Well these particular SRB's are troublesome because they are segmented. Typically, SRBs boast the advantage of being simpler. You get a lot of bang for a relatively cheap design. You put a nozzle on the end of a tube packed with fuel, light a spark, and watch the fireworks.
The SRB's employed by the shuttle, and the ones proposed here, are not a simple tube. They have multiple tubes bolted together in segments. This means that, between each segment, there are interfaces that have to be designed to compensate for the stress nodes at these points, the potential flow leakage at these joints, and so on. This complicates the design and raises the cost of these particular SRBs. So, why design segmented SRBs in the first place? Well one rocket maker, Morton-Thyokol, now owned by ATK, made a design bid for the SRBs on the shuttle when it was first being designed. Unfortunately, after their bid won, they realized that their manufacturing plant was in Utah, and their launch site was in Florida. Super large rockets don't travel well by road or rail, so they had to segment the SRBs to ship them in parts to Florida.
There are other issues as well. SRBs are hard to shut off once they are lit. There are workarounds for this problem, but, again, they complicate the otherwise simple design which makes SRBs so appealing in the first place. But all in all, the real problem is these particular SRBs, in my opinion, not SRBs in general.
They'll probably learn when Congress gives NASA the financial freedom to learn. Until Congress stops mandating technical requirements as, "solutions," from on high via micomanaged budgets, NASA's hands are tied. If you don't like how NASA is being funded and managed, complain to your Congress critters.
I'm aware of that, I actually submitted another story about that very issue just before I submitted this one. I suppose I should have used the word, "model," rather than, "design," as that was my intended meaning. I only meant to point out that it would be the same tank model in this "new" vehicle. Thanks for the catch though.
Well actually, they very well may have considered it. Or, at least, NASA may have. Congress tends to be the entity demanding that the same SRB's get used on the new vehicle that were on the shuttle system. You can thank Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Richard Shelby for this, in part, because they are defending the industries that provide jobs to the areas they represent. As a result, they both push heavily to have certain technical requirements inserted, via budget line items, into legislation regarding NASA's designs.
In a recent copy of Make magazine Dick Rutan, Burt Rutan's test pilot brother, was quoted saying, "In America, the Apollo program was the greatest thing we ever did. A young president wrote a check and got the fuck out of the way..." I think that sums up nicely the role that politicians should play in engineering. But then, I'm old fashioned like that.
There is quite an argument to be made that this whole thing is a political ploy by NASA to either force Congress to pay for what they are asking for, or to loosen up on the stupid ass requirements an allow NASA to design a truly optimal solution. Whether or not the ploy will work, backfire, or do nothing will be seen with time I suppose.
The editors took the second paragraph of my summary out. They probably thought it was a bit too tasteless, or something, despite the important information in it. Here it is (also from the article linked):
The catch is, NASA also admitted that they will not be able to complete the proposed rocket on the budget that Congress has given them. Neither will they be able to finish the rocket on time. Finally, NASA has commented that a current study being conducted by 13 independent contractors is still being conducted to determine if there is a better design out there that NASA has, 'overlooked.' NASA has stated that, should that study finds any alternate, interesting designs then, they will need to consider those seriously."
Except, if they do that, then hundreds of thousands of users will have new bulletins from this "weird Amber alert thingy" that they never signed up for and, rather than investigate, they will simply ignore it, opt out, or block it. I suppose the same end would probably be reached as an opt in program, eventually. But really, if you want people to actually notice this new facebook feature, it is better to advertise it and then have them consciously seek it out and pick it. At least, that would be my guess.
Just a hint, look for another job that doesn't require you to be on call 24/7. That game is a fool's errand. And, yes, there are jobs out there that don't require that.
That's because nobody outside of our state is crazy enough to elect the man. Don't get me wrong, seizing useless state funded cell phones is fine by me, but considering the rest of Brown's political career, I can see precisely why nobody outside of my state would vote for him.
"Oh, your plow slid off the highway? So sorry, you're on your own. We can't afford $1000/yr on top of your pittance of a salary."
Plow drivers have dedicated radios so that they can communicate to a dispatch station no matter what kind of 'cell reception' area they may be in. There is no need for them to carry both at the cost of the state.
