What's worse, China's society heavily values science and engineers. America's does not. Very few people go into engineering any more, except for software engineering. When was the last time you met an aerospace engineer? Way back in the early 90s when I was in college, we joked that AEs would never find a job, because it was a pretty dead industry. Very few engineering majors went into the AE school. ME (which a lot of jet engine engineers probably have) is a little better, but still not great. Go into any major engineering school, and look at the students: most of them are Chinese and Indian, and these days, they go back to their home country when they finish their degree.
America's days as a technology power (except maybe for web development) are almost over.
What the fuck are you talking about? I will agree with your first two sentences in this chunk of text but the rest is utter rubbish. I happen to be an aerospace engineer. I went to one of the top engineering schools on the West Coast and I graduated only a couple years ago. Since I graduated, enrollment in my major has nearly doubled at the school. The student body is not primarily Chinese and Indian. In fact, in my graduating class, I would say that we had, approximately 15 minority students out of a graduating class of a just over one hundred. It is great that you and your friends used to joke about AE's not being able to find jobs, but it was a false joke. There are an enormous amount of AE jobs in existence in the USA, primarily due to the bloated DOD budget and Congress's ability to get an erection for anything that looks and sounds like it comes from science fiction. Furthermore, the commercial and civil space industry is starting to take off in the U.S., which is not occurring anywhere else save Europe (JAXA, India, China are all state funded). We have companies that are trying to grow and expand from nothing as we speak. That includes the little guys like Interorbital Systems and Armadillo to the medium players like SpaceX and Orbital Sciences. We have some huge megacorps that love to eat up fresh college AE's to staff their cubicle farms with people that can design FAA rated ashtrays and shit like that (Boeing, Northrup, Lockheed).
Dear God, I go to sleep every night happy that I chose the major I did because it seems like the one industry left that the U.S. actually does want to invest money in. This field also employs ME's, CE's, EE's, MATE's, IME's, and fuck only knows what other kind of obscure E's. Right now, becoming an engineer is a fantastic idea because the U.S. actually does have infrastructure (thanks to the development back in the 70's and 80's) and it needs people that can design maintenance fixes and patches for the infrastructure. I realize markets are bleak right now in a lot of fields but your little rant about AE's and ME's being jobless and in short supply is completely retarded. Just go on any job hunting website: Monster, LinkedIn, whatever, and search for jobs in Tech. and Engineering fields. There are plenty to go around.
I don't necessarily disagree with the rest of your post, but declaring that the only engineers left in the U.S. are jobless foreign kids has to be the single stupidest thing I've seen modded up on/. in awhile.
Re:I am confident this thread won't become a flame
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
I wonder what would happen if every single Slashdot user, U.S. citizen or not, wrote a letter to President Obama that basically said something along the lines of,
"President Obama,
I understand a bill extending the Patriot Act is currently being voted on in Congress. The Patriot Act was supposed to be a temporary measure introduced to increase the security of America. If this bill passes, please veto it on behalf of the American citizenry. It is time to end this nonsense. Don't make excuses.
Thank You,
[name signed here]"
Would anyone even notice? Would he comment on it? Here's the mailing address:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Meh, watching bacteria sit in a hibernation state for 34,000 years would still be more entertaining twenty minutes of Jersey Shore. It's kind of like how Purgatory is better than Hell, even those it's incredibly uneventful.
Or, alternatively, back in November when Discovery was being fueled, an on-pad engineer could have noticed a crack along the main tank that looked large enough to be suspicious and reported it. As a result, NASA delayed a launch multiple months (something which causes a hassle for other launch platforms preparing to launch, as shuttle almost always takes precedence) to figure out what was causing the main tank, a gigantic bubble filled with cryogenic, highly flammable liquid explosives, to crack since, you know, they don't want that toxic shit spraying all over their personnel on launch. Then, after performing three months of rigorous analysis to model, simulate, and test a highly complex system with hundreds of thousands of stress focal points that are subjected to extreme temperatures throughout a mission, the people that NASA pays a cubic assload of money to for being smarter than you and I finally figured out the problem, and proposed a solution.
There are dozens of ways low-quality material could have made it through the QA process at Lockheed that don't require some sort of communist-conspiracy, "OMG we need jobs," to explain. For instance, it could be that, since production on this particular tank model has stopped, the remaining work force was simply trying to make due with what they had, materials wise, and produce their product (the tank) as quickly as possible without giving a particular two-shits to the wind as to how sound it was since, you know, their program was getting canceled anyways. Or, yeah, it could be a jobs program. Sure.
