Well, your Engineering Success Story example happens to a very small percentage of all scientists and engineers.
While the $120k happens to the average lawyer. Even incompetent lawyers still make a very good living.
Incompetent engineers get laid off, lose their houses, and get age-discriminated out of their industry by 45. Competent but "average" engineers make the $60k, which is just barely enough to buy a house, raise a family, and, assuming they aren't hit with some major medical problem, they might actually have a modest retirement.
A very, very few scientists and engineers are bright enought to come up with a sellable idea. A small percentage of those actually have contacts which give them access to capital.
This is not an attractive proposition. An exceptional scientist/engineer knows that they are exceptional when they enter school. Ones with contacts usually know that as well. Kids who don't really have a plan, or aren't sure if they have talent - those kids are the ones who this program is targeted at. Some of those kids are going to be crappy engineers. Many of them might actually end up being "good enough" - and a very small minority will end up being "great". But the "good enough" will often realize that a business or law degree has a much better chance of earning them a lot more money.
This Pentagon program is saying that there's a National (economic competitiveness) Security demand for engineers and scientists. The "Market" - based on what engineers and scientists are actually paid, sends a different message entirely.
If we want more engineers and scientists, domestically, in this country, if it's truly a matter of National (economic competitiveness) Security, then this is a case where it is necessary to tamper with the Free Market. Either with subsidies to education or salary of engineers and scientists, or through protectionist policies to improve domestic job security.
A day's going to come in this nation where some bright kid, in another country, is going to invent something that gives that country a significant military advantage over the US. That country may try to take the US on. All the Laywers and MBAs are not going to have a chance in hell at stopping it. But the "Free Market" is not far sighted enough to do a damn thing about it. Tampering with the "Free Market" is often ill-advised. But in this case - anyone got a better plan? Learn to speak Mandarin?
And what's to stop groups like "Focus on the Family" from staging an Astroturf campaign to slant certain articles their way.
For example, FoF routinely sends out form-emails to people on their email list (members, freinds of members, etc.) - and instructs the members to email them back to Newspaper editorial pages nationwide. One result of this type of situation was that the FCC was innundated with tens of millions of emails after the Janet Jackson Wardrobe Malfunction, when in fact, the opinion of this onslaught of email represented fewer than 1% of the US population - it was magnified by FoF's email campaign.
Similar groups on either side of the political fence could mount an astroturf "attack" on Wikipedia. Some of these groups are astoundingly well-funded. The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, The Federalist Society, even MoveOn.org. The newsmedia has already been polarized by such groups, through pressure tactics, and through stacking corporate boardrooms with members of these groups, dictating opinion down through the ranks of these newsmedia organizations.
I don't know if there's a good way to combat these kinds of things. But the same situation you see on FoxNews, CNN, Washington Times, or Wall Street Journal - eventually these groups are going to catch on to the fact that Wikipedia is an important source of information that needs to be "controlled" by them. If they can't do it with money, they'll do it with numbers. And if the founders maintain editorial control anyway, they'll attempt to destroy it's credibility by using their newsmedia outlets to claim that Wikipedia is biased.
I think that about 99% of all of humanity's problems could be solved if someone could invent a reliable and reproducible process to take any text on any subject, and modify it so that it's objectively neutral. Personally, I think it's an inherent weakness in all human language, and quite possibly a fundamental component of human consciousness, that objective neutrality in an idea expressed in a human language, is actually impossible to achieve.
(In other words, I think that just about any topic can and will be slanted to produce a political bias, and that humans will be arguing about politics until the end of time, or until the arguing brings an end to humans. . . whichever comes first)
Today's "coin-operated" American youth will look at average pay for a scientist, and average pay for a lawyer, and, really, you don't have to be a wiz at calculus to see that yearly vacations to Cabo aren't in the cards for the average scientist, as they are for the average lawyer.
Greed is good for some things, in terms of human motivation. But when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Greed's a good motivator for work, but it's terrible for innovation. The guy who invented the wheel didn't do it out of greed. He did it because he was sick of carrying heavy shit around all the time.
Look, nobody is going to argue that getting into space isn't difficult. It is. And the fact that NASA's done it 114 times with the shuttle is an acheivement.
However...
Merely going somewhere is not a challenge, nor is it anything to really get worked up about...if you've already been there
Had NASA kept that momentum and moved on to a permanent lunar colony and a mission to Mars, NASA would've had no trouble getting funding from taxpayers.
But that's the thing. Space travel, and exploration, isn't about public entertainment. It's true, that's what brings the big bucks in. But at some point, it's gotta transition into a self-sustaining industry. The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were a public spectacle, a grand achievement. Nobody said we need to halt all transatlantic shipping when the Titanic hit an iceberg. (not to mention all the previous shiploads of limeys that went to Davey Jones' locker in the intevening time period). Today it's routine. 100 years ago it was routine. 400 years ago, it was exceptionally difficult, but routine. The rewards were there for those that took the risk.
