Kinda like how your simile between the car industry and the space industry bears no relation to the real world, as they utilize completely different design cycles, program cost models, and product requirements?
Contrary to popular Slashdot belief, car analogies don't actually produce any meaningful data for a proper analysis of a given situation.;)
I would be very surprised if cost-overruns for big projects are due to overpaid labor. The reality of it is that for missions like those designed by NASA, Ball, Lockheed, and Boeing etc. there are a lot of unknowns. Problems arise in designs that weren't accounted for at the start. That can be anything from a technician not being able to reach a particular screw hole with a screw driver to an improper thermal compound being used that fails a vacuum test and, thus, requires a tear down of an entire subassembly. Some of the missions being designed by the large firms are doing things that nobody has ever done before, at all. Sure, we may have chucked a few Voyager probes out of the solar system, but how many orbiters are there around Saturn other than Cassini? None. So when the engineering team started building Cassini, they were flying into problems that nobody had ever encountered before. The same goes for many other complex missions.
Now, of course, not all problems are technical. For large complicated systems to be developed in a short timeframe, large armies of engineers and technicians need to be present to get the hard work done in parallel with one another. These large armies need to be managed. On top of that, there needs to be a control mechanism in place that allows everyone to have access to the latest and greatest information from everyone else. So you start developing overhead by staffing a managerial team. Then you start accruing costs because you have to build a configuration management system where important design documents and interface documents are checked in and out before they are changed. Then engineers have to spend time filling out all the appropriate paperwork to make sure their check-ins and check-outs are all tracked appropriately. Of course, you also have to meet certain safety regulations, so you probably hire a quality assurance manager and engineer in there somewhere. And since these projects are complex, they are expensive, so you keep a few highly paid accountants on hand to track every penny just in case you get audited. And so on and so on.
Being able to balance a project between efficient, quick development and being safe, quality, well-managed project is a fine art. Unfortunately, it is a fine art that many of the very large organizations have "mastered" so highly that it has become one of their biggest problems. I've worked on engineering projects before where it literally took me a few weeks worth of work just to get approval to use one type of epoxy rather than another type of epoxy that was already on the approved materials list. That's how bad some of the bureaucratic overhead can get on highly complex projects.
Yeah, but imagine an industry where just about everyone buys Bugatti Veryons regardless of whether they need them or not. Then imagine that some guy comes along and buys a moped instead, because all he needs to do is putt to work every morning, not race every hot-rodder on the road.
The impressive thing isn't just the cost itself, but it's the demonstration that the moped can fulfill your needs at a significantly lower cost. This is an especially impressive thing when 99% of the current car buyers don't think a moped can get them to work at all.;)
Hey, if NASA is going to chuck a few hundred pounds into orbit anyways, and the launcher can lift a few hundred lbs. + 200 lbs., then why not bolt on some extra science and/or tech-demo missions? Otherwise you're just wasting hardware.
Who cares about another shitty satellite in orbit.
Anyone who builds satellites does. Something that a lot of folk seem to miss in the space industry is that risk is a determining factor in most spacecraft development costs. The managerial board in charge of any design will dog its engineers about how risky a particular program is. Every piece of technology that has not been tested on orbit adds a very significant amount of risk to any risk model. Essentially it adds one big, "Oh crap this has a high chance of failing," component to an otherwise proven design.
Thus, in order for the spacecraft industry to progress, some entity needs to take on high-risk test missions. These missions are known as tech-demonstrators. Essentially, their sole purpose is to put something in the space environment that has never been done before just to show that it will perform on-orbit the same as it did in a lab on the ground. The problem is, there is almost no profit in the very small tech-demo missions. Thus, the large companies often have to gloss over new, but small leaps in technology in favor of 30 year old proven designs.
A mission like this is far beyond just another "shitty satellite." While I didn't work on this mission, I can promise you that there are coding techniques, chips, and control devices on these spacecraft that have never been flown before. I can guarantee that because a mission of this nature, on this scale, has never been flown before. So its overall design is going to be incredibly unique. As a result of this project, however, commercial companies will now start looking into adopting micro-scale satellite networks as a viable solution to many problems that customers want to solve since the concept, and at least one design, has been shown to work. Hell, right now there is a Canadian company that is trying to put together a a network of 78 nanosats to solve a real world problem. I'd bet my bollocks to a barn dance that company (MSCI) is watching this mission intently, and they may very well be in communication with the UT students who are working on FASTRAC in an attempt to reduce their own R&D costs.