What will be even more interesting is those of us already living in the country will probably be barred from leaving. That no-fly list sure does a lot more than protect us from terrorists doesn't it?
It treats the peple it works for well, it works to protect the rights of it's people, and has almost no corruption.
What fucking world are you living in? I'll agree it's not perfect, and we could do better. But protects the rights of it's people? I don't think the government, in general, has done that for a couple decades now (perhaps with the exception of a few courts scattered about the country).
It's a stark reminder that you're mostly a bunch of ignoramuses that spout off about crap you know nothing about.
And how the hell do you get modded up for spouting off such self-serving, smug, flambait bullshit as this? You didn't even remark about what you know, "fairly well," to justify such an assertion.
Here, I've got a comment as equally useful and verifiable as your own. "Sometimes I have a flash of enlightenment and shoot lightning out my hands. This just happened to me five minutes ago. It's a stark reminder that I am God and all other slashdot users should bow before my undeniable power."
Unless your employees are completely and entirely dependent upon this job right now (i.e. not enough skills to get hired somewhere else, supporting families, etc.) or they are completely invested, idealistically, to the products you provide, I imagine a lot of them will leave. Folks don't tend to like being told, from on high, that they absolutely have to do something burdensome. So unless they zealously believe in your product, they'll find somewhere nicer to leave.
I would suggest digging up some research on how, in a given day, most employees only actually produce ~X many hours of quality work (I think I heard something like 4 - 6 hours at one point). Or, alternatively, your boss could address the employee body directly and, rather than demand that employees work those hours, ask for volunteers who would like to see the project succeed to volunteer. Folks prefer long work hours when they are there by choice.
While amazon doesn't have a legit role...socially...Well...I think we have to admit they have some role in practice--or will.
No, they don't have a role. If the police, or FBI, or whoever need access to Amazon's resources to prosecute a legitimate criminal that is likely using Amazon's services for criminal activity, then said police entity needs to obtain a legal warrant just like they do for anything else. If the warrant is obtained legally, then Amazon, by law, must comply with the warrant and turn over all data required by the warrant. That is fine. That is legal. That is how the system is supposed to work. If Amazon resists police investigation of Amazon's computational resources after the police have obtained a legal warrant, then Amazon is on the hook for legal prosecution by their own action.
Any deviation from this model is an infringement on the rights protected under the 4th amendment of the Constitution. Any deviation from this model further corrupts the justice system, as well as industry. If you give a profit motivated company the power of execution over it's customers, then they are no longer customers, they are servants. No privately held company should ever have the power of execution over an individual. If they want to refuse service, that is fine. Amazon is not required to provide their services to everyone by law. However, once they allow a customer to exchange legal tender for a service or good rendered, they do not gain the power to police or otherwise execute that individual's actions. They are welcome to terminate services and return whatever fees are necessary to the customer. But policing in any manner, voluntarily leaking private information to government authorities, or sharing of data not explicitly outlined in the business contract is an abuse of the law, the justice system, and the spirit of business between customers and service providers.
Among the questions Roth's research raises is, what role should Amazon and other public-cloud service providers play in preventing customers from using their services to commit crimes?"
None whatsoever. Amazon and other service providers are retailers. They are not a police force. If a crime is being committed, let the designated authorities (i.e. cops) investigate it, police it, and arrest the criminal. No business should ever be involved in policing anything. That's a role specially held for the executive branch of governments.
I hardly use Google as my search engine these days. 90% or so of my search engine queries go to DuckDuckGo. I only resort to Google if I am looking for music files or something so obscure that I know Google won't provide me a list of 1000+ potential hits, half of which are marketing or shopping sites. I never use Bing, but that's because I have a general hatred for Microsoft and am trying, vigorously, to cut them out of my personal computer use entirely. I also find using some specific protocol search engines to be helpful too. There are a number of nice FTP search engines and I still like using Veronica for Gopher.
Does anybody know about what they are doing regarding, 'buzzing in,' to answer the question? It seems like a computer, inherently, has a massive advantage on this front as it can simply send a (by human perception) instant signal to trigger a buzzer once it detects the end of the question. Did IBM program it not to buzz in until it knows the answer? Is there some sort of in-built lag to the system to mimic human reaction? It seems like a computer operating on clock cycles of, I assume, milliseconds or less could beat humans simply by buzzing in first each time and post processing the question immediately once it gets called on. Has anybody heard anything regarding this?
