Ah, so you believe the politicians when they tell you the ISS/Shuttle is about exploration?
It's actually about job creation schemes for Russians who could help foreign powers build ICBMs pointed at America. That's what the ISS is for. MIR did nearly all the exploration already. You'll note a lack of scientific papers coming from the ISS.
Space needs to be about money to get anywhere now. Space Tourism is the future; there's a reasonably plausible route to Lunar and Martian travel (including exploration) via it. First we need orbital hotels and suitable launchers. The suborbital stuff will hopefully derisk it for investors so that these can be built.
That's unfair. You're must be counting unmanned Soyuz launches toward the total to get the 2% number
No. Just the manned launches, Progress is not included. Check the wikipedia article for more information. Space Disasters.
You only mention the manned failures because it makes your side look better; the failures being on unmanned craft, however, was just a coincidence.
No, the question was about passenger safety what the odds for his child on a launch vehicle was, not reliability; Soyuz is possibly less reliable, but it is somewhat safer for the cosmonauts.
By the way, that 2002 launch? It killed a soldier on the ground, who undoubtedly wasn't included in your count, in addition to wounding 8 (a mile away from the explosion, at that).
That was a Progress launch. It's quite possible that had it been a Soyuz that the cosmonauts would have escaped on the escape tower. The fatality was standing behind a plate glass window within the blast range. Very avoidable and very sad. Incidentally that shows a worse problem with the shuttle- a similar failure of the Shuttle could kill hundreds; the launch pad is surrounded by thousands of people for miles around, including watching from behind windows. Many, many deaths are to be expected.
The high safety of Soyuz is not a coincidence; it has been built in from the ground up (no pun intended). The Shuttle was badly designed; it has safety issues they still haven't solved, the foam for example is still expected to damage the tiles on takeoff; and some of the abort modes are extremely suspect. The Soyuz abort modes do actually work; in some cases we know this because they've been executed. Still, as with ejector seats, surviving and lack of injury is not the same thing- even in aeroplanes ejector seats often weaken the pilot enough that they never fly again.
Check out the wikipedia article for more info: Space Disasters.
You've messed up the difference between safety and reliability. The shuttle reliability is 2%- 1 in 50, but the safety is actually only 95.5% (4.5% deathrate) because they put different numbers of astronauts on some of the shuttles (the first launch only had 2 crew for example, and some of the defense-related launches had reduced crew also), but both times they blew up, they had a full crew onboard. If you do the maths, it's about a 4.5% fatality rate.
Shuttle is actually more than twice as dangerous than Soyuz (overall), furthermore Soyuz hasn't had any deaths at all in about 30 years, and none with the current version that seats 3. The reason Soyuz is safer is because they had all the really deadly problems early on when they only risked small crews, whereas the Shuttle is more brittle, and kills at random (hence more likely to kill a large crew).
Nope. Death rate (astronaut fatality per launch) for the shuttle is 4.5%. Count em. IRC it's because the number of astronauts launched varies- some of the defense launches had fewer crew.
By way of contrast, Soyuz's death rate is under 2% and getting lower all the time, and they haven't had any deaths in over 25 years, and none with the current version.
Soyuz is significantly less brittle than the Shuttle, they have an escape tower, and their abort modes actually do seem to work- some of the Shuttle's involve 3 miracles happening.
Don't feel bad, Rosetta is probably based on a project called 'Dynamo' which was an HP project that did binary translation of PA-8000 processor code to the self-same PA-8000, running on the same machine(!)
In other words, it was an PA-8000 emulator, running on PA-8000. And it very often ran faster!!!! (Between 5 and 40%, occasionally slower, but then it switched itself off and ran natively.)
Obviously there was a trick; and it was that it was able to do stuff like straighten out code, which improved cache usage, and measure how the code actually ran, rather than how the compiler thought it might run, and generally do great run-time decisions.
It's not completely clear. However the potential tensile energy of the cable under normal loading is entirely comparable to a high explosive per kg of cable.
Basically, it has been suggested that if the cable breaks a 'spray' of fragments will be thrown up and down the cable, possibly causing further damage.
Freeman Dyson is on record as saying that he doesn't think it will work for essentially this reason "but he's willing to be persuaded". This from a man who once wanted to sit on a few thousand exploding nuclear bombs- he's clearly getting cautious in his old age.
