I was afraid something went wrong with the orbit injection and we lost Dawn. I was very relieved when I went to the mission homepage and found that was not the case. The title and the word, "expected," in the summary almost ruined my Friday.
But the absolute goal of SpaceX is to develop the technologies to make life multiplanetary, which means being able to transport huge volumes of people and cargo to Mars.
Who said the U.S. doesn't have any vision for space anymore? What country is Mr. Musk developing his business in?
Does anyone know if SpaceX has published a plan for how they intend to actually land the capsule on Mars?
Landing such a large mass on a planet with such a thin atmosphere is not a trivial engineering problem. There is not a hell of a lot of gas to brake against upon atmospheric entry, air bags become more complicated for such large masses, and get-ups similar to the sky-crane and retro-rockets tend to be expensive and complex. Has anyone heard SpaceX's idea on solving this particular problem?
I am going to Godwin this shit, but didn't Nazi Germany have some program in place similar to this? Members of a certain, "party," were given conveniences and breaks in a manner that made their lives easier than others, while non-members of said party were treated like crap? Is that really the direction we want to take air travel in what is supposed to be the Land of the Free?
Seriously, fuck you TSA.
No group of citizens should be considered more equal than the other groups.
Why is this modded Troll? If you look at NASA's funding historically you would see that during NASA's golden age, the Apollo program, funding levels for NASA were closer in the ball park to funding levels for the current Iraq war. When there is only so much money to go around, you can buy guns, butter, or science: pick one.
But somehow we have so much money that we don't have to tax the top 2% of earners in this country as much as we ever have in history before. Yep, that makes sense.
Nature made the raw materials. Humans made them better. Similarly, nature made bees. Humans are trying to make them better. So, once again, I assert that humans know better than nature, especially considering that nature is nothing more than a phenomenon lacking any ability to, "know," whatsoever.
And that's the beauty of pure-text responses: without any inflection, it becomes very hard to distinguish humor from downright naivete. Still, good one.
Now's the time to put your money where your mouth is Slashdotters. Time and again we bemoan on this site that our politicians (in the U.S.) piss our tax dollars away on pork-ridden bills and unnecessary defense spending at the expense of science. Now is the time to let Congress know just how important we nerds find science like the JWST to be. There are at least two open letters to Congress written by folks on the internet. They can be found here and here.
You can find your Congress-critter's mailing and contact information here and here.
It won't take you more than 10 minutes to print on of those letters, fold it up, stamp it, and mail it to your representative or senator. We 'dotters bring down entire websites when we care enough about an issue to RTFA. Now is the time to bring Congress's mailroom to a standstill by declaring, in one unified voice, "You won't ransack our science research anymore!"
If we can afford two wars in the Middle East, Medicaire, Medicaide, and tax cuts for the rich assholes who are driving this country into the ground, then we can afford to build this telescope, not just for America, but for the continued progress and exploration of humanity in general.
Delta-v refers to a specific type of velocity imparted upon a vehicle for injecting into any given orbit. The Delta IV is specific type of launch vehicle, as is the Atlas V. The parent, if you read his post, was referring to a, "Delta V," as a vehicle which the military uses, which is utter nonsense as no Delta V vehicle exists. He was not using, "Delta-v," in a context relevant to the particular variable you are referring to.
Please try reading before responding next time. And to whoever modded this guy up, the same goes for you.
Thinking we know better than nature is just plain arrogance
We do know better than nature. For evidence I offer up such artifical marvels as: the wheel, the screw, trans-pacific planes and boats, the transcontinental railroad in the U.S., micro SD cards, macro SD cards, buildings, seismographs, and submarines.
If nature knows better than us, please show me where she invented anything comparable to those manmade items above that isn't completely inefficient or didn't take multiple thousands of years to develop. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
Incidentally, that kind of experiment/investment is one of the technologies that Obama's plan for NASA listed. He may not have wanted to invest in another pork-ridden wagon like the space shuttle, but Obama certainly did have his head on straight when he put together his new goals and new vision for NASA. (I should mention, I suspect Obama didn't develop a lot of these goals himself, but, rather, probably had a well-informed advisor guiding him).
The United States will never be prominent in space again.
You show me one other country that has probes exploring the outer planets or landers exploring the inner planets. Go ahead and show me. I'll wait right here.