The point of the shuttle was trying to learn how to make it routine, and how to reduce the cost so it could become profitable. Right now, space flight, in of itself, is just not profitable. Ways have been found to make it profitable, communications, and weather. (I'm not certain that commercial imaging is profitable yet). Part of exploiting space as an economic resource is going to be learning how to cut costs (without sacrificing safety). Right now, we're going into space on the equivalent of a dinghy or rowboat, one step up from a dugout canoe. None of us can really imagine what even a small schooner will look like, or how it will function. Not with our current thermal protection technology, not with our current propulsion technology, not with our current environmental support technology. But we've got to keep building rowboats and dinghies, and perhaps even try to build schooners. Sail them. Sink them. And not wring our hands over who's watching, or who gets exited. Eventually, we'll have a ship that will look good enough that the queen will hock her jewels to fund the next grand expedition. A return to the moon won't bring that kind of exitement. I doubt even a moon base will. And a mars landing? Well, I'm sure there will be a temporary exitement. 5 years tops - until the public gets re-occupied by Paris Hilton's children's antics or whatever passes for pop culture in 2050. The whims and foibles of our short national attention span is not the key to sustaining a venture in space. Making it more economical is. Reusability is a good goal. The Shuttle probably provides a good example of how NOT to achieve affordability. But it's a good start over the traditional disposable converted ballistic missiles.
I'd say that going to LEO for the 115th time *is* something grand. Making spaceflight routine was the main goal of the shuttle - by using "reusability" as a technique to address out-of-control cost escalation. (an ineffective technique, I might add).
I'd say that in 10 years, if we'd been to LEO another 115 times, that would be a "grand achievement". Particularly if that grand achievement were built upon to make something even more grand, (like a permanent presence in space - ISS, or a moon base, or a self-sustaining colony, or a manned mars landing.)
The reason why the public is disenchanted with the shuttle is because it doesn't have the promotional budget of McDonalds. The public is conditioned by now, not to take anything seriously unless it's a major media event. That runs counter to the "routine" bit about routine space travel. The grand things the shuttle has achieved simply have fallen below the public's "exitement" radar. Maybe NASA should have launched a pop-star. I dunno. I just can't figure out why a permanent manned presence in space isn't exiting to most people, or smashing a comet, or landing on an asteroid.
Well- yes, you're technically correct. But the matter is grossly oversimplified for the audience at home.
As far as the armed resistance speak, 75% of it is self-aggrandizing trolls thinking they're going to get away from their computer for more than a day to fight "the man" like its some mod for BF2. The other 25% are just damned tired of continuing to vote for the loser in elections......I truly think we're past the point of being able to vote-in reform, mostly because reform needs to start with ballot access laws and the current legislators think the laws we have on the books are just super. IMO, a constitutional convention is in order along with a complete rewrite of the US Code.
A constitutional convention at this point is about as realistic as "change by vote" and "armed resistance". In my opinion.
Are these kids really fired up and ready to fight and die to strike down the DMCA? I doubt it, and I hope not. But I still have faith that there's an untapped reservoir of voting power that can overcome both the Right Wing Noise Machine and Diebold/fraud. In November 2004, 51% voted for continuation. Today, if you look at Bush's approval rating, and various opinion polls, and the Hackett election in Ohio district 02, and also based on the quality of the discussion I'm seeing here on slashdot, and elsewhere, I really question what the result would be if we could re-do the November 2004 election today. As the first and greatest Republican said, you can fool some of the people all of the time (evidently, the 38% who approve of Bush today) and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. (take THAT smackdown, Goebbels!). I still have faith in that. The extreme right has a tight grip on the reigns of cable news and AM talkradio (where they can tightly control public debate). But it's slipping.
As far as I'm concerned it will take a miracle to pull this nation from the very brink of corporate facism, and I stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.. it kind of brings back to memory a little opening song from the movie "canadian bacon".
I don't think it will require divine intervention of any sort. The kind of power-hungry corporate fascism that currently grips America, will likely (as they all do) overextend itself out of greed and arrogance. It won't take a miracle. It will take a disaster. Not like 9/11. 9/11 was apparently not enough. We're already seeing how American competitiveness is suffering due to crony capitalism. Eventually, other players will simply come along and eat our lunch. When this results in the collapse of a viable middle-class, and the tax revenues necessary to maintain National Security, we'll become a target for takeover. Either economic, or military.
Germans got a wake-up call in the early years of the 1940's. Cities bombed to rubble, armies of pissed-off Russians came in, partitioned the country, slaughtered tens of thousands of civillians, and they lived through the Soviet occupation for 50 years. When they emerged, I think there was "attitude change". I hate to think of the US suffering a similar fate. I really hate it. But the wake-up call on 9/11/01 seems to only have been enough to force us collectively into a still-deeper sleep. Like a petulant teenager, smacking the snooze button on the alarm clock, instead of waking up and getting ready for school. But like the snooze button, the smack-down on terror is only a temporary cure.
Not at CAFTA's passage, or it's nasty provisionses. But check my User ID - I've been reading and posting on slashdot for a long time.
I've seen this debate hundreds of times. Usually, slanted towards the libertarian philosophy - and when I logged in to read this discussion, I expected a balance, or slant towards that direction. After all, this is a debate on free trade. But the character of these discussions has changed in the past several months. Fewer pro-lassez faire opinions. Fewer sustained discussions. And this thread, in particular, has me shocked to see such open discussion of things like, armed resistence, etc. Especially post-9/11, with all the pro-"kill terrorists" propaganda on the mainstream newsmedia. I'm not really sure how or why this is happening. Can we blame/credit blogs or the internet?
I'm just really shocked. It shows that there's a lot of untapped rage out there. I don't know where that rage was in November of 2004. But it's there now. I sure hope that a viable opposition party arises that can tap into that and start winning elections. It would be nice if that were the Democrats, because it won't require a third party to start from the ground up. But I sincerely doubt it. The Democrats have proven that they're utterly clueless at how to tap into what the electorate want.
Indeed, liberty cannot exist without security. By the same (idiotic) token, if one gives up one's liberties for security, then what's the point of security?