Well no, there were other folks on the ballot too, as well as a write-in line. It's just that 90% of folk can't get their head out of their ass long enough to see past the R and D tags. Why that is, I have no idea.
Well Hester Prynne's village would be proud. I am glad that they mark the exclusion zones red on the maps. They have got the Scarlet part of the stigma correct, but they are missing the letter. Let's just carve 'SO' into their foreheads so everyone can be safe from these dastardly outcasts of society....
By the way, just so I don't repeat Orwell's mistake, this comment is not an instruction manual.
Okay, well the first source is interesting, but the basic conclusion of it is that Biden said the U.S. is looking at the possibility of pursuing legal actions. That's not claiming that Assange is the target of U.S. prosecution. Any justice department worth its salt, when addressed with the possibility that a crime has been committed by an individual, will start looking into the matter to see if a case can be built to support such an accusation. That's SOP. Now, if Biden were to come forward and say, "The U.S. will be taking legal action against Julian Assange for issues X, Y, and Z," that would be a declaration of Assange being a target of the U.S. Until then, I have to say that the U.S. DOJ simply appears to be looking into the matter, not necessarily pursing anything further.
The second source you cited doesn't really relate to my claim whatsoever. Subpoenaing Twitter for records regarding wikileaks is different than targeting Assange for prosecution. Assange was one of five members whose account data was requested. This could be used for evidence in a case prosecuting wikileaks, or Manning, or some other member of the wikileaks leadership, or something entirely different. The point is, asking for the information requested is not indicative of a case against Assange. It is indicative of the U.S. government's interest in the matter overall.
So, do I think the U.S. government is targeting wikileaks for an investigation? Yes. Do I think they are targeting Assange for prosecution? No, not yet. I don't see any hard evidence, including your sources, that indicate that the U.S. is necessarily out to get Assange, specifically. Now, I will acknowledge the notion that they could be, and that these are just the first moves from their side of the chess board. But speculation of intention is not evidence of action. So I stand by my assertion.
Maybe, at some point, the U.S. will target Assange, specifically, for prosecution. Until then, however, it appears the the U.S. government is just trying to wrap it's head around the matter of the leak entirety. Of course, as always, I could be wrong.
We won't. It seems that most of us Americans just like to talk tough and then go home and flip on the T.V. afterwards. Most of the folk that I know that detest our federal government the most, you know, the gun-toting redneck types that want to move to Texas and secede from the union, think Julian Assange is a war criminal and should be executed for treason. Hell, none of them even realize that he is not a U.S. citizen. How they can live with such a conflicting mental arrangement of of enemies in their perception of reality is beyond me. On the one hand, they detest the federal government. On the other hand, they detest the fellow that is embarrassing the federal government. Strange indeed.
I've been following this wikileaks stuff from the get go, and I still haven't seen any evidence to suggest that Assange is the target of anything more than an obsessed media and a lot of public outcry by the same stupid pundits that throw up a public outcry over every other damn thing in the news.
I'll grant that the circumstances and nuances of Assange's whole sex-offender case were damn strange, meaning all that stuff involving the case getting dropped, then picked up, then Interpol involvement, etc. But considering that large government bureaucracies, in general, don't often operate efficiently, or, for that matter, even sensibly half the damn time, all that crap could very well be little more than the Swedish justice system panicking over a high profile case and responding to such global scrutiny in the same way that many people would under such a lens: completely uselessly and foolishly.
I'm not saying Assange explicitly is not on some government blacklist somewhere, but I also don't see a lot of convincing evidence that he definitely is the target of anything in particular; other than, you know, some bitter female scorn projected by two young lasses that he fooled about with.
Honestly, the sheer fact that you tried, and continue to try, to hijack a thread regarding donations to help the victims to further your own political message is disgusting. The parent poster was simply providing a resource which people could use to donate to disaster relief. You took that opportunity to start proselytizing about climate change because there happens to be some shady people in the same geographic location. Get some fucking perspective. Not everything has to come back to climate change, dirty coal, or whatever other political issues you care about.