Yeah, the U.S. may be retiring a flying 30 year old POS brick that has more potential failure modes than a God damned boat made of Swiss cheese. But how, exactly, that leads to the U.S. failing to be prominent in space when the U.S. is the only country investing in actual space exploration (and not just dicking around in LEO) is completely and utterly beyond me.
I have a question for you or anyone out there that can answer it. I accidentally failed to uncheck that, "I can be tracked," box when I signed up (it was late, I was sleep deprived and in a rush). Does anyone know where the option to turn this tracking thingy off is after after you sign up?
Do you have any evidence that the posters who put forward those objections you listed were American?
If not, then congratulations, you just let your emotions judge and convict an entire country's population of being unforgivable due to some pseudoanonymous comments people made on the Internet.
I really hope you don't hold any position of power or serious responsibility in your day job that requires objective analysis.
Unlike old style bulbs, CFLs are complex enough that quality matters. The ultra-cheap ones are really crap.
Oh great, another product that replaces something simple and effective with something complex and annoying. That's really what I want to spend my spare time doing, researching which CFL manufacturer's produce quality bulbs and, in the event they fail anyways, packaging up said bulbs, mailing to said manufacturer, and sitting on the phone with, "customer service," to fix my light bulb.
Yep, I am so happy I get to do that, all for a fucking light bulb.
Incandescent, aside from being What You're Used To, really is NOT very good light!
But that doesn't mean it should be banned. I'm still allowed to buy a cheap, shitty, NOT very good car if I so desire. Sure, I may kill myself in the process, but it's not illegal. The problem with all of these, "ban X due to issue Y," laws is that it inherently limits a person's freedom to choose X. And, while X may not be a very good thing in the first place, we are are supposed to be free to still choose X if we so desire.
Unless X is actually hurting someone else, banning it is nothing more than a limit on personal freedom, even if the ban comes due to some arbitrarily created, "efficiency standard," or what have you.
I guess I am just tired of seeing Congress folk wasting time on legislating things out of department stores rather than taking the time to fix something that is actually broken.
Uhm, I've calculated the maneuvers for injecting a geo-stationary satellite and I'm an idiot.
That's cute. I design launch vehicle trajectories for a living as my day job. We do take into account those 10,000 input variables. Sometimes we do so in an explicit manner. Other times we use a "black box" statistical analysis to account for their effects without necessary understanding or labeling them. Both methods are extremely difficult. Both methods require a certain level of intellectual abstraction beyond simple Keplerian conic calculations (your GEO injection maneuver). You can question the 10k variable inputs all you want. Meanwhile, those of us who do this for a living will get back to the hard work.;)
Why is there nobody who actually asks what jurisdiction the USA can claim or what international law there is that the USA can do that?
At the end of the day jurisdiction is determined by who has the biggest guns. You may not like that answer. That may not measure up to all of mankind's noble ideas about equality, and law, and so on. But that is the way it is. Unless/until someone is capable of standing up and telling the United States military to stand the fuck down, they can pretty much do whatever they want.
I think you're referring to That Boeing Company, when you mention Bowing. If that's not the case, please say so.
Now, having clarified that, can you please explain to me who, or by what metric, Boeing is considered to be the best run large aerospace company? I have worked fairly closely with that company in the past and, in my opinion, they are no better or worse than any of the other large contractors: Northrop-Grumman. Lockheed-Martin, L-3 Communications, Raytheon, etc. In fact, the only people I have ever heard describe Boeing as being some sort of exceptional company have been people who were employed with Boeing for a long period (10+ years) of time.
Do you think the companies responsible for coal power plants, or the people responsible for ostensibly regulating them, can be trusted? Because that seems to be what they intend to replace nuclear plants with.
Also, Japanese culture and business, I would wager, is somewhat different from German culture and business. I have to imagine that there are different companies and different regulatory agencies/frameworks present in two completely distinct countires on opposite sides of the world.
But go ahead and keep painting with that overly-broad brush of yours. It makes for some irrationally pretty pictures of sunsets in the world of technology.
Slashdot Mirror
I was afraid something went wrong with the orbit injection and we lost Dawn. I was very relieved when I went to the mission homepage and found that was not the case. The title and the word, "expected," in the summary almost ruined my Friday.
Thank you.
But the absolute goal of SpaceX is to develop the technologies to make life multiplanetary, which means being able to transport huge volumes of people and cargo to Mars.
Who said the U.S. doesn't have any vision for space anymore? What country is Mr. Musk developing his business in?