In the case of CAFTA, the liberty we're trading, is freedom of speech (by acquiescing to software patents, dmca, and copyright fascism) for the security of hoping that by giving away our rights to corporations, they'll be nice and keep innovating and hiring us. The events of the past 12 or so years of NAFTA seem to indicate that no matter what welfare we hand out to corporations, there's no guarantee they'll keep us employed, or that they'll keep innovating. Socialize the risk, privatize the profit.
personally - the ability to have two distinct single-click behaviors in a web browser, is very important to me. (click a link, open the link, wheel-click the same link, open the link in a tab).
Ideology about GUI design be-damned. Perhaps this is just an exception to the ideological "rule". But it's a damned important one.
That's why I run nightly builds of Firefox instead of the latest "release" - because only 1.1 actually works this way on OS X.
I used to actually buy that cheesy excuse about the "purity" of the one-button mouse design, and why Steve Jobs wanted to make sure both lefties and righties were well-served by their products' offerings.
But looking at this thing, I'm starting to think that it's actually some weird pathological fear of multi-button mice. I mean what? Was Steve Jobs raped by a two-button mouse as a child? WTF?
When I buy a new Mac, the first thing I do is buy a two-button/scrollwheel mouse. Then I upgrade the RAM (because Apple is stingy with stock RAM, and overcharges for upgrade. No room for debate there.) With the last few years of Apple's offerings, there really hasn't been a need for upgrading much more than that. (although their black keyboards suck for typing in the dark, so I've replaced those - didn't need to for the G5 powermac white keyboard).
I think spaceflightnow.com is probably the best public source for this kind of space news.
But it irks me that subscription is required for access to video footage and images.
Don't get me wrong, I think spaceflightnow.com is one of those rare sites where their reporting "product" is good enough to pay for.
But as far as the video and images goes, I simply can't accept that this stuff should be locked away from free public access. MY tax dollars paid for NASA to have RocketCam mount these cameras on the shuttle. That footage belongs to me. Dammit.
I keep hearing this accusation that the shuttle design is "flawed" - particularly the part about how the "payload should be above the boosters".
This is the kind of "in the box" thinking that prevents progress.
Goddard's original design had the thruster at the top of the rocket, and the fuel tanks actually sat below, in the stream of the rocket exhaust.
This design was necessary, to provide stability in flight; the problems of steering and guidance by fins, gyroscopes, and gymballed nozzles had not yet been solved.
Of course, when you start talking about rocket designs of more significant power, then the exhaust becomes a heat problem, and you have to move the payload out of the way, which introduces a stability problem; which is what Goddard worked the rest of his career solving.
The issue with the shuttle is; it's an incredibly complex machine, and some of the problems it was designed to handle are very difficult problems. Personally, I wouldn't blame these problems on the configuration of the orbiter, booster, and external fuel tank. Fundamentally, it's not a "bad" configuration. It becomes a hazard when you combine that configuration with the hazards of ice forming on the external tank, and an extremely fragile Thermal Protection System on the orbiter. Saying that the problems with the Space Shuttle are all caused by configuration is a gross oversimplification of the problem. The Space Transportation System as a whole, is a complex system, and each component is engineered with certain trade-offs. Perhaps all of them together, in sum, equate to a hazardous system. When you have a hazard, you look at the easiest and most effective way to solve the problem. A complete redesign, including re-arranging the basic configuration of the vehicle, is an overreaction to this hazard. Switching from paint on the external tank to insulating foam, perhaps, was an underreaction, because it moved the hazard from launch time to 60-150 seconds into flight, from slow, falling ice, to high-speed foam. The ultimate solution may turn out to be as simple as re-formulating the foam. (the original freon-based foam was more successful at sticking to the tank). It may turn out to be more complicated, like re-engineering the orbiter's Thermal Protection System.
And of course - we'll never see an attempt at something like that, because the simple-minded folks will stick to the conclusion that it's better to simply redesign the whole thing.
The end result may be semi-reusable. May be cheaper per pound than the shuttle. But it won't have the payload capacity, nor will it have the flexibility. Personally, I think that the nation, as a whole, would be better served by approaching the old design with new technology (as in the X-33 approach). The state of materials science has advanced significantly in 30 years. As has propulsion technology, and even aerodynamics. An effort to build the same shuttle, with the same configuration, with fresh ideas from these advances could possibly yeild a vehicle without the same hazards, possibly with a cheaper operating cost, quicker duty cycle, and greater flexibility than the shuttle we have today.
In my opinion, using this "throwback" design will represent a huge setback to the spacelaunch industry. It will be adequate for servicing the ISS. It will be adequate for placing small crews into orbit. And it will be more cost-effective than our current shuttle. But it doesn't represent a technical advance. It's a retreat. It will come to represent the symbol of where Mankind said; "That's it, we tried to go farther than this point, and we failed. Let's stop here."
Apple could have shipped Intel-based laptops (and, I suppose mini and iMac too), and continued with PPC for server and workstation platforms where PPC would be more appropriate. If their "switch" ju-ju is really all it's cracked up to be, dual CPU-platform strategy would actually be best, more long-term flexibility.
Reading the links to the wikipedia article, it was not lost because it was mounted upside down. It was lost because of a faulty guidance sensor. Since not all the facts are known because it's still considered a state secret, I doubt that the real story is all that close to what we've read.
what happens if your giant foam net doesn't detatch from the shuttle properly and rips off a section of the shuttle underbody during launch?