However, if this shrapnel effect can be dealt with, concepts like a 'hoytether' can be considered (basically make the ribbon like a fishnet, so small threads being cut wouldn't cause the whole elevator snapping.) Overbuilding the cable by a few percent would then mean that there would be ample reservoir to deal with any local lack of strength from broken threads.
You're saying that slashdot isn't blocked, but the BBC is? Well, for whatever reason it is blocked, it's not blocked for productivity reasons, that's for sure.:-)
For real! Re:I had a better suggestion
on
Blank Keyboard
·
· Score: 1
Can I get a version that has the letters on all the wrong keys, so I'm
punished if I get weak and look at the keyboard?
I actually had this. Well, it didn't come that way...
I levered off the keycaps on my keyboard (they were only clipped on), and swapped them around- keeping them in the same row due to offsets. (n.b. not all keyboards can do this, but quite a few can- some just break when you try it:-) )
It actually really helped, whilst I knew where the keys were, I kept looking down to see where they were all the time.
By swapping them around I soon broke the habit.
The main downside were the people who 'wanted to show me something' and tried to grab the keyboard, followed by a yell: 'what have you done to your keyboard!'
LOL. Guess they weren't touch typists.
Eventually I graduated to being a touch typist, and I swapped them back again.
I must admit this new keyboard looks darn cool though.
In the UK though, we bury our power cables, so the cables aren't nearly as leaky.
However, even in the UK, there's a problem- the street lights are run off the mains too. So you have a whole row of transmitters all neatly lined up. Gah. Presumably it's possible to put a filter on each and every one at ground level, but it's fairly expensive I guess.
I talked to some of the guys that worked for Nortel on it, they were very enthusiastic, and seemed to think it would work.
One problem they got around was the streetlights again. At UK lighting up time, all the streetlights turn on, something like: blink, blinkety-blink, blink blink blink, on. Now each blink throws a whole mess of noise on the mains. And you have a whole street full of them. Essentially, the internet connection would go down for a minute or two everyday at lighting up time:-)
I think they changed their filtering or shortened the packet size or something, and the problem mostly went away... But it was funny.
Still, I don't see powerline internet really taking off, never did.
Actually that's about the only point of the ISS that actually makes any sense. Actually running an oxygen generator for long periods to see if it actually works. That's actually necessary to test out for a Mars mission.
In practice, for the ISS, the recalcitrant oxygen generator is mainly just a nuisance, at worst, because it operates atleast part of the time, it still cuts down on the amount of oxygen that needs shipping up from the ground and leaves room in the supply vessels for other equipment.
Trying to make it anything larger makes you suddenly slam straight into those limits (ie: you need to build your own space station or add extra launch facilities, training facilities, etc.).
Well, Bigelow has cheap space hotels in the pipeline, and there's a fair amount of capacity if the launch process can be streamlined.
Also it's in Russia; it's questionable if such a venture would even be profitable in the US.
So, are Nike shoes; they're profitable because they don't make them in Russia. That's why NASA doing manned flight is so bad- it helps prevent launching using cheap Russian kit. Also, there's no reason why Russian stuff couldn't be launched from America; they already have deals with ESA.
Because NASA is in the exploration business, not the charter bus business.
Really? I have no problem with genuine exploration, but I have extreme difficulty in understanding what exploration the ISS was all about. It's not like there's been thousands of new discoveries from the ISS. On the other hand check out Cassini.
Basically, for human flight, to put it extremely crudely, NASA should piss or get off the pot. The evidence of the Shuttle and the ISS is that NASA is not as good at it as the Russians. Russia launches for a fraction of the cost, even allowing for the lower wages, and with better than half the deaths per person launched.
So you get to spend a week on a largely-US funded space station for $20mil?
Yup. Everyone that has gone thinks zero-g is a blast; and the Earth looks pretty whizzing past at 8km/s. Facile? Maybe. Unique- definitely.
The more people that launch to there, the more facilities are needed, and the cheaper it becomes to use lunar resources than launch everthing from the Earth- it turns out that that is cheaper, but the startup costs are high.
