wheel, then got bogged, then froze), but because Opportunity rolled on, so the program as a whole continued successfully. Compared to the Phoenix lander, which had problems from the beginning, diminishing the whole program.)
Likewise Hubble. They had a design that worked (eventually). The cost of Hubble was about $1b. The cost of the JWST has blown out to $6.5b. If you could get the cost of Hubble clones down to $500m apiece, you could have a pair doing long baseline optical interferometry (the only new, and therefore risky, technology being the interferometer) in an ISS-friendly orbit for a $1b. You could even have one attached to the ISS (the only risky tech being the attachment, and vibration dampening) for half a $b. You could have tested the Webb's flower-petal thing five years ago by attaching one to a Hubble-clone (the only risk being the flower-petal thing. And if you prove it, you can then standardise it and upgrade all the other Hubbles with it.)
NASA used to know this stuff. Surveyors, Mariners, Pioneers. Vikings, Voyagers. Mercury/Gemini/Apollo.
Incremental development and improvement. Learn your craft, then take one more risk, solve that, then one more...
"Want to help Russia and America at the same time?
Send half our lawyers (freedom in both countries will go up.)
Send half our MBAs (both our economy and theirs will boom.)
And send half of NASA's managers (America gets a great space program and Russia some good farm labor.)"
I knew the same guy. He was later found dead, still in his wetsuit, hundreds of miles from the sea, in the middle of an area of burnt out bushland. The FBI believe that a water bomber must scooped him out of a lake where he was working... Bizarrely, his wife found a series of missed calls on her phone from his cell number, but the timestamp was hours after he died!
That's not unexpected. If you already believe that you owe nothing to society, a public humiliation by an authority figure (who you can't touch) will only reinforce that idea. Public debasements only work as a forgiveness ritual, and even then only within your own social group. Which is where they came from in tribal law, since there were no prisons.
For a lot of people it is, because that checkbox is clicked in their preferences, or it's the only one they want to use (for fear of viruses or whatever).
FTFS: "Google has pulled one of the most popular torrent download managers..."
Do you really think people who won't download an app from anywhere but the google approved app store are the people downloading torrents?
You mean that famous one at the John Wayne Airport in California? Or the one of him on horseback on Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills? Or the one in the Cowboy Musuem? Or the one at the future $5.5m John Wayne Birthplace Museum And Learning Centre?
[statue of] Madonna.
Then never visit a catholic country.
and glorifying entertainment at the expense of more important things.
Dude, they're taking public donations. It's not like they're somehow taking statues out of the mouths of starving children in Africa. I promise you people piss their money away on stupider things than a bunch of geeks memorialising someone who did something they spent a lot of time on when they were kids.
Life-Lords don't run for re-election, don't need to campaign. They are not dependent on their (former) party for pre-selection or rank. Once elevated, they are free.
Brilliant idea. After all, military trials have military juries. To stop it from becoming incestuous, it can be defendant's privilege (as with a jury trial, vs bench trial, itself.) That way, the defendant can choose between full disclosure to people familiar with National Security infrastructure, ie, genuine peers, or obfuscated information but a "clean" jury.
Whereas currently, anyone with any form of clearance would probably be excluded from the jury-pool.
I don't think it's especially radioactive. It's just rock. So it's the same level of radiation that radiometric dating has been calibrated for. (That said, IDFK. And the article I read had the phrase "they carbon-dated the water", so I don't know if they are using the phrase "carbon-dating" as a dumbed down way of saying "radiometric dating", or "water" to mean "nematode's environment". Either way, not much help there.)
They were found at depths ranging from 900m down to 3.6km (3000ft-2mi). Carbon dating their environment showed they'd been there for at least 3000 years. (The team that found this also found radiation eating bacteria at similar depths five years ago, they been through the standard objections before.)
lithotrophic bacteria that live from certain anorganic chemicals found down there
According to the team that found these nematodes (and the bacteria five years earlier), the bacteria lives off of radiation in the rocks, not chemistry. (Come back in a few years to see what eats the worms?)
An example? MS-Security Essentials is not included in the Win7 install. Instead you have to download it. Moreso, you have to know to look for it. Even when the "You are not secure" warnings come up, they don't point to an MSE download page. Microsoft could have largely destroyed the AV market if they build their anti-virus directly into Windows 7. (Hell, they don't even have their email client in the default install.) How about an example of playing nice with a direct rival? I've mentioned before, they could have an ad-blocker built directly Internet Explorer (including older versions via an update), except websites which use MSN/Atlas-served ads. Seriously fuck with Google's revenue stream. They don't. You think a sense of decency and fair-play is stopping them?