No worse than a the current problem of the foam detaching and ripping off a section of the shuttle underbody 80 seconds after launch when they're going 4+ times the speed of sound.
Look, I'm not a structural engineer, I don't have detailed CAD drawings of the orbiter and tank, but I'm sure these clever fellows could come up with a geometry that will shed the foam in a non-fatal, reliable, repeatable manner, rather than the uncontrolled and sometiems fatal manner in which the foam currently sheds. It makes sense that this should happen very near T-0, rather than at T +80 when it's dangerous. Maybe have some cable-driven mechanism yank the foam blanket off a second or two prior to ignition, and abort ignition if the foam blanket fails to detatch cleanly.
Maybe the geniuses at Lockheed already thought of this, and have good reasons not to do it. Maybe it can't be done cleanly and quickly at that scale. I don't know. I'm just, you know, trying to suggest an apparent "out of the box" thought.
and er wtf? the point of the foam is to keep the tank cold, to insulate it from the much higher ambient temperature.
And that much higher ambient temperature does not pose a problem after about t+60, when the Shuttle is at altitude. As far as I recall, the first few launches did not have the foam on the tank, and the foam was added, because of fear of the hazard of falling ice from the tank - because late holds would allow ice to build up in the humid environment.
Or why not reinforce the bottom and leading wings of the orbiter with some material strong enough to deflect any foam strikes, but can burn off harmlessly on re-entry, exposing the thermal tiles under?
I don't know if there's a way to guarantee that the stuff would definately ALL burn off, and any remaining material might have an adverse effect on the aerodynamic profile of the orbiter.
Plus - the testing they did post-Columbia with the air cannon proved that the foam strikes could be quite devastating, moreso than anyone previously imagined, given the physics of the situation. It turned out that the velocity, more than the mass of the foam was to blame.
But maybe some reinforcement panels that could be jettisoned prior to re-entry might work? Who knows. I just hope this grounding isn't permanent, that they can figure out a way around this problem. Personally, I never liked the tile solution to controlling reentry heat. But nobody's come up with a better option for a winged vehicle in 30 years. 3500 degrees is pretty hot stuff.
Since the reason for the foam insulation on the tank is to prevent condensation from forming on the ground between the time the tank is filled with liquid fuel, and the time of launch, and is not needed past T-0, how about this?:
Jettison the foam at T-0, during engine ignition. Velocity at that point in time is low enough that no foam strikes will have any chance of damaging orbiter tiles.
The foam and ice stay on the ground. The orbiter, and tank, go up. Probably a few thousand pounds lighter, as well.
Sure, there's the problem of getting all of the foam off in a few seconds, leaving none behind. Maybe by forming the foam around a fine, mesh netting, and attaching that netting to the ground via cables, it all slips right off at T-0.
There are easy workarounds to this anonymity problem:
Send the text electronically to the journalist, who then prints it out on his printer - the journalists' source's confidentiality is protected. Mostly.
or
Print it out. Fax it to yourself a few times using different fax machines, at the office, at kinkos, etc. Each generation destroys prior "markings" more and more. Final generation faxed anonymously from Kinkos (like the Dan Rather Killian Memos).
Besides, 90% of the time, the feature sets will be identical. Maybe you haven't noticed, but the fat binary is just a checkbox click away.
So, Adobe's going to port Photoshop 7 to x86? (or more realistically, CS2)
No, they're going to spit out CS3, and the users are going to buy the new license, and if CS3 "fixes" things in ways that piss off CS2 users, then too bad for them. (Generally, version upgrades aren't so nasty for Photoshop, but I can think of a few other apps where upgrades are a step backwards).
Look at it this way... your next mac is likely to be more upgradeable, because you can use more mainstream hardware.
I was a hardcore upgrade-junky with my beige. I did everything but water-cooling. But in the end, when I got the dual G5, I just don't see me upgrading it. It's got firewire, and usb, and a "fast enough" bus. I didn't see me opening the case even for the next 5 years (though my HD is getting a tad crowded). I don't think upgradability is an issue anymore. The dual G5 purchase was about forward compatability with OS X - I skipped the G4 generation, because of it's crippled bus. With the G5, I felt like I finally had a Mac that had caught up with the rest of the computer world. Now I'm going to have to, at some point, buy new hardware, because I'm not convinced that vendors are going to endlessly support PPC. They may provide binaries, but they sure as hell aren't going to devote dual-platform testing resources. Maybe in two years, or four, I'm betting that Apple's going to stop pushing os updates on PPC with the same schedule, or they'll find some issue introduced with an update that only affects one platform, and not the other, and they won't devote resources to fixing it. I know this because I've lived through these transitions before, and while Apple has done it better than any other vendor (Sun, BeOS, IBM, Microsoft, etc.) they still show a proclivity to gravitate to one platform when they have multiple platforms to support. Apple can be very insensitive to customers in this regard. If they weren't, I'd still be running OS X on my beige (instead of LinuxPPC).
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Well, your Engineering Success Story example happens to a very small percentage of all scientists and engineers.
While the $120k happens to the average lawyer. Even incompetent lawyers still make a very good living.
Incompetent engineers get laid off, lose their houses, and get age-discriminated out of their industry by 45.
Competent but "average" engineers make the $60k, which is just barely enough to buy a house, raise a family, and, assuming they aren't hit with some major medical problem, they might actually have a modest retirement.
A very, very few scientists and engineers are bright enought to come up with a sellable idea. A small percentage of those actually have contacts which give them access to capital.