That's a lot of real-world progress that comes from just another shitty satellite in space. Don't rain down on small, incremental progress. It pays off in leaps and bounds with patience.
You posted what is, essentially, the exact same post content-wise 7 minutes before this one. Do you always repeat yourself, or only when you have an axe to grind?
So.....Limewire's supposed to be responsible for lost profits in excess of 5 times the GDP of the world's largest national economy?. Yeah, good luck with that one dipshits.
Or maybe, just maybe, the vibration testing is for doing things in near space, like flying through the atmosphere while landing...
Actually the harsh acoustic and vibrational testing are done to ensure that it can survive the launch environment while strapped to what is, basically, a giant bomb with a nozzle on one end. The environmental design space for any payload that rides a rocket to orbit is intense to say the least. Don't let that stymie your rant about bad journalism though.
All the people saying that copyright must be abolished, where will you hide when there are no more works of art to enjoy?
I'll probably just walk down the street and listen to the guy that plays the violin on the corner there for fun. He seems to produce better music than most of the Hollywood firms anyways, and I like going on walks. For books, I'll probably get to know my local authors. For movies and T.V. well, that's all just a waste of my time anyways. I tend to find YouTube more entertaining 90% of the time after all.
I'm not sure about anyone else, but I downloaded FF4 yesterday on my work machine. It seems like it takes longer to resolve any given url than FF3.whatever did. Once a page loads, then it zips through the page pretty snappily, but it definitely takes a bit longer to resolve the url in the first place.
That said, does anyone know how to change the loading icon in the upper left corner of a tab that is loading a page? Personally I don't want a damn thing on my computer to remind me of the Windows OS eye candy like that little circulating ring does.
Capsules are an extremely capable form factor when talking about spacecraft. When something is orbiting a gravity well in a vacuum or near vacuum, the geometry of that thing has some very powerful effects on the design of the system in general. Capsule are nice in that they are symmetric about one axis. This makes controlling and pointing them very easy. If you take a geometry like that of the space shuttle, the control problems become much more difficult. Those large wings and that vertical stabilizer act as moment arms about your roll axis. Any forces that act upon those moment arms turn into large, asymmetrical torques (these forces can be due to atmospheric drag, radiation gradients, thermal gradients, micro-meteor impacts, etc.). Damping out the increase in angular momentum due to torques applied to such large moment arms requires more powerful, more massive, more power-hungry momentum exchange devices (like reaction wheels, CMG's whatever). Thus, such a clunky geometric design puts some heavy restrictions on your system design space.
Now, if you take a form factor like the capsule, you find that you don't have those giant moment arms (save for the solar arrays which, if designed properly, should go a long way in canceling out each other's torques). What's more, you have a nice aerodynamic shape that can reenter atmospheres much more elegantly than, say a brick with wings bolted on. All in all, the capsule is a beautifully elegant design that solves many of the difficult space-environment design problems through passive geometry, rather than through more active systems like large control mechanisms or expensive ceramic tiles.
Just because a design is 40 years old doesn't mean it's poor. The car is the same form factor that it was back when it was design in the early 1900's, but that's because there is a lot to be said for a 4-wheel base vehicle. That doesn't mean all cars are the same as the Model T though.
Finally, you should probably realize that The Orion was built and designed by Lockheed-Martin, not NASA.
There are quite a few private companies that are currently developing space capsules that the government isn't paying for. The first one that comes to my mind is Interorbital Systems. Much of SpaceX's Dragon capsule was developed with private funds. Boeing is currently developing a commercial capsule for launch cargo, and, possibly, crew. Orbital sciences is developing an unmanned capsule. There are also a handful of other, smaller contenders, but I can't recall them off the top of my head. Blue Origin has some kind of funky lander/capsule vehicle that they've tested, but I am not sure what they are planning on using it for yet.
The point is, there are many companies that are starting to invest in the space market for the sake of investing in the space market. Right now, the biggest impediment to the U.S. space program is Congress, not public will, lack of vision, lack of technology, or lack of engineering expertise.