I stand by my assertion that you are a jerk and an asshole. Not because you didn't offer kind words to the victims, but because your actions demonstrate that you consider your personal politics to be more important. It's sick, plain and simple.
I'm just going to float this out there. It's not really relevant to the article, nor is it particularly valuable to any discussion, but the discoverer of the Voorwerp, Hanny Van Arkely, is absolutely lovely. Many 'dotters could probably kill an hour or two sifting through her images on Google.
So, let me get this straight, there is a group of people that is actively unfriendly towards the environment. A natural disaster has occurred in the area where that group of people live. Some people in that area, possibly members of the group, possibly not, have died. Other people have outright disappeared. Still other people have had their homes and livelihoods wrecked by a geological event outside the control of the human species. And yet, just because there is a group of people that live in that same area, who have poor environmental practices, the rest of humanity should just turn their backs on everyone affected.
Wow, you're a grade-A, zealous, enviro-nut asshole, FriendlyLurker. I can only hope that you picked your screen name to be ironic, because there is absolutely nothing friendly about the action you are espousing. I think this is one of the most anti-social, sociopathic, and utterly tragic posts I've ever read on this site. You're terrible.
Perhaps I should have been a bit more explicit, but I am aware of many of your rebuttal points. When I said the first democratic republic, I meant the first one since the dark ages (since it was a miracle those ideas survived that knowledge blackout at all).
As for defining our people as black people in the 1920's you're wrong. The roots of Jazz could be found in the South as far back as the 1870's or so. While it was an African-American movement, one of the key elements to the movement being successful was the poetic way the music style managed to portray the struggle of the African-American in a post slavery, white dominated society. Thus, the roots of the movement were due to African-American's American heritage, more so than their African heritage, as African black cultures did not have the brotherhood or experience of coping with slavery in America or a post-slavery society. Thus, I consider Jazz to be part of American culture, not just African-American culture. So referring to Jazz as a product of our people, meaning those of us united under this country, is perfectly legitimate in my opinion.
I realize that there were massive hostilities between locals and Native American tribes during expansionist eras, but the massive killings and battles waged upon the Native Americans were primarily the product of the federal and state governments, not of the local townspeople. As someone who has grown up in a community very close to the local Native American tribes, I can tell you that their culture has permeated, deeply, into our culture in more ways than we give them credit. If you don't want to acknowledge individual achievement as part of that, then maybe you could look at stoicism, or glibness as values portrayed by the classic Western cowboy archetype as values that we inherited from our Native American brethren. Or, hell, look how popular moccasin style slippers and shoes are and how much turquoise can be found in local jewelry. The point is, many typical values associated with American archetypes were learned from continual interaction with Native Americans.
I wasn't aware of the German national forest program, thanks for the information.
While there are definitely ethnically isolated suburbs of major cities, that doesn't mean there hasn't been a melting pot of cultures. Hell, half the folk that I know that have been married in the past five years are in ethnically blended marriages, and those are primarily made up of white kids that grew up in the same small hick town that I did. So yes, there are still isolated pockets of culture, and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is also a lot of blending of culture on a scale we haven't seen before in history, in this country or anywhere else.
I'd argue that the Golden Ages where never really that golden - maybe gilded for some, but it's been a pretty brutal slog for a lot of people.
Really? Because to date I haven't met a person that was alive in 1969 that said anything other than, "Man, that was a good year," of course, I haven't met everyone, but the general consensus seems to be, from hardcore Christians to ex-hippies and even a few 'Nam vets that 1969 was pretty damn wonderful for some reason. I also get the feeling that a lot of folk would have declared the early 1900's, under TR, to be a pretty damn golden era. The '90's weren't bad either, though I am not sure you could call them a golden age. All I am trying to get at though, is that while we will always have hardships in this country, that's part of the human condition and exactly what has made us strong, there were definitely some times when our victories had good reason to give us a national buzz. Saying otherwise seems to be little more than deep-rooted cynicism.
Slashdot Mirror
Well these particular SRB's are troublesome because they are segmented. Typically, SRBs boast the advantage of being simpler. You get a lot of bang for a relatively cheap design. You put a nozzle on the end of a tube packed with fuel, light a spark, and watch the fireworks.