This is not an attractive proposition. An exceptional scientist/engineer knows that they are exceptional when they enter school. Ones with contacts usually know that as well.
Kids who don't really have a plan, or aren't sure if they have talent - those kids are the ones who this program is targeted at. Some of those kids are going to be crappy engineers. Many of them might actually end up being "good enough" - and a very small minority will end up being "great". But the "good enough" will often realize that a business or law degree has a much better chance of earning them a lot more money.
This Pentagon program is saying that there's a National (economic competitiveness) Security demand for engineers and scientists. The "Market" - based on what engineers and scientists are actually paid, sends a different message entirely.
If we want more engineers and scientists, domestically, in this country, if it's truly a matter of National (economic competitiveness) Security, then this is a case where it is necessary to tamper with the Free Market. Either with subsidies to education or salary of engineers and scientists, or through protectionist policies to improve domestic job security.
A day's going to come in this nation where some bright kid, in another country, is going to invent something that gives that country a significant military advantage over the US. That country may try to take the US on. All the Laywers and MBAs are not going to have a chance in hell at stopping it. But the "Free Market" is not far sighted enough to do a damn thing about it. Tampering with the "Free Market" is often ill-advised. But in this case - anyone got a better plan? Learn to speak Mandarin?
Who moderates the moderators?
And what's to stop groups like "Focus on the Family" from staging an Astroturf campaign to slant certain articles their way.
For example, FoF routinely sends out form-emails to people on their email list (members, freinds of members, etc.) - and instructs the members to email them back to Newspaper editorial pages nationwide. One result of this type of situation was that the FCC was innundated with tens of millions of emails after the Janet Jackson Wardrobe Malfunction, when in fact, the opinion of this onslaught of email represented fewer than 1% of the US population - it was magnified by FoF's email campaign.
Similar groups on either side of the political fence could mount an astroturf "attack" on Wikipedia. Some of these groups are astoundingly well-funded. The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, The Federalist Society, even MoveOn.org. The newsmedia has already been polarized by such groups, through pressure tactics, and through stacking corporate boardrooms with members of these groups, dictating opinion down through the ranks of these newsmedia organizations.
I don't know if there's a good way to combat these kinds of things. But the same situation you see on FoxNews, CNN, Washington Times, or Wall Street Journal - eventually these groups are going to catch on to the fact that Wikipedia is an important source of information that needs to be "controlled" by them. If they can't do it with money, they'll do it with numbers. And if the founders maintain editorial control anyway, they'll attempt to destroy it's credibility by using their newsmedia outlets to claim that Wikipedia is biased.
I think that about 99% of all of humanity's problems could be solved if someone could invent a reliable and reproducible process to take any text on any subject, and modify it so that it's objectively neutral. Personally, I think it's an inherent weakness in all human language, and quite possibly a fundamental component of human consciousness, that objective neutrality in an idea expressed in a human language, is actually impossible to achieve.
(In other words, I think that just about any topic can and will be slanted to produce a political bias, and that humans will be arguing about politics until the end of time, or until the arguing brings an end to humans. . . whichever comes first)
Today's "coin-operated" American youth will look at average pay for a scientist, and average pay for a lawyer, and, really, you don't have to be a wiz at calculus to see that yearly vacations to Cabo aren't in the cards for the average scientist, as they are for the average lawyer.
Greed is good for some things, in terms of human motivation. But when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Greed's a good motivator for work, but it's terrible for innovation. The guy who invented the wheel didn't do it out of greed. He did it because he was sick of carrying heavy shit around all the time.
Look, nobody is going to argue that getting into space isn't difficult. It is. And the fact that NASA's done it 114 times with the shuttle is an acheivement.
However...
Merely going somewhere is not a challenge, nor is it anything to really get worked up about...if you've already been there
Had NASA kept that momentum and moved on to a permanent lunar colony and a mission to Mars, NASA would've had no trouble getting funding from taxpayers.
But that's the thing. Space travel, and exploration, isn't about public entertainment. It's true, that's what brings the big bucks in. But at some point, it's gotta transition into a self-sustaining industry. The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were a public spectacle, a grand achievement. Nobody said we need to halt all transatlantic shipping when the Titanic hit an iceberg. (not to mention all the previous shiploads of limeys that went to Davey Jones' locker in the intevening time period). Today it's routine. 100 years ago it was routine. 400 years ago, it was exceptionally difficult, but routine. The rewards were there for those that took the risk.
The point of the shuttle was trying to learn how to make it routine, and how to reduce the cost so it could become profitable. Right now, space flight, in of itself, is just not profitable. Ways have been found to make it profitable, communications, and weather. (I'm not certain that commercial imaging is profitable yet). Part of exploiting space as an economic resource is going to be learning how to cut costs (without sacrificing safety). Right now, we're going into space on the equivalent of a dinghy or rowboat, one step up from a dugout canoe. None of us can really imagine what even a small schooner will look like, or how it will function. Not with our current thermal protection technology, not with our current propulsion technology, not with our current environmental support technology. But we've got to keep building rowboats and dinghies, and perhaps even try to build schooners. Sail them. Sink them. And not wring our hands over who's watching, or who gets exited. Eventually, we'll have a ship that will look good enough that the queen will hock her jewels to fund the next grand expedition. A return to the moon won't bring that kind of exitement. I doubt even a moon base will. And a mars landing? Well, I'm sure there will be a temporary exitement. 5 years tops - until the public gets re-occupied by Paris Hilton's children's antics or whatever passes for pop culture in 2050. The whims and foibles of our short national attention span is not the key to sustaining a venture in space. Making it more economical is. Reusability is a good goal. The Shuttle probably provides a good example of how NOT to achieve affordability. But it's a good start over the traditional disposable converted ballistic missiles.