Most paints applied to spacecraft are chosen due to their thermal properties. Some paints will give higher reflective indexes, while others will absorb more energy, and still others are designed to let a certain amount of energy through the paint and into whatever surface it is covering. I don't know which paint, specifically, has the "baby puke green" color that you are referring to, but I would wager that the entire body of this spacecraft was coated in that paint specifically to control the thermal pathways through the spacecraft body.
It's worth noting that one of the most difficult and most important aspects of spacecraft design involve the energy management within the spacecraft. Spacecraft are subject to high levels of radiation, high and low temperature extremes, and house multiple boxes of electronics that cannot be cooled via typical convective methods as they are on the ground. Thus, to keep a spacecraft operating effectively, a full analysis must be done to take into account all energy (thermal or otherwise) sources in a spacecraft and redirect energy to appropriately sized energy sinks (radiators, heat-pies, etc.). This is one aspect of spacecraft design that many folks fail to take into account when discussing how simple it would be to build a spacecraft that does [insert theoretical task here].
It's important for you to understand that one state does not represent all of America. The probe you were referring to when you discussed your inspiration was designed in a few states, built in a few others, and is now operated out of two or three (one being California [Pasadena], the other, wherever GSFC is located). Just about every state in our union has its quirks as well as its strengths. California, for instance, is an agricultural powerhouse. However, we're so batshit loony with money that we seem intent on bankrupting ourselves.
Texas has some strong industries in it (including a strong history in the realm of spaceflight, that mission that you spoke so eloquently of being inspirational). Lately, however (meaning the past few decades), they seem more intent on projecting their, "Maybe we're not real cowboys, like Clint Eastwood," insecurities on their entire populace. Like California, there are strengths and weaknesses. Nevada is an incredibly free state in terms of personal liberty, but it also has crime problems as a result. And so on and so on.
Every state in our union brings a unique attitude to the table. Thus, basing your opinion of America on one state's actions is somewhat silly. This country does great things because its constituent states can come together to do great things. This country also does stupid things because its constituent states can spend a lot of time and money having petty pissing competitions with each other. It's a constant give and take, and part of what makes America unique.
Ah, nothing like some good condescending flamebait to go with my coffee on a Friday morning. I'm glad we have heroic watchdog Slashdotters like you keeping us corporate shills honest.;)
And regardless of weather you buy all those facts, it is requiring a HUGE effort of man power to prevent it getting worse and there is no solid plan.
If you think any large scale engineering projects (most of which all modern civilizations require to exist at all) doesn't require a HUGE effort of man power to prevent them from getting worse when a natural disaster strikes, you're kidding yourself.
Every large industry that mankind's current society relies upon is just one massive natural disaster away from a complete cluster fuck. Operations of train networks, operation of power grids, operation of shipping industries, operation of recycling facilities, operation of chemical processing plants, operation of hydroelectric plants, operation of the entire aviation industry, building and maintenance of bridges, building and maintenance of freeways, etc. etc. etc. all rely upon nominal conditions to function and progress as expected. In the event of a magnitude 9 earthquake, all of these operations have the potential to spill deadly and/or harmful toxins into the environment, all of these operations have the potential to go into a failure mode that kills dozens, if not hundreds of human beings, all of these operations would require a massive effort on the part of their maintainers, designers, and managers to to successfully mitigate the potential failure mode.
The only reason nuclear power generation stands out as being "more dangerous," is because it involves a color-less, odor-less, potentially lethal agent that has somewhat of a mystic idiom attached to it due to it's secondary use as an extraordinarily powerful weapon. In other words, your fears are psychologically based, and not founded on any practical benefit-risk analysis. Modern society is a dangerous place. Grow up and deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
You know the sad part is how aptly your signature fits your current moderation (which is Offtopic, for those reading this from the future).
....that bears no relation to the real world
Kinda like how your simile between the car industry and the space industry bears no relation to the real world, as they utilize completely different design cycles, program cost models, and product requirements?
;)
Contrary to popular Slashdot belief, car analogies don't actually produce any meaningful data for a proper analysis of a given situation.