The SRB's employed by the shuttle, and the ones proposed here, are not a simple tube. They have multiple tubes bolted together in segments. This means that, between each segment, there are interfaces that have to be designed to compensate for the stress nodes at these points, the potential flow leakage at these joints, and so on. This complicates the design and raises the cost of these particular SRBs. So, why design segmented SRBs in the first place? Well one rocket maker, Morton-Thyokol, now owned by ATK, made a design bid for the SRBs on the shuttle when it was first being designed. Unfortunately, after their bid won, they realized that their manufacturing plant was in Utah, and their launch site was in Florida. Super large rockets don't travel well by road or rail, so they had to segment the SRBs to ship them in parts to Florida.
There are other issues as well. SRBs are hard to shut off once they are lit. There are workarounds for this problem, but, again, they complicate the otherwise simple design which makes SRBs so appealing in the first place. But all in all, the real problem is these particular SRBs, in my opinion, not SRBs in general.
They'll probably learn when Congress gives NASA the financial freedom to learn. Until Congress stops mandating technical requirements as, "solutions," from on high via micomanaged budgets, NASA's hands are tied. If you don't like how NASA is being funded and managed, complain to your Congress critters.
I'm aware of that, I actually submitted another story about that very issue just before I submitted this one. I suppose I should have used the word, "model," rather than, "design," as that was my intended meaning. I only meant to point out that it would be the same tank model in this "new" vehicle. Thanks for the catch though.
Well actually, they very well may have considered it. Or, at least, NASA may have. Congress tends to be the entity demanding that the same SRB's get used on the new vehicle that were on the shuttle system. You can thank Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Richard Shelby for this, in part, because they are defending the industries that provide jobs to the areas they represent. As a result, they both push heavily to have certain technical requirements inserted, via budget line items, into legislation regarding NASA's designs.
In a recent copy of Make magazine Dick Rutan, Burt Rutan's test pilot brother, was quoted saying, "In America, the Apollo program was the greatest thing we ever did. A young president wrote a check and got the fuck out of the way..." I think that sums up nicely the role that politicians should play in engineering. But then, I'm old fashioned like that.
There is quite an argument to be made that this whole thing is a political ploy by NASA to either force Congress to pay for what they are asking for, or to loosen up on the stupid ass requirements an allow NASA to design a truly optimal solution. Whether or not the ploy will work, backfire, or do nothing will be seen with time I suppose.
The editors took the second paragraph of my summary out. They probably thought it was a bit too tasteless, or something, despite the important information in it. Here it is (also from the article linked):
The catch is, NASA also admitted that they will not be able to complete the proposed rocket on the budget that Congress has given them. Neither will they be able to finish the rocket on time. Finally, NASA has commented that a current study being conducted by 13 independent contractors is still being conducted to determine if there is a better design out there that NASA has, 'overlooked.' NASA has stated that, should that study finds any alternate, interesting designs then, they will need to consider those seriously."
I'm advocating for people to actually do something useful to get paid for it.
Except, if they do that, then hundreds of thousands of users will have new bulletins from this "weird Amber alert thingy" that they never signed up for and, rather than investigate, they will simply ignore it, opt out, or block it. I suppose the same end would probably be reached as an opt in program, eventually. But really, if you want people to actually notice this new facebook feature, it is better to advertise it and then have them consciously seek it out and pick it. At least, that would be my guess.
Just a hint, look for another job that doesn't require you to be on call 24/7. That game is a fool's errand. And, yes, there are jobs out there that don't require that.
That's because nobody outside of our state is crazy enough to elect the man. Don't get me wrong, seizing useless state funded cell phones is fine by me, but considering the rest of Brown's political career, I can see precisely why nobody outside of my state would vote for him.
"Oh, your plow slid off the highway? So sorry, you're on your own. We can't afford $1000/yr on top of your pittance of a salary."
Plow drivers have dedicated radios so that they can communicate to a dispatch station no matter what kind of 'cell reception' area they may be in. There is no need for them to carry both at the cost of the state.