This ablility was long lost after the legal industry began suing everyone for anything.
Which began shortly after hucksters began cutting corners and producing unsafe products in order to make a quick buck.
When was the last time public opinion effectively forced the federal government to step back on investment decisions?
Bush's Social Security privatization plan.
I'd say that going to LEO for the 115th time *is* something grand. Making spaceflight routine was the main goal of the shuttle - by using "reusability" as a technique to address out-of-control cost escalation. (an ineffective technique, I might add).
I'd say that in 10 years, if we'd been to LEO another 115 times, that would be a "grand achievement". Particularly if that grand achievement were built upon to make something even more grand, (like a permanent presence in space - ISS, or a moon base, or a self-sustaining colony, or a manned mars landing.)
The reason why the public is disenchanted with the shuttle is because it doesn't have the promotional budget of McDonalds. The public is conditioned by now, not to take anything seriously unless it's a major media event. That runs counter to the "routine" bit about routine space travel. The grand things the shuttle has achieved simply have fallen below the public's "exitement" radar. Maybe NASA should have launched a pop-star. I dunno. I just can't figure out why a permanent manned presence in space isn't exiting to most people, or smashing a comet, or landing on an asteroid.
Incorrect. This is a debate on managed trade.
Well- yes, you're technically correct. But the matter is grossly oversimplified for the audience at home.
As far as the armed resistance speak, 75% of it is self-aggrandizing trolls thinking they're going to get away from their computer for more than a day to fight "the man" like its some mod for BF2. The other 25% are just damned tired of continuing to vote for the loser in elections......I truly think we're past the point of being able to vote-in reform, mostly because reform needs to start with ballot access laws and the current legislators think the laws we have on the books are just super. IMO, a constitutional convention is in order along with a complete rewrite of the US Code.
A constitutional convention at this point is about as realistic as "change by vote" and "armed resistance". In my opinion.
Are these kids really fired up and ready to fight and die to strike down the DMCA? I doubt it, and I hope not. But I still have faith that there's an untapped reservoir of voting power that can overcome both the Right Wing Noise Machine and Diebold/fraud. In November 2004, 51% voted for continuation. Today, if you look at Bush's approval rating, and various opinion polls, and the Hackett election in Ohio district 02, and also based on the quality of the discussion I'm seeing here on slashdot, and elsewhere, I really question what the result would be if we could re-do the November 2004 election today. As the first and greatest Republican said, you can fool some of the people all of the time (evidently, the 38% who approve of Bush today) and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. (take THAT smackdown, Goebbels!). I still have faith in that. The extreme right has a tight grip on the reigns of cable news and AM talkradio (where they can tightly control public debate). But it's slipping.
As far as I'm concerned it will take a miracle to pull this nation from the very brink of corporate facism, and I stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.. it kind of brings back to memory a little opening song from the movie "canadian bacon".
I don't think it will require divine intervention of any sort. The kind of power-hungry corporate fascism that currently grips America, will likely (as they all do) overextend itself out of greed and arrogance. It won't take a miracle. It will take a disaster. Not like 9/11. 9/11 was apparently not enough. We're already seeing how American competitiveness is suffering due to crony capitalism. Eventually, other players will simply come along and eat our lunch. When this results in the collapse of a viable middle-class, and the tax revenues necessary to maintain National Security, we'll become a target for takeover. Either economic, or military.
Germans got a wake-up call in the early years of the 1940's. Cities bombed to rubble, armies of pissed-off Russians came in, partitioned the country, slaughtered tens of thousands of civillians, and they lived through the Soviet occupation for 50 years. When they emerged, I think there was "attitude change". I hate to think of the US suffering a similar fate. I really hate it. But the wake-up call on 9/11/01 seems to only have been enough to force us collectively into a still-deeper sleep. Like a petulant teenager, smacking the snooze button on the alarm clock, instead of waking up and getting ready for school. But like the snooze button, the smack-down on terror is only a temporary cure.
Not at CAFTA's passage, or it's nasty provisionses. But check my User ID - I've been reading and posting on slashdot for a long time.
I've seen this debate hundreds of times. Usually, slanted towards the libertarian philosophy - and when I logged in to read this discussion, I expected a balance, or slant towards that direction. After all, this is a debate on free trade. But the character of these discussions has changed in the past several months. Fewer pro-lassez faire opinions. Fewer sustained discussions. And this thread, in particular, has me shocked to see such open discussion of things like, armed resistence, etc. Especially post-9/11, with all the pro-"kill terrorists" propaganda on the mainstream newsmedia. I'm not really sure how or why this is happening. Can we blame/credit blogs or the internet?
I'm just really shocked. It shows that there's a lot of untapped rage out there. I don't know where that rage was in November of 2004. But it's there now. I sure hope that a viable opposition party arises that can tap into that and start winning elections. It would be nice if that were the Democrats, because it won't require a third party to start from the ground up. But I sincerely doubt it. The Democrats have proven that they're utterly clueless at how to tap into what the electorate want.
Indeed, liberty cannot exist without security. By the same (idiotic) token, if one gives up one's liberties for security, then what's the point of security?