I would be very surprised if cost-overruns for big projects are due to overpaid labor. The reality of it is that for missions like those designed by NASA, Ball, Lockheed, and Boeing etc. there are a lot of unknowns. Problems arise in designs that weren't accounted for at the start. That can be anything from a technician not being able to reach a particular screw hole with a screw driver to an improper thermal compound being used that fails a vacuum test and, thus, requires a tear down of an entire subassembly. Some of the missions being designed by the large firms are doing things that nobody has ever done before, at all. Sure, we may have chucked a few Voyager probes out of the solar system, but how many orbiters are there around Saturn other than Cassini? None. So when the engineering team started building Cassini, they were flying into problems that nobody had ever encountered before. The same goes for many other complex missions.
Now, of course, not all problems are technical. For large complicated systems to be developed in a short timeframe, large armies of engineers and technicians need to be present to get the hard work done in parallel with one another. These large armies need to be managed. On top of that, there needs to be a control mechanism in place that allows everyone to have access to the latest and greatest information from everyone else. So you start developing overhead by staffing a managerial team. Then you start accruing costs because you have to build a configuration management system where important design documents and interface documents are checked in and out before they are changed. Then engineers have to spend time filling out all the appropriate paperwork to make sure their check-ins and check-outs are all tracked appropriately. Of course, you also have to meet certain safety regulations, so you probably hire a quality assurance manager and engineer in there somewhere. And since these projects are complex, they are expensive, so you keep a few highly paid accountants on hand to track every penny just in case you get audited. And so on and so on.
Being able to balance a project between efficient, quick development and being safe, quality, well-managed project is a fine art. Unfortunately, it is a fine art that many of the very large organizations have "mastered" so highly that it has become one of their biggest problems. I've worked on engineering projects before where it literally took me a few weeks worth of work just to get approval to use one type of epoxy rather than another type of epoxy that was already on the approved materials list. That's how bad some of the bureaucratic overhead can get on highly complex projects.
Yeah, but imagine an industry where just about everyone buys Bugatti Veryons regardless of whether they need them or not. Then imagine that some guy comes along and buys a moped instead, because all he needs to do is putt to work every morning, not race every hot-rodder on the road.
;)
The impressive thing isn't just the cost itself, but it's the demonstration that the moped can fulfill your needs at a significantly lower cost. This is an especially impressive thing when 99% of the current car buyers don't think a moped can get them to work at all.
Hey, if NASA is going to chuck a few hundred pounds into orbit anyways, and the launcher can lift a few hundred lbs. + 200 lbs., then why not bolt on some extra science and/or tech-demo missions? Otherwise you're just wasting hardware.
Who cares about another shitty satellite in orbit.
Anyone who builds satellites does. Something that a lot of folk seem to miss in the space industry is that risk is a determining factor in most spacecraft development costs. The managerial board in charge of any design will dog its engineers about how risky a particular program is. Every piece of technology that has not been tested on orbit adds a very significant amount of risk to any risk model. Essentially it adds one big, "Oh crap this has a high chance of failing," component to an otherwise proven design.
Thus, in order for the spacecraft industry to progress, some entity needs to take on high-risk test missions. These missions are known as tech-demonstrators. Essentially, their sole purpose is to put something in the space environment that has never been done before just to show that it will perform on-orbit the same as it did in a lab on the ground. The problem is, there is almost no profit in the very small tech-demo missions. Thus, the large companies often have to gloss over new, but small leaps in technology in favor of 30 year old proven designs.
A mission like this is far beyond just another "shitty satellite." While I didn't work on this mission, I can promise you that there are coding techniques, chips, and control devices on these spacecraft that have never been flown before. I can guarantee that because a mission of this nature, on this scale, has never been flown before. So its overall design is going to be incredibly unique. As a result of this project, however, commercial companies will now start looking into adopting micro-scale satellite networks as a viable solution to many problems that customers want to solve since the concept, and at least one design, has been shown to work. Hell, right now there is a Canadian company that is trying to put together a a network of 78 nanosats to solve a real world problem. I'd bet my bollocks to a barn dance that company (MSCI) is watching this mission intently, and they may very well be in communication with the UT students who are working on FASTRAC in an attempt to reduce their own R&D costs.