So the state government is supposed to be a jobs program now? That's news to me.
Well no, there were other folks on the ballot too, as well as a write-in line. It's just that 90% of folk can't get their head out of their ass long enough to see past the R and D tags. Why that is, I have no idea.
Well Hester Prynne's village would be proud. I am glad that they mark the exclusion zones red on the maps. They have got the Scarlet part of the stigma correct, but they are missing the letter. Let's just carve 'SO' into their foreheads so everyone can be safe from these dastardly outcasts of society....
By the way, just so I don't repeat Orwell's mistake, this comment is not an instruction manual.
Thanks for the info., I hadn't read that particular bit yet.
Okay, well the first source is interesting, but the basic conclusion of it is that Biden said the U.S. is looking at the possibility of pursuing legal actions. That's not claiming that Assange is the target of U.S. prosecution. Any justice department worth its salt, when addressed with the possibility that a crime has been committed by an individual, will start looking into the matter to see if a case can be built to support such an accusation. That's SOP. Now, if Biden were to come forward and say, "The U.S. will be taking legal action against Julian Assange for issues X, Y, and Z," that would be a declaration of Assange being a target of the U.S. Until then, I have to say that the U.S. DOJ simply appears to be looking into the matter, not necessarily pursing anything further.
The second source you cited doesn't really relate to my claim whatsoever. Subpoenaing Twitter for records regarding wikileaks is different than targeting Assange for prosecution. Assange was one of five members whose account data was requested. This could be used for evidence in a case prosecuting wikileaks, or Manning, or some other member of the wikileaks leadership, or something entirely different. The point is, asking for the information requested is not indicative of a case against Assange. It is indicative of the U.S. government's interest in the matter overall.
So, do I think the U.S. government is targeting wikileaks for an investigation? Yes. Do I think they are targeting Assange for prosecution? No, not yet. I don't see any hard evidence, including your sources, that indicate that the U.S. is necessarily out to get Assange, specifically. Now, I will acknowledge the notion that they could be, and that these are just the first moves from their side of the chess board. But speculation of intention is not evidence of action. So I stand by my assertion.
Maybe, at some point, the U.S. will target Assange, specifically, for prosecution. Until then, however, it appears the the U.S. government is just trying to wrap it's head around the matter of the leak entirety. Of course, as always, I could be wrong.
...especially when attached to a pin and stuck into a large Starbucks straw.
Well now I'm going to have to go and get myself thrown out of my favorite coffee house. Thanks a lot.
We won't. It seems that most of us Americans just like to talk tough and then go home and flip on the T.V. afterwards. Most of the folk that I know that detest our federal government the most, you know, the gun-toting redneck types that want to move to Texas and secede from the union, think Julian Assange is a war criminal and should be executed for treason. Hell, none of them even realize that he is not a U.S. citizen. How they can live with such a conflicting mental arrangement of of enemies in their perception of reality is beyond me. On the one hand, they detest the federal government. On the other hand, they detest the fellow that is embarrassing the federal government. Strange indeed.
I've been following this wikileaks stuff from the get go, and I still haven't seen any evidence to suggest that Assange is the target of anything more than an obsessed media and a lot of public outcry by the same stupid pundits that throw up a public outcry over every other damn thing in the news.
I'll grant that the circumstances and nuances of Assange's whole sex-offender case were damn strange, meaning all that stuff involving the case getting dropped, then picked up, then Interpol involvement, etc. But considering that large government bureaucracies, in general, don't often operate efficiently, or, for that matter, even sensibly half the damn time, all that crap could very well be little more than the Swedish justice system panicking over a high profile case and responding to such global scrutiny in the same way that many people would under such a lens: completely uselessly and foolishly.
I'm not saying Assange explicitly is not on some government blacklist somewhere, but I also don't see a lot of convincing evidence that he definitely is the target of anything in particular; other than, you know, some bitter female scorn projected by two young lasses that he fooled about with.
Owning a $45 million anything will do that.
Well at least that's not the worst thing I've read on the internet today....