Hey, I have no doubt Loughner said some creepy stuff on some online games. I have $10 that says none of it was half as bad as the shit that I hear Halo-playing 12 year olds say on XBox Live at night though.
I've been running Chrome for about a year now (maybe less) as my primary browser. It's small and snappy enough that it suits my older hardware better than FF 3 does. I use FF when my primary concern is security, rather than speed and convenience. Unfortunately, I've been getting a bit frustrated at Chrome lately too. Google keeps releasing patches and updates, which is fine for security. But it seems like the last few iterations of Chrome have made my Adblocking, Flashblocking, and javascript settings nearly useless. Sure, some of the more obnoxious ads are getting blocked, but even with my AdBlock extensions and a few good, reliable blocklist subscriptions, I am finding more and more ads in Chrome than I do on the same pages in FF with AB+ installed.
To top it off, the most recent Chrome update seems to have gummed up Flash in my browser somehow. I am not sure how. I will probably just need to reconfigure something (though I have no idea what yet). But many flash applications seem to have buttons disabled, or some other such thing. I liked Chrome because it was simple, quick, and convenient. But with AdBlocking becoming increasingly useless, I'd much prefer to switchback to FF. Here's hoping FF 4 is sleek enough to not lag out my 6 year old hardware.
See, that kind of thing sounds fine to me, and I would support it much more than I would any initiative to grow a government bureaucracy just to maintain jobs. You don't need 15 aides filing papers and forms just to get the approval to do something for office X of the executive branch, or whatever. If, instead, you paid those same 15 people to transfer existing public records onto open, internet accessible databases, that would add value to society.
I am not against government jobs, in general. But if I am going to be paying taxes, I want something of value back for my money.
Actually this raises a very interesting point. Do we even need an HLV to get to the moon? Or, for that matter, to Mars? Currently, we can launch manned capsules and cargo capsules like Dragon, Progress, Soyuz, the ATV, and the Japanese cargo craft (I forget the name) into LEO using our existing fleet of launchers. We can mount these types of capsules on top of Delta IV's, Delta IV heavy's, the Soyuz launch system, the Arianne V, the Atlas V, and the Falcon 9. The only thing that keeps them from getting to the moon and back is the lack of fuel reserves for another burn once they are in LEO. So do we really need an HLV to do a moon shot in one shot? There is nothing keeping us from assembling something similar to the ISS that acts as a fuel depot on orbit (or, for that matter, using the ISS itself). We could launch fuel into orbit in separate cargo craft than the manned capsules. We could launch manned capsules into orbit later. The two systems could dock on orbit. Fuel could be transferred to the manned craft. The manned craft could make a second trip to the moon and back using those fuel reserves.
There are actually some proposals floating around to do just this. We could use Progress, at first, to test this system as the original Progress vehicle was designed to survive a moon trip. We could test the Dragon's capabilities to do the same thing when it is ready. We could use Centaur vehicles (also designed for lunar orbit) to send unmanned cargo to lunar orbit or, even, to the lunar surface. So why do we need to make a moon shot (or, later, a Mars shot) in one big oomph from a super powerful rocket? It may well prove to be more sustainable to stick to smaller rockets, launched rapidly in sequence, than it would be to design a super powerful rocket and man rate it. So yeah, definitely a debate worth having. Unfortunately, Congress doesn't tend to like proposals like this because it moves funding away from the industries currently located in their districts.
No, it's not the DIRECT program. The DIRECT program's key advantages were the use of the existent four stage SRBs (not the five stage ones proposed in this report) and the use of the RS-68 engine, rather than the SSME's which is vastly cheaper and simpler than the SSMEs. This is a rehash of the Ares V. This is not Jupiter DIRECT. Get your designs straight please.
I'm aware of the materials issue with the tank. I didn't mean to imply that the design was the cause of the the issues, but rather, that this particular tank model (as there are other tank models and designs in existence, though not in use) is being used with the current Space Shuttle. In other words, I should have worded the sentence, "the same tank model that is currently giving the Discovery shuttle launch so many problems." My bad. The stringers, however, are part of this particular tank model. So it is possible that a similar materials issue could arise on future tanks. Sorry for the poor wording.
Slashdot Mirror
What's worse, China's society heavily values science and engineers. America's does not. Very few people go into engineering any more, except for software engineering. When was the last time you met an aerospace engineer? Way back in the early 90s when I was in college, we joked that AEs would never find a job, because it was a pretty dead industry. Very few engineering majors went into the AE school. ME (which a lot of jet engine engineers probably have) is a little better, but still not great. Go into any major engineering school, and look at the students: most of them are Chinese and Indian, and these days, they go back to their home country when they finish their degree. America's days as a technology power (except maybe for web development) are almost over.