That's a lot of real-world progress that comes from just another shitty satellite in space. Don't rain down on small, incremental progress. It pays off in leaps and bounds with patience.
The difference is, my hope of finding bacteria on Mars or Titan does not lead me to make broad sweeping moral proclamations from a soap box.
Physics....
Tell me about it! Have you been hearing the crap those folk have been spouting lately? Quarks? Gluons? "Dark matter?"
;)
Next, they'll be telling us that reality is made up of a bunch of little strings tied in loops or some magical crap like that!
You posted what is, essentially, the exact same post content-wise 7 minutes before this one. Do you always repeat yourself, or only when you have an axe to grind?
So.....Limewire's supposed to be responsible for lost profits in excess of 5 times the GDP of the world's largest national economy?. Yeah, good luck with that one dipshits.
Or maybe, just maybe, the vibration testing is for doing things in near space, like flying through the atmosphere while landing...
Actually the harsh acoustic and vibrational testing are done to ensure that it can survive the launch environment while strapped to what is, basically, a giant bomb with a nozzle on one end. The environmental design space for any payload that rides a rocket to orbit is intense to say the least. Don't let that stymie your rant about bad journalism though.
It seems to help a little bit. I'll have to do a little more buggering around.
All the people saying that copyright must be abolished, where will you hide when there are no more works of art to enjoy?
I'll probably just walk down the street and listen to the guy that plays the violin on the corner there for fun. He seems to produce better music than most of the Hollywood firms anyways, and I like going on walks. For books, I'll probably get to know my local authors. For movies and T.V. well, that's all just a waste of my time anyways. I tend to find YouTube more entertaining 90% of the time after all.
I'm not sure about anyone else, but I downloaded FF4 yesterday on my work machine. It seems like it takes longer to resolve any given url than FF3.whatever did. Once a page loads, then it zips through the page pretty snappily, but it definitely takes a bit longer to resolve the url in the first place.
That said, does anyone know how to change the loading icon in the upper left corner of a tab that is loading a page? Personally I don't want a damn thing on my computer to remind me of the Windows OS eye candy like that little circulating ring does.
Happy Birthday, mykey2k!
Capsules are an extremely capable form factor when talking about spacecraft. When something is orbiting a gravity well in a vacuum or near vacuum, the geometry of that thing has some very powerful effects on the design of the system in general. Capsule are nice in that they are symmetric about one axis. This makes controlling and pointing them very easy. If you take a geometry like that of the space shuttle, the control problems become much more difficult. Those large wings and that vertical stabilizer act as moment arms about your roll axis. Any forces that act upon those moment arms turn into large, asymmetrical torques (these forces can be due to atmospheric drag, radiation gradients, thermal gradients, micro-meteor impacts, etc.). Damping out the increase in angular momentum due to torques applied to such large moment arms requires more powerful, more massive, more power-hungry momentum exchange devices (like reaction wheels, CMG's whatever). Thus, such a clunky geometric design puts some heavy restrictions on your system design space.
Now, if you take a form factor like the capsule, you find that you don't have those giant moment arms (save for the solar arrays which, if designed properly, should go a long way in canceling out each other's torques). What's more, you have a nice aerodynamic shape that can reenter atmospheres much more elegantly than, say a brick with wings bolted on. All in all, the capsule is a beautifully elegant design that solves many of the difficult space-environment design problems through passive geometry, rather than through more active systems like large control mechanisms or expensive ceramic tiles.
Just because a design is 40 years old doesn't mean it's poor. The car is the same form factor that it was back when it was design in the early 1900's, but that's because there is a lot to be said for a 4-wheel base vehicle. That doesn't mean all cars are the same as the Model T though.
Finally, you should probably realize that The Orion was built and designed by Lockheed-Martin, not NASA.
But, in this case, the green paint is a corrosion-inhibitive primer on the internal structure.
Ah, that also makes sense.
Ah Kindergarten cryptography ... so simple, yet so strong.
There are quite a few private companies that are currently developing space capsules that the government isn't paying for. The first one that comes to my mind is Interorbital Systems. Much of SpaceX's Dragon capsule was developed with private funds. Boeing is currently developing a commercial capsule for launch cargo, and, possibly, crew. Orbital sciences is developing an unmanned capsule. There are also a handful of other, smaller contenders, but I can't recall them off the top of my head. Blue Origin has some kind of funky lander/capsule vehicle that they've tested, but I am not sure what they are planning on using it for yet.