:D
Does anyone know if SpaceX has published a plan for how they intend to actually land the capsule on Mars?
Landing such a large mass on a planet with such a thin atmosphere is not a trivial engineering problem. There is not a hell of a lot of gas to brake against upon atmospheric entry, air bags become more complicated for such large masses, and get-ups similar to the sky-crane and retro-rockets tend to be expensive and complex. Has anyone heard SpaceX's idea on solving this particular problem?
If so, could you provide a linky?
I am going to Godwin this shit, but didn't Nazi Germany have some program in place similar to this? Members of a certain, "party," were given conveniences and breaks in a manner that made their lives easier than others, while non-members of said party were treated like crap? Is that really the direction we want to take air travel in what is supposed to be the Land of the Free?
Seriously, fuck you TSA.
No group of citizens should be considered more equal than the other groups.
Why is this modded Troll? If you look at NASA's funding historically you would see that during NASA's golden age, the Apollo program, funding levels for NASA were closer in the ball park to funding levels for the current Iraq war. When there is only so much money to go around, you can buy guns, butter, or science: pick one.
But somehow we have so much money that we don't have to tax the top 2% of earners in this country as much as we ever have in history before. Yep, that makes sense.
Nature made the raw materials. Humans made them better. Similarly, nature made bees. Humans are trying to make them better. So, once again, I assert that humans know better than nature, especially considering that nature is nothing more than a phenomenon lacking any ability to, "know," whatsoever.
And that's the beauty of pure-text responses: without any inflection, it becomes very hard to distinguish humor from downright naivete. Still, good one.
Now's the time to put your money where your mouth is Slashdotters. Time and again we bemoan on this site that our politicians (in the U.S.) piss our tax dollars away on pork-ridden bills and unnecessary defense spending at the expense of science. Now is the time to let Congress know just how important we nerds find science like the JWST to be. There are at least two open letters to Congress written by folks on the internet. They can be found here and here.
You can find your Congress-critter's mailing and contact information here and here.
It won't take you more than 10 minutes to print on of those letters, fold it up, stamp it, and mail it to your representative or senator. We 'dotters bring down entire websites when we care enough about an issue to RTFA. Now is the time to bring Congress's mailroom to a standstill by declaring, in one unified voice, "You won't ransack our science research anymore!"
If we can afford two wars in the Middle East, Medicaire, Medicaide, and tax cuts for the rich assholes who are driving this country into the ground, then we can afford to build this telescope, not just for America, but for the continued progress and exploration of humanity in general.
Delta-v refers to a specific type of velocity imparted upon a vehicle for injecting into any given orbit. The Delta IV is specific type of launch vehicle, as is the Atlas V. The parent, if you read his post, was referring to a, "Delta V," as a vehicle which the military uses, which is utter nonsense as no Delta V vehicle exists. He was not using, "Delta-v," in a context relevant to the particular variable you are referring to.
Please try reading before responding next time. And to whoever modded this guy up, the same goes for you.
Thinking we know better than nature is just plain arrogance
We do know better than nature. For evidence I offer up such artifical marvels as: the wheel, the screw, trans-pacific planes and boats, the transcontinental railroad in the U.S., micro SD cards, macro SD cards, buildings, seismographs, and submarines.
If nature knows better than us, please show me where she invented anything comparable to those manmade items above that isn't completely inefficient or didn't take multiple thousands of years to develop. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
Incidentally, that kind of experiment/investment is one of the technologies that Obama's plan for NASA listed. He may not have wanted to invest in another pork-ridden wagon like the space shuttle, but Obama certainly did have his head on straight when he put together his new goals and new vision for NASA. (I should mention, I suspect Obama didn't develop a lot of these goals himself, but, rather, probably had a well-informed advisor guiding him).
The United States will never be prominent in space again.
You show me one other country that has probes exploring the outer planets or landers exploring the inner planets. Go ahead and show me. I'll wait right here.
Yeah, the U.S. may be retiring a flying 30 year old POS brick that has more potential failure modes than a God damned boat made of Swiss cheese. But how, exactly, that leads to the U.S. failing to be prominent in space when the U.S. is the only country investing in actual space exploration (and not just dicking around in LEO) is completely and utterly beyond me.
It failed to live up to that statement which is why the military has been using the Delta V.
There is no such thing as a Delta V. There is a Delta IV, and an Atlas V, and the military uses both.