What the fuck are you talking about? I will agree with your first two sentences in this chunk of text but the rest is utter rubbish. I happen to be an aerospace engineer. I went to one of the top engineering schools on the West Coast and I graduated only a couple years ago. Since I graduated, enrollment in my major has nearly doubled at the school. The student body is not primarily Chinese and Indian. In fact, in my graduating class, I would say that we had, approximately 15 minority students out of a graduating class of a just over one hundred. It is great that you and your friends used to joke about AE's not being able to find jobs, but it was a false joke. There are an enormous amount of AE jobs in existence in the USA, primarily due to the bloated DOD budget and Congress's ability to get an erection for anything that looks and sounds like it comes from science fiction. Furthermore, the commercial and civil space industry is starting to take off in the U.S., which is not occurring anywhere else save Europe (JAXA, India, China are all state funded). We have companies that are trying to grow and expand from nothing as we speak. That includes the little guys like Interorbital Systems and Armadillo to the medium players like SpaceX and Orbital Sciences. We have some huge megacorps that love to eat up fresh college AE's to staff their cubicle farms with people that can design FAA rated ashtrays and shit like that (Boeing, Northrup, Lockheed).
/. in awhile.
Dear God, I go to sleep every night happy that I chose the major I did because it seems like the one industry left that the U.S. actually does want to invest money in. This field also employs ME's, CE's, EE's, MATE's, IME's, and fuck only knows what other kind of obscure E's. Right now, becoming an engineer is a fantastic idea because the U.S. actually does have infrastructure (thanks to the development back in the 70's and 80's) and it needs people that can design maintenance fixes and patches for the infrastructure. I realize markets are bleak right now in a lot of fields but your little rant about AE's and ME's being jobless and in short supply is completely retarded. Just go on any job hunting website: Monster, LinkedIn, whatever, and search for jobs in Tech. and Engineering fields. There are plenty to go around.
I don't necessarily disagree with the rest of your post, but declaring that the only engineers left in the U.S. are jobless foreign kids has to be the single stupidest thing I've seen modded up on
Well good luck with that retard!
=P
This is little different than engineers imagining themselves as physicists.
Oh be realistic now. No engineer would try to discredit himself in such a manner. ;)
I wonder what would happen if every single Slashdot user, U.S. citizen or not, wrote a letter to President Obama that basically said something along the lines of,
"President Obama,
I understand a bill extending the Patriot Act is currently being voted on in Congress. The Patriot Act was supposed to be a temporary measure introduced to increase the security of America. If this bill passes, please veto it on behalf of the American citizenry. It is time to end this nonsense. Don't make excuses.
Thank You,
[name signed here]"
Would anyone even notice? Would he comment on it? Here's the mailing address:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Meh, watching bacteria sit in a hibernation state for 34,000 years would still be more entertaining twenty minutes of Jersey Shore. It's kind of like how Purgatory is better than Hell, even those it's incredibly uneventful.
I like how there are folks complaining about NASA when the tank and alloy were manufactured by Lockheed-Martin....
Or, alternatively, back in November when Discovery was being fueled, an on-pad engineer could have noticed a crack along the main tank that looked large enough to be suspicious and reported it. As a result, NASA delayed a launch multiple months (something which causes a hassle for other launch platforms preparing to launch, as shuttle almost always takes precedence) to figure out what was causing the main tank, a gigantic bubble filled with cryogenic, highly flammable liquid explosives, to crack since, you know, they don't want that toxic shit spraying all over their personnel on launch. Then, after performing three months of rigorous analysis to model, simulate, and test a highly complex system with hundreds of thousands of stress focal points that are subjected to extreme temperatures throughout a mission, the people that NASA pays a cubic assload of money to for being smarter than you and I finally figured out the problem, and proposed a solution.
There are dozens of ways low-quality material could have made it through the QA process at Lockheed that don't require some sort of communist-conspiracy, "OMG we need jobs," to explain. For instance, it could be that, since production on this particular tank model has stopped, the remaining work force was simply trying to make due with what they had, materials wise, and produce their product (the tank) as quickly as possible without giving a particular two-shits to the wind as to how sound it was since, you know, their program was getting canceled anyways. Or, yeah, it could be a jobs program. Sure.