The point is, there are many companies that are starting to invest in the space market for the sake of investing in the space market. Right now, the biggest impediment to the U.S. space program is Congress, not public will, lack of vision, lack of technology, or lack of engineering expertise.
Most paints applied to spacecraft are chosen due to their thermal properties. Some paints will give higher reflective indexes, while others will absorb more energy, and still others are designed to let a certain amount of energy through the paint and into whatever surface it is covering. I don't know which paint, specifically, has the "baby puke green" color that you are referring to, but I would wager that the entire body of this spacecraft was coated in that paint specifically to control the thermal pathways through the spacecraft body.
It's worth noting that one of the most difficult and most important aspects of spacecraft design involve the energy management within the spacecraft. Spacecraft are subject to high levels of radiation, high and low temperature extremes, and house multiple boxes of electronics that cannot be cooled via typical convective methods as they are on the ground. Thus, to keep a spacecraft operating effectively, a full analysis must be done to take into account all energy (thermal or otherwise) sources in a spacecraft and redirect energy to appropriately sized energy sinks (radiators, heat-pies, etc.). This is one aspect of spacecraft design that many folks fail to take into account when discussing how simple it would be to build a spacecraft that does [insert theoretical task here].
Thanks for the link, that should save me having to ride with my visor up in cold ass weather.
It's important for you to understand that one state does not represent all of America. The probe you were referring to when you discussed your inspiration was designed in a few states, built in a few others, and is now operated out of two or three (one being California [Pasadena], the other, wherever GSFC is located). Just about every state in our union has its quirks as well as its strengths. California, for instance, is an agricultural powerhouse. However, we're so batshit loony with money that we seem intent on bankrupting ourselves.
Texas has some strong industries in it (including a strong history in the realm of spaceflight, that mission that you spoke so eloquently of being inspirational). Lately, however (meaning the past few decades), they seem more intent on projecting their, "Maybe we're not real cowboys, like Clint Eastwood," insecurities on their entire populace. Like California, there are strengths and weaknesses. Nevada is an incredibly free state in terms of personal liberty, but it also has crime problems as a result. And so on and so on.
Every state in our union brings a unique attitude to the table. Thus, basing your opinion of America on one state's actions is somewhat silly. This country does great things because its constituent states can come together to do great things. This country also does stupid things because its constituent states can spend a lot of time and money having petty pissing competitions with each other. It's a constant give and take, and part of what makes America unique.
...like a duck on june bug.
Do ducks dive on june bugs a lot?
Ah, nothing like some good condescending flamebait to go with my coffee on a Friday morning. I'm glad we have heroic watchdog Slashdotters like you keeping us corporate shills honest. ;)
And regardless of weather you buy all those facts, it is requiring a HUGE effort of man power to prevent it getting worse and there is no solid plan.
If you think any large scale engineering projects (most of which all modern civilizations require to exist at all) doesn't require a HUGE effort of man power to prevent them from getting worse when a natural disaster strikes, you're kidding yourself.
Every large industry that mankind's current society relies upon is just one massive natural disaster away from a complete cluster fuck. Operations of train networks, operation of power grids, operation of shipping industries, operation of recycling facilities, operation of chemical processing plants, operation of hydroelectric plants, operation of the entire aviation industry, building and maintenance of bridges, building and maintenance of freeways, etc. etc. etc. all rely upon nominal conditions to function and progress as expected. In the event of a magnitude 9 earthquake, all of these operations have the potential to spill deadly and/or harmful toxins into the environment, all of these operations have the potential to go into a failure mode that kills dozens, if not hundreds of human beings, all of these operations would require a massive effort on the part of their maintainers, designers, and managers to to successfully mitigate the potential failure mode.
The only reason nuclear power generation stands out as being "more dangerous," is because it involves a color-less, odor-less, potentially lethal agent that has somewhat of a mystic idiom attached to it due to it's secondary use as an extraordinarily powerful weapon. In other words, your fears are psychologically based, and not founded on any practical benefit-risk analysis. Modern society is a dangerous place. Grow up and deal with it.