In the case of CAFTA, the liberty we're trading, is freedom of speech (by acquiescing to software patents, dmca, and copyright fascism) for the security of hoping that by giving away our rights to corporations, they'll be nice and keep innovating and hiring us. The events of the past 12 or so years of NAFTA seem to indicate that no matter what welfare we hand out to corporations, there's no guarantee they'll keep us employed, or that they'll keep innovating. Socialize the risk, privatize the profit.
personally - the ability to have two distinct single-click behaviors in a web browser, is very important to me. (click a link, open the link, wheel-click the same link, open the link in a tab).
Ideology about GUI design be-damned. Perhaps this is just an exception to the ideological "rule". But it's a damned important one.
That's why I run nightly builds of Firefox instead of the latest "release" - because only 1.1 actually works this way on OS X.
I used to actually buy that cheesy excuse about the "purity" of the one-button mouse design, and why Steve Jobs wanted to make sure both lefties and righties were well-served by their products' offerings.
But looking at this thing, I'm starting to think that it's actually some weird pathological fear of multi-button mice. I mean what? Was Steve Jobs raped by a two-button mouse as a child? WTF?
When I buy a new Mac, the first thing I do is buy a two-button/scrollwheel mouse. Then I upgrade the RAM (because Apple is stingy with stock RAM, and overcharges for upgrade. No room for debate there.) With the last few years of Apple's offerings, there really hasn't been a need for upgrading much more than that. (although their black keyboards suck for typing in the dark, so I've replaced those - didn't need to for the G5 powermac white keyboard).
I think spaceflightnow.com is probably the best public source for this kind of space news.
.torrent?
But it irks me that subscription is required for access to video footage and images.
Don't get me wrong, I think spaceflightnow.com is one of those rare sites where their reporting "product" is good enough to pay for.
But as far as the video and images goes, I simply can't accept that this stuff should be locked away from free public access. MY tax dollars paid for NASA to have RocketCam mount these cameras on the shuttle. That footage belongs to me. Dammit.
So anyone have a
I keep hearing this accusation that the shuttle design is "flawed" - particularly the part about how the "payload should be above the boosters".
This is the kind of "in the box" thinking that prevents progress.
Goddard's original design had the thruster at the top of the rocket, and the fuel tanks actually sat below, in the stream of the rocket exhaust.
This design was necessary, to provide stability in flight; the problems of steering and guidance by fins, gyroscopes, and gymballed nozzles had not yet been solved.
Of course, when you start talking about rocket designs of more significant power, then the exhaust becomes a heat problem, and you have to move the payload out of the way, which introduces a stability problem; which is what Goddard worked the rest of his career solving.
The issue with the shuttle is; it's an incredibly complex machine, and some of the problems it was designed to handle are very difficult problems. Personally, I wouldn't blame these problems on the configuration of the orbiter, booster, and external fuel tank. Fundamentally, it's not a "bad" configuration. It becomes a hazard when you combine that configuration with the hazards of ice forming on the external tank, and an extremely fragile Thermal Protection System on the orbiter. Saying that the problems with the Space Shuttle are all caused by configuration is a gross oversimplification of the problem. The Space Transportation System as a whole, is a complex system, and each component is engineered with certain trade-offs. Perhaps all of them together, in sum, equate to a hazardous system. When you have a hazard, you look at the easiest and most effective way to solve the problem. A complete redesign, including re-arranging the basic configuration of the vehicle, is an overreaction to this hazard. Switching from paint on the external tank to insulating foam, perhaps, was an underreaction, because it moved the hazard from launch time to 60-150 seconds into flight, from slow, falling ice, to high-speed foam. The ultimate solution may turn out to be as simple as re-formulating the foam. (the original freon-based foam was more successful at sticking to the tank). It may turn out to be more complicated, like re-engineering the orbiter's Thermal Protection System.
And of course - we'll never see an attempt at something like that, because the simple-minded folks will stick to the conclusion that it's better to simply redesign the whole thing.
The end result may be semi-reusable. May be cheaper per pound than the shuttle. But it won't have the payload capacity, nor will it have the flexibility. Personally, I think that the nation, as a whole, would be better served by approaching the old design with new technology (as in the X-33 approach). The state of materials science has advanced significantly in 30 years. As has propulsion technology, and even aerodynamics. An effort to build the same shuttle, with the same configuration, with fresh ideas from these advances could possibly yeild a vehicle without the same hazards, possibly with a cheaper operating cost, quicker duty cycle, and greater flexibility than the shuttle we have today.
In my opinion, using this "throwback" design will represent a huge setback to the spacelaunch industry. It will be adequate for servicing the ISS. It will be adequate for placing small crews into orbit. And it will be more cost-effective than our current shuttle. But it doesn't represent a technical advance. It's a retreat. It will come to represent the symbol of where Mankind said; "That's it, we tried to go farther than this point, and we failed. Let's stop here."
Apple could have shipped Intel-based laptops (and, I suppose mini and iMac too), and continued with PPC for server and workstation platforms where PPC would be more appropriate. If their "switch" ju-ju is really all it's cracked up to be, dual CPU-platform strategy would actually be best, more long-term flexibility.
The PPC->Intel shift didn't have one damn thing to do with IBM chips, and it wasn't Apple using strongarm tactics on IBM.
It was all about the likes of Sony and the other music industry players strongarming Apple.
"Protect our IP with DRM, or we'll sell our songs to your Windows competitors at half price, and kiss your pretty iPod sales good bye."
Call it "Revenge of the buggy-whip manufacturers."
I think we should just take a hint from the VCR people; fuck measuring time, and let all the clocks flash "12:00" forever.