What will be even more interesting is those of us already living in the country will probably be barred from leaving. That no-fly list sure does a lot more than protect us from terrorists doesn't it?
It treats the peple it works for well, it works to protect the rights of it's people, and has almost no corruption.
What fucking world are you living in? I'll agree it's not perfect, and we could do better. But protects the rights of it's people? I don't think the government, in general, has done that for a couple decades now (perhaps with the exception of a few courts scattered about the country).
It's a stark reminder that you're mostly a bunch of ignoramuses that spout off about crap you know nothing about.
And how the hell do you get modded up for spouting off such self-serving, smug, flambait bullshit as this? You didn't even remark about what you know, "fairly well," to justify such an assertion.
Here, I've got a comment as equally useful and verifiable as your own. "Sometimes I have a flash of enlightenment and shoot lightning out my hands. This just happened to me five minutes ago. It's a stark reminder that I am God and all other slashdot users should bow before my undeniable power."
Unless your employees are completely and entirely dependent upon this job right now (i.e. not enough skills to get hired somewhere else, supporting families, etc.) or they are completely invested, idealistically, to the products you provide, I imagine a lot of them will leave. Folks don't tend to like being told, from on high, that they absolutely have to do something burdensome. So unless they zealously believe in your product, they'll find somewhere nicer to leave.
I would suggest digging up some research on how, in a given day, most employees only actually produce ~X many hours of quality work (I think I heard something like 4 - 6 hours at one point). Or, alternatively, your boss could address the employee body directly and, rather than demand that employees work those hours, ask for volunteers who would like to see the project succeed to volunteer. Folks prefer long work hours when they are there by choice.
Nah, we just need to craft and install cybernetic gills! Hail the return of the age of Atlanteans!
While amazon doesn't have a legit role...socially...Well...I think we have to admit they have some role in practice--or will.
No, they don't have a role. If the police, or FBI, or whoever need access to Amazon's resources to prosecute a legitimate criminal that is likely using Amazon's services for criminal activity, then said police entity needs to obtain a legal warrant just like they do for anything else. If the warrant is obtained legally, then Amazon, by law, must comply with the warrant and turn over all data required by the warrant. That is fine. That is legal. That is how the system is supposed to work. If Amazon resists police investigation of Amazon's computational resources after the police have obtained a legal warrant, then Amazon is on the hook for legal prosecution by their own action.
Any deviation from this model is an infringement on the rights protected under the 4th amendment of the Constitution. Any deviation from this model further corrupts the justice system, as well as industry. If you give a profit motivated company the power of execution over it's customers, then they are no longer customers, they are servants. No privately held company should ever have the power of execution over an individual. If they want to refuse service, that is fine. Amazon is not required to provide their services to everyone by law. However, once they allow a customer to exchange legal tender for a service or good rendered, they do not gain the power to police or otherwise execute that individual's actions. They are welcome to terminate services and return whatever fees are necessary to the customer. But policing in any manner, voluntarily leaking private information to government authorities, or sharing of data not explicitly outlined in the business contract is an abuse of the law, the justice system, and the spirit of business between customers and service providers.
Among the questions Roth's research raises is, what role should Amazon and other public-cloud service providers play in preventing customers from using their services to commit crimes?"
None whatsoever. Amazon and other service providers are retailers. They are not a police force. If a crime is being committed, let the designated authorities (i.e. cops) investigate it, police it, and arrest the criminal. No business should ever be involved in policing anything. That's a role specially held for the executive branch of governments.
I RTFA 90% of the time. I'm allowed to be lazy every once in awhile.
Awesome, thanks for the info.
I hardly use Google as my search engine these days. 90% or so of my search engine queries go to DuckDuckGo. I only resort to Google if I am looking for music files or something so obscure that I know Google won't provide me a list of 1000+ potential hits, half of which are marketing or shopping sites. I never use Bing, but that's because I have a general hatred for Microsoft and am trying, vigorously, to cut them out of my personal computer use entirely. I also find using some specific protocol search engines to be helpful too. There are a number of nice FTP search engines and I still like using Veronica for Gopher.
Does anybody know about what they are doing regarding, 'buzzing in,' to answer the question? It seems like a computer, inherently, has a massive advantage on this front as it can simply send a (by human perception) instant signal to trigger a buzzer once it detects the end of the question. Did IBM program it not to buzz in until it knows the answer? Is there some sort of in-built lag to the system to mimic human reaction? It seems like a computer operating on clock cycles of, I assume, milliseconds or less could beat humans simply by buzzing in first each time and post processing the question immediately once it gets called on. Has anybody heard anything regarding this?