I just don't want new readers/non-space-enthusiasts to get confused over a typo.
How the hell does Google get people to make an about face like that?
Using Facebook makes you feel like a cheap hooker that just took part in a tranny bukake scene for $15.
Using Google+ makes you feel like a wined and dined princess that finished off the perfect date night with the perfect guy by giving the perfect BJ.
Sure, in both cases you will have a bit of spunk on your lips, but one situation makes you feel a lot better than the other.
I have a question for you or anyone out there that can answer it. I accidentally failed to uncheck that, "I can be tracked," box when I signed up (it was late, I was sleep deprived and in a rush). Does anyone know where the option to turn this tracking thingy off is after after you sign up?
Do you have any evidence that the posters who put forward those objections you listed were American?
If not, then congratulations, you just let your emotions judge and convict an entire country's population of being unforgivable due to some pseudoanonymous comments people made on the Internet.
I really hope you don't hold any position of power or serious responsibility in your day job that requires objective analysis.
Unlike old style bulbs, CFLs are complex enough that quality matters. The ultra-cheap ones are really crap.
Oh great, another product that replaces something simple and effective with something complex and annoying. That's really what I want to spend my spare time doing, researching which CFL manufacturer's produce quality bulbs and, in the event they fail anyways, packaging up said bulbs, mailing to said manufacturer, and sitting on the phone with, "customer service," to fix my light bulb.
Yep, I am so happy I get to do that, all for a fucking light bulb.
Doesn't anyone value free time anymore?
Incandescent, aside from being What You're Used To, really is NOT very good light!
But that doesn't mean it should be banned. I'm still allowed to buy a cheap, shitty, NOT very good car if I so desire. Sure, I may kill myself in the process, but it's not illegal. The problem with all of these, "ban X due to issue Y," laws is that it inherently limits a person's freedom to choose X. And, while X may not be a very good thing in the first place, we are are supposed to be free to still choose X if we so desire.
Unless X is actually hurting someone else, banning it is nothing more than a limit on personal freedom, even if the ban comes due to some arbitrarily created, "efficiency standard," or what have you.
I guess I am just tired of seeing Congress folk wasting time on legislating things out of department stores rather than taking the time to fix something that is actually broken.
Uhm, I've calculated the maneuvers for injecting a geo-stationary satellite and I'm an idiot.
That's cute. I design launch vehicle trajectories for a living as my day job. We do take into account those 10,000 input variables. Sometimes we do so in an explicit manner. Other times we use a "black box" statistical analysis to account for their effects without necessary understanding or labeling them. Both methods are extremely difficult. Both methods require a certain level of intellectual abstraction beyond simple Keplerian conic calculations (your GEO injection maneuver). You can question the 10k variable inputs all you want. Meanwhile, those of us who do this for a living will get back to the hard work. ;)
Why is there nobody who actually asks what jurisdiction the USA can claim or what international law there is that the USA can do that?
At the end of the day jurisdiction is determined by who has the biggest guns. You may not like that answer. That may not measure up to all of mankind's noble ideas about equality, and law, and so on. But that is the way it is. Unless/until someone is capable of standing up and telling the United States military to stand the fuck down, they can pretty much do whatever they want.
Welcome to the real world.
I think you're referring to That Boeing Company, when you mention Bowing. If that's not the case, please say so.
Now, having clarified that, can you please explain to me who, or by what metric, Boeing is considered to be the best run large aerospace company? I have worked fairly closely with that company in the past and, in my opinion, they are no better or worse than any of the other large contractors: Northrop-Grumman. Lockheed-Martin, L-3 Communications, Raytheon, etc. In fact, the only people I have ever heard describe Boeing as being some sort of exceptional company have been people who were employed with Boeing for a long period (10+ years) of time.
So, care to cite your claim?
I do, but apparently it is trendy to be nostaligically emo on /. today. Go figure.
Here's to the next generation of space exploration!
Do you think the companies responsible for coal power plants, or the people responsible for ostensibly regulating them, can be trusted? Because that seems to be what they intend to replace nuclear plants with.
Also, Japanese culture and business, I would wager, is somewhat different from German culture and business. I have to imagine that there are different companies and different regulatory agencies/frameworks present in two completely distinct countires on opposite sides of the world.
But go ahead and keep painting with that overly-broad brush of yours. It makes for some irrationally pretty pictures of sunsets in the world of technology.