Reading the links to the wikipedia article, it was not lost because it was mounted upside down. It was lost because of a faulty guidance sensor. Since not all the facts are known because it's still considered a state secret, I doubt that the real story is all that close to what we've read.
I think that the payload should be AT THE BOTTOM of the rocket.
You know.
Like Goddard intended.
'd rather have a rocket with the payload where it's supposed to be: on top.
Supposed to be?
Is this how God built spacecraft in the Garden of Eden? WTF?
Side mounted payloads are suicide.
Please cite one other example where a side-mounted payload is a safety hazard.
what happens if your giant foam net doesn't detatch from the shuttle properly and rips off a section of the shuttle underbody during launch?
No worse than a the current problem of the foam detaching and ripping off a section of the shuttle underbody 80 seconds after launch when they're going 4+ times the speed of sound.
Look, I'm not a structural engineer, I don't have detailed CAD drawings of the orbiter and tank, but I'm sure these clever fellows could come up with a geometry that will shed the foam in a non-fatal, reliable, repeatable manner, rather than the uncontrolled and sometiems fatal manner in which the foam currently sheds. It makes sense that this should happen very near T-0, rather than at T +80 when it's dangerous. Maybe have some cable-driven mechanism yank the foam blanket off a second or two prior to ignition, and abort ignition if the foam blanket fails to detatch cleanly.
Maybe the geniuses at Lockheed already thought of this, and have good reasons not to do it. Maybe it can't be done cleanly and quickly at that scale. I don't know. I'm just, you know, trying to suggest an apparent "out of the box" thought.
and er wtf? the point of the foam is to keep the tank cold, to insulate it from the much higher ambient temperature.
And that much higher ambient temperature does not pose a problem after about t+60, when the Shuttle is at altitude. As far as I recall, the first few launches did not have the foam on the tank, and the foam was added, because of fear of the hazard of falling ice from the tank - because late holds would allow ice to build up in the humid environment.
Or why not reinforce the bottom and leading wings of the orbiter with some material strong enough to deflect any foam strikes, but can burn off harmlessly on re-entry, exposing the thermal tiles under?
I don't know if there's a way to guarantee that the stuff would definately ALL burn off, and any remaining material might have an adverse effect on the aerodynamic profile of the orbiter.
Plus - the testing they did post-Columbia with the air cannon proved that the foam strikes could be quite devastating, moreso than anyone previously imagined, given the physics of the situation. It turned out that the velocity, more than the mass of the foam was to blame.
But maybe some reinforcement panels that could be jettisoned prior to re-entry might work? Who knows. I just hope this grounding isn't permanent, that they can figure out a way around this problem. Personally, I never liked the tile solution to controlling reentry heat. But nobody's come up with a better option for a winged vehicle in 30 years. 3500 degrees is pretty hot stuff.
Since the reason for the foam insulation on the tank is to prevent condensation from forming on the ground between the time the tank is filled with liquid fuel, and the time of launch, and is not needed past T-0, how about this?:
Jettison the foam at T-0, during engine ignition.
Velocity at that point in time is low enough that no foam strikes will have any chance of damaging orbiter tiles.
The foam and ice stay on the ground. The orbiter, and tank, go up. Probably a few thousand pounds lighter, as well.
Sure, there's the problem of getting all of the foam off in a few seconds, leaving none behind. Maybe by forming the foam around a fine, mesh netting, and attaching that netting to the ground via cables, it all slips right off at T-0.
There are easy workarounds to this anonymity problem:
Send the text electronically to the journalist, who then prints it out on his printer - the journalists' source's confidentiality is protected. Mostly.
or
Print it out. Fax it to yourself a few times using different fax machines, at the office, at kinkos, etc. Each generation destroys prior "markings" more and more. Final generation faxed anonymously from Kinkos (like the Dan Rather Killian Memos).
Besides, 90% of the time, the feature sets will be identical. Maybe you haven't noticed, but the fat binary is just a checkbox click away.
So, Adobe's going to port Photoshop 7 to x86?
(or more realistically, CS2)
No, they're going to spit out CS3, and the users are going to buy the new license, and if CS3 "fixes" things in ways that piss off CS2 users, then too bad for them. (Generally, version upgrades aren't so nasty for Photoshop, but I can think of a few other apps where upgrades are a step backwards).
Look at it this way... your next mac is likely to be more upgradeable, because you can use more mainstream hardware.
I was a hardcore upgrade-junky with my beige. I did everything but water-cooling. But in the end, when I got the dual G5, I just don't see me upgrading it. It's got firewire, and usb, and a "fast enough" bus. I didn't see me opening the case even for the next 5 years (though my HD is getting a tad crowded). I don't think upgradability is an issue anymore. The dual G5 purchase was about forward compatability with OS X - I skipped the G4 generation, because of it's crippled bus. With the G5, I felt like I finally had a Mac that had caught up with the rest of the computer world. Now I'm going to have to, at some point, buy new hardware, because I'm not convinced that vendors are going to endlessly support PPC. They may provide binaries, but they sure as hell aren't going to devote dual-platform testing resources. Maybe in two years, or four, I'm betting that Apple's going to stop pushing os updates on PPC with the same schedule, or they'll find some issue introduced with an update that only affects one platform, and not the other, and they won't devote resources to fixing it. I know this because I've lived through these transitions before, and while Apple has done it better than any other vendor (Sun, BeOS, IBM, Microsoft, etc.) they still show a proclivity to gravitate to one platform when they have multiple platforms to support. Apple can be very insensitive to customers in this regard. If they weren't, I'd still be running OS X on my beige (instead of LinuxPPC).