Like I said, the ones that you will find playing Halo on XBox Live late at night. =P
Hey, I have no doubt Loughner said some creepy stuff on some online games. I have $10 that says none of it was half as bad as the shit that I hear Halo-playing 12 year olds say on XBox Live at night though.
I've been running Chrome for about a year now (maybe less) as my primary browser. It's small and snappy enough that it suits my older hardware better than FF 3 does. I use FF when my primary concern is security, rather than speed and convenience. Unfortunately, I've been getting a bit frustrated at Chrome lately too. Google keeps releasing patches and updates, which is fine for security. But it seems like the last few iterations of Chrome have made my Adblocking, Flashblocking, and javascript settings nearly useless. Sure, some of the more obnoxious ads are getting blocked, but even with my AdBlock extensions and a few good, reliable blocklist subscriptions, I am finding more and more ads in Chrome than I do on the same pages in FF with AB+ installed.
To top it off, the most recent Chrome update seems to have gummed up Flash in my browser somehow. I am not sure how. I will probably just need to reconfigure something (though I have no idea what yet). But many flash applications seem to have buttons disabled, or some other such thing. I liked Chrome because it was simple, quick, and convenient. But with AdBlocking becoming increasingly useless, I'd much prefer to switchback to FF. Here's hoping FF 4 is sleek enough to not lag out my 6 year old hardware.
See, that kind of thing sounds fine to me, and I would support it much more than I would any initiative to grow a government bureaucracy just to maintain jobs. You don't need 15 aides filing papers and forms just to get the approval to do something for office X of the executive branch, or whatever. If, instead, you paid those same 15 people to transfer existing public records onto open, internet accessible databases, that would add value to society.
I am not against government jobs, in general. But if I am going to be paying taxes, I want something of value back for my money.
Yes. Unfortunately this particular Floridan trailer park resident appears to be rather short on the whole, "sense," thing.
Actually this raises a very interesting point. Do we even need an HLV to get to the moon? Or, for that matter, to Mars? Currently, we can launch manned capsules and cargo capsules like Dragon, Progress, Soyuz, the ATV, and the Japanese cargo craft (I forget the name) into LEO using our existing fleet of launchers. We can mount these types of capsules on top of Delta IV's, Delta IV heavy's, the Soyuz launch system, the Arianne V, the Atlas V, and the Falcon 9. The only thing that keeps them from getting to the moon and back is the lack of fuel reserves for another burn once they are in LEO. So do we really need an HLV to do a moon shot in one shot? There is nothing keeping us from assembling something similar to the ISS that acts as a fuel depot on orbit (or, for that matter, using the ISS itself). We could launch fuel into orbit in separate cargo craft than the manned capsules. We could launch manned capsules into orbit later. The two systems could dock on orbit. Fuel could be transferred to the manned craft. The manned craft could make a second trip to the moon and back using those fuel reserves.
There are actually some proposals floating around to do just this. We could use Progress, at first, to test this system as the original Progress vehicle was designed to survive a moon trip. We could test the Dragon's capabilities to do the same thing when it is ready. We could use Centaur vehicles (also designed for lunar orbit) to send unmanned cargo to lunar orbit or, even, to the lunar surface. So why do we need to make a moon shot (or, later, a Mars shot) in one big oomph from a super powerful rocket? It may well prove to be more sustainable to stick to smaller rockets, launched rapidly in sequence, than it would be to design a super powerful rocket and man rate it. So yeah, definitely a debate worth having. Unfortunately, Congress doesn't tend to like proposals like this because it moves funding away from the industries currently located in their districts.
No, it's not the DIRECT program. The DIRECT program's key advantages were the use of the existent four stage SRBs (not the five stage ones proposed in this report) and the use of the RS-68 engine, rather than the SSME's which is vastly cheaper and simpler than the SSMEs. This is a rehash of the Ares V. This is not Jupiter DIRECT. Get your designs straight please.
I'm aware of the materials issue with the tank. I didn't mean to imply that the design was the cause of the the issues, but rather, that this particular tank model (as there are other tank models and designs in existence, though not in use) is being used with the current Space Shuttle. In other words, I should have worded the sentence, "the same tank model that is currently giving the Discovery shuttle launch so many problems." My bad. The stringers, however, are part of this particular tank model. So it is possible that a similar materials issue could arise on future tanks. Sorry for the poor wording.