The reason people do "Well, duh!" research is because of how interesting it is when the "Duh!" is wrong. Such as the research into DARE, or similar research showing the ineffectiveness of 12-step programs, or diets, or that losing weight doesn't increase your lifespan (although gaining it decreases it), or that modest alcohol consumption can have positive health effects, or...
I mean, how interesting would it be if...
Driving ability improved in people with early Alzheimer's disease.
Or if women who get epidurals experienced more pain during childbirth than women who didn't.
Or if young men who are obese have the higher odds of getting married than thinner peers.
Or if trying to "make exercise more fun" lowers fitness rates among teens.
Slashdot Mirror
Often there is no successful design to work from. There is a lot of talk about the James Webb telescope in the news right now. That program pushes the boundaries of our engineering capabilities. Off the shelf isn't really an option.
But there was a successful design, Hubble. With Webb, you've got a bunch of new technology all shoe-horned onto a single mission, if you screw up just one of them, you fail the mission. That's why the cost blew out the way it did. Why not test the flower-petal mirror trick on an up-rated Hubble-clone first? Then add the IR sensitivity to the next version. One problem per mission.
A lot of the value of NASA comes directly from them inventing new things.
And this is part of NASA's problem, the contradiction between research and operations. They do great research, so they try to shoe-horn as much as possible into every operational mission.
People often try to criticise SpaceX's achievements (vs Constellation's non-achievements) by harping on about how much NASA research SpaceX used. What they ignore is that, by definition, the same research was available to the Constellation teams. So how was SpaceX able to fly two new rockets and a capsule for around half a billion dollars, while NASA has spent... what are they up to?... around eleven billion dollars, and have nothing to show for it.
Part of the reason the shuttle program was such a boondoggle was specifically because it took away much of the reason for NASA to think hard about solving new problems.
No, the reason the shuttle was such a boondoggle is because they had never built a space-plane before. And they built a 130-ton-to-orbit semi-reusable space-plane launch system as their first attempt. Hence new engines, new heat shield (actually two new heat shield technologies), new landing system, totally new type of launch (side-mount). And I'm sure, a bunch of other things I don't know about. All jammed into their prototype design, with not a single part tried on a smaller, more manageable spacecraft first. And even when they succeeded (I mean, they got the pig to fly!), they didn't do a damn thing with any of those systems while the development teams were still fresh.
And 30 years later, they've learnt nothing from their mistakes.
You miss the GP's point. MSL is a totally different beast to the MER rovers, there's no hardware or design overlap whatsoever. And it requires a totally new, totally unique landing system because of the weight. Consequently, it's over-budget, behind schedule, and after JWST gets cancelled, it may be next on the chopping block. And they are only building one of it, not even a pair like Spirit/Opportunity. So if it does work, they'll have thrown away all that work, and all that money, on a single rover.
(And that's the biggest lesson from MER, always have a spare. Spirit had problems (stuck wheel, then got bogged, then froze), but because Opportunity rolled on, so the program as a whole continued successfully. Compared to the Phoenix lander, which had problems from the beginning, diminishing the whole program.)
Likewise Hubble. They had a design that worked (eventually). The cost of Hubble was about $1b. The cost of the JWST has blown out to $6.5b. If you could get the cost of Hubble clones down to $500m apiece, you could have a pair doing long baseline optical interferometry (the only new, and therefore risky, technology being the interferometer) in an ISS-friendly orbit for a $1b. You could even have one attached to the ISS (the only risky tech being the attachment, and vibration dampening) for half a $b. You could have tested the Webb's flower-petal thing five years ago by attaching one to a Hubble-clone (the only risk being the flower-petal thing. And if you prove it, you can then standardise it and upgrade all the other Hubbles with it.)
NASA used to know this stuff. Surveyors, Mariners, Pioneers. Vikings, Voyagers. Mercury/Gemini/Apollo.
Incremental development and improvement. Learn your craft, then take one more risk, solve that, then one more...
David Brin put it like this in the early '90s:
"Want to help Russia and America at the same time?
Send half our lawyers (freedom in both countries will go up.)
Send half our MBAs (both our economy and theirs will boom.)
And send half of NASA's managers (America gets a great space program and Russia some good farm labor.)"
Now we have a new POTUS, [...] and what do we get?
Bin Laden shot in the head? Withdrawal of troops from Iraq? A deadline for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan?
I knew the same guy. He was later found dead, still in his wetsuit, hundreds of miles from the sea, in the middle of an area of burnt out bushland. The FBI believe that a water bomber must scooped him out of a lake where he was working... Bizarrely, his wife found a series of missed calls on her phone from his cell number, but the timestamp was hours after he died!