Honestly, the sheer fact that you tried, and continue to try, to hijack a thread regarding donations to help the victims to further your own political message is disgusting. The parent poster was simply providing a resource which people could use to donate to disaster relief. You took that opportunity to start proselytizing about climate change because there happens to be some shady people in the same geographic location. Get some fucking perspective. Not everything has to come back to climate change, dirty coal, or whatever other political issues you care about.
I stand by my assertion that you are a jerk and an asshole. Not because you didn't offer kind words to the victims, but because your actions demonstrate that you consider your personal politics to be more important. It's sick, plain and simple.
I'm just going to float this out there. It's not really relevant to the article, nor is it particularly valuable to any discussion, but the discoverer of the Voorwerp, Hanny Van Arkely, is absolutely lovely. Many 'dotters could probably kill an hour or two sifting through her images on Google.
So, let me get this straight, there is a group of people that is actively unfriendly towards the environment. A natural disaster has occurred in the area where that group of people live. Some people in that area, possibly members of the group, possibly not, have died. Other people have outright disappeared. Still other people have had their homes and livelihoods wrecked by a geological event outside the control of the human species. And yet, just because there is a group of people that live in that same area, who have poor environmental practices, the rest of humanity should just turn their backs on everyone affected.
Wow, you're a grade-A, zealous, enviro-nut asshole, FriendlyLurker. I can only hope that you picked your screen name to be ironic, because there is absolutely nothing friendly about the action you are espousing. I think this is one of the most anti-social, sociopathic, and utterly tragic posts I've ever read on this site. You're terrible.
Navy Seals is the operative term there. Those guys don't come cheap, and their training ain't particularly a walk in the park....
As for defining our people as black people in the 1920's you're wrong. The roots of Jazz could be found in the South as far back as the 1870's or so. While it was an African-American movement, one of the key elements to the movement being successful was the poetic way the music style managed to portray the struggle of the African-American in a post slavery, white dominated society. Thus, the roots of the movement were due to African-American's American heritage, more so than their African heritage, as African black cultures did not have the brotherhood or experience of coping with slavery in America or a post-slavery society. Thus, I consider Jazz to be part of American culture, not just African-American culture. So referring to Jazz as a product of our people, meaning those of us united under this country, is perfectly legitimate in my opinion.
I realize that there were massive hostilities between locals and Native American tribes during expansionist eras, but the massive killings and battles waged upon the Native Americans were primarily the product of the federal and state governments, not of the local townspeople. As someone who has grown up in a community very close to the local Native American tribes, I can tell you that their culture has permeated, deeply, into our culture in more ways than we give them credit. If you don't want to acknowledge individual achievement as part of that, then maybe you could look at stoicism, or glibness as values portrayed by the classic Western cowboy archetype as values that we inherited from our Native American brethren. Or, hell, look how popular moccasin style slippers and shoes are and how much turquoise can be found in local jewelry. The point is, many typical values associated with American archetypes were learned from continual interaction with Native Americans.
I wasn't aware of the German national forest program, thanks for the information.
While there are definitely ethnically isolated suburbs of major cities, that doesn't mean there hasn't been a melting pot of cultures. Hell, half the folk that I know that have been married in the past five years are in ethnically blended marriages, and those are primarily made up of white kids that grew up in the same small hick town that I did. So yes, there are still isolated pockets of culture, and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is also a lot of blending of culture on a scale we haven't seen before in history, in this country or anywhere else.
I'd argue that the Golden Ages where never really that golden - maybe gilded for some, but it's been a pretty brutal slog for a lot of people.
Really? Because to date I haven't met a person that was alive in 1969 that said anything other than, "Man, that was a good year," of course, I haven't met everyone, but the general consensus seems to be, from hardcore Christians to ex-hippies and even a few 'Nam vets that 1969 was pretty damn wonderful for some reason. I also get the feeling that a lot of folk would have declared the early 1900's, under TR, to be a pretty damn golden era. The '90's weren't bad either, though I am not sure you could call them a golden age. All I am trying to get at though, is that while we will always have hardships in this country, that's part of the human condition and exactly what has made us strong, there were definitely some times when our victories had good reason to give us a national buzz. Saying otherwise seems to be little more than deep-rooted cynicism.