Oddly enough, explosives. Funny story...
Or a hairy piece of scareware?
I wonder what would happen to Microsoft's share price if Gates himself stepped back into the role?
That's not unexpected. If you already believe that you owe nothing to society, a public humiliation by an authority figure (who you can't touch) will only reinforce that idea. Public debasements only work as a forgiveness ritual, and even then only within your own social group. Which is where they came from in tribal law, since there were no prisons.
For a lot of people it is, because that checkbox is clicked in their preferences, or it's the only one they want to use (for fear of viruses or whatever).
FTFS: "Google has pulled one of the most popular torrent download managers..."
Do you really think people who won't download an app from anywhere but the google approved app store are the people downloading torrents?
This is why responsible parents teach their children to torrent.
statue of John Wayne
You mean that famous one at the John Wayne Airport in California? Or the one of him on horseback on Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills? Or the one in the Cowboy Musuem? Or the one at the future $5.5m John Wayne Birthplace Museum And Learning Centre?
[statue of] Madonna.
Then never visit a catholic country.
and glorifying entertainment at the expense of more important things.
Dude, they're taking public donations. It's not like they're somehow taking statues out of the mouths of starving children in Africa. I promise you people piss their money away on stupider things than a bunch of geeks memorialising someone who did something they spent a lot of time on when they were kids.
Sounds just like something from House...
Or Snopes.
Life-Lords don't run for re-election, don't need to campaign. They are not dependent on their (former) party for pre-selection or rank. Once elevated, they are free.
Never mind... http://hubrisarts.com/collatz.png
of the number's you searched
<Sigh>
Out of curiosity, of the number's you searched, what number had the longest sequence?
Brilliant idea. After all, military trials have military juries. To stop it from becoming incestuous, it can be defendant's privilege (as with a jury trial, vs bench trial, itself.) That way, the defendant can choose between full disclosure to people familiar with National Security infrastructure, ie, genuine peers, or obfuscated information but a "clean" jury.
Whereas currently, anyone with any form of clearance would probably be excluded from the jury-pool.
I don't think it's especially radioactive. It's just rock. So it's the same level of radiation that radiometric dating has been calibrated for. (That said, IDFK. And the article I read had the phrase "they carbon-dated the water", so I don't know if they are using the phrase "carbon-dating" as a dumbed down way of saying "radiometric dating", or "water" to mean "nematode's environment". Either way, not much help there.)
They were found at depths ranging from 900m down to 3.6km (3000ft-2mi). Carbon dating their environment showed they'd been there for at least 3000 years. (The team that found this also found radiation eating bacteria at similar depths five years ago, they been through the standard objections before.)
Half a millimetre long. (The spice must trickle.)
(About 1/50th of an inch, for the uneducated.)
lithotrophic bacteria that live from certain anorganic chemicals found down there
According to the team that found these nematodes (and the bacteria five years earlier), the bacteria lives off of radiation in the rocks, not chemistry. (Come back in a few years to see what eats the worms?)
Actually it worked in the submission (I saw it after I'd submitted an unintentional dupe.) From memory it was Cosmos.
My own links were via NewScientist: This story.
A story about the discovery of radiation eating bacteria by the same team.
And a long article from '96 about what this all means for the search for life on (or in) Mars.
An example? MS-Security Essentials is not included in the Win7 install. Instead you have to download it. Moreso, you have to know to look for it. Even when the "You are not secure" warnings come up, they don't point to an MSE download page. Microsoft could have largely destroyed the AV market if they build their anti-virus directly into Windows 7. (Hell, they don't even have their email client in the default install.) How about an example of playing nice with a direct rival? I've mentioned before, they could have an ad-blocker built directly Internet Explorer (including older versions via an update), except websites which use MSN/Atlas-served ads. Seriously fuck with Google's revenue stream. They don't. You think a sense of decency and fair-play is stopping them?
The reason people do "Well, duh!" research is because of how interesting it is when the "Duh!" is wrong. Such as the research into DARE, or similar research showing the ineffectiveness of 12-step programs, or diets, or that losing weight doesn't increase your lifespan (although gaining it decreases it), or that modest alcohol consumption can have positive health effects, or...
I mean, how interesting would it be if...
Driving ability improved in people with early Alzheimer's disease.
Or if women who get epidurals experienced more pain during childbirth than women who didn't.
Or if young men who are obese have the higher odds of getting married than thinner peers.
Or if trying to "make exercise more fun" lowers fitness rates among teens.
No? You should have a look around mil forums and see what they think of it.