Humanity doesn't gain anything and most people can't afford it anyway. Hell the launch costs alone are probably around $300k+ per person, and that won't go down without either a space elevator, nuclear rocket or a lot more space travel (and I mean a lot).
Actually, the space elevator probably doesn't work for humans because of the Van Allen belts, (but it might be good for cargo); but simply launching a LOT probably does.
Why does it matter?
Cheap energy (Solar Power Satellites), colonisation of other planets, reduction of CO2 production, exploration of the solar system. Basically launching a lot reduces the costs, and opens up space so that we can actually use it and go places other than the Earth. Is that bad or wrong?
And the only reason Russia is even sending ordinary peopel into space is because they're broke.
So what you're saying is that Russia is doing it to make money, and there is a market. And this is a problem because?
Yes, but I wasn't. The safety of mineral oil is quite high, it's difficult to ignite and generally requires a wick or vapourisation. In this application where everything is submerged it's very difficult for me to see how anything bad can happen.
Apparently people should only play on the beach in positive pressure respiration equipment, and sand pits for kids; what are you nuts?:-)
Whilst silicosis is a real disease, and lots of people have actually died of ethanol toxicity, I'm not entirely sure that somebody isn't having a laugh at us when I read these sheets.
Slashdot Mirror
It's actually about job creation schemes for Russians who could help foreign powers build ICBMs pointed at America. That's what the ISS is for. MIR did nearly all the exploration already. You'll note a lack of scientific papers coming from the ISS.
Space needs to be about money to get anywhere now. Space Tourism is the future; there's a reasonably plausible route to Lunar and Martian travel (including exploration) via it. First we need orbital hotels and suitable launchers. The suborbital stuff will hopefully derisk it for investors so that these can be built.
Yes, but even allowing for that, the facts say that Soyuz is more than twice as safe, per person who flies.
No. Just the manned launches, Progress is not included. Check the wikipedia article for more information. Space Disasters.
You only mention the manned failures because it makes your side look better; the failures being on unmanned craft, however, was just a coincidence.
No, the question was about passenger safety what the odds for his child on a launch vehicle was, not reliability; Soyuz is possibly less reliable, but it is somewhat safer for the cosmonauts.
By the way, that 2002 launch? It killed a soldier on the ground, who undoubtedly wasn't included in your count, in addition to wounding 8 (a mile away from the explosion, at that).
That was a Progress launch. It's quite possible that had it been a Soyuz that the cosmonauts would have escaped on the escape tower. The fatality was standing behind a plate glass window within the blast range. Very avoidable and very sad. Incidentally that shows a worse problem with the shuttle- a similar failure of the Shuttle could kill hundreds; the launch pad is surrounded by thousands of people for miles around, including watching from behind windows. Many, many deaths are to be expected.
The high safety of Soyuz is not a coincidence; it has been built in from the ground up (no pun intended). The Shuttle was badly designed; it has safety issues they still haven't solved, the foam for example is still expected to damage the tiles on takeoff; and some of the abort modes are extremely suspect. The Soyuz abort modes do actually work; in some cases we know this because they've been executed. Still, as with ejector seats, surviving and lack of injury is not the same thing- even in aeroplanes ejector seats often weaken the pilot enough that they never fly again.
Sure, it has made one-way trips twice before.
You've messed up the difference between safety and reliability. The shuttle reliability is 2%- 1 in 50, but the safety is actually only 95.5% (4.5% deathrate) because they put different numbers of astronauts on some of the shuttles (the first launch only had 2 crew for example, and some of the defense-related launches had reduced crew also), but both times they blew up, they had a full crew onboard. If you do the maths, it's about a 4.5% fatality rate.
Shuttle is actually more than twice as dangerous than Soyuz (overall), furthermore Soyuz hasn't had any deaths at all in about 30 years, and none with the current version that seats 3. The reason Soyuz is safer is because they had all the really deadly problems early on when they only risked small crews, whereas the Shuttle is more brittle, and kills at random (hence more likely to kill a large crew).
By way of contrast, Soyuz's death rate is under 2% and getting lower all the time, and they haven't had any deaths in over 25 years, and none with the current version.
Soyuz is significantly less brittle than the Shuttle, they have an escape tower, and their abort modes actually do seem to work- some of the Shuttle's involve 3 miracles happening.
Yeah, I meant 'based on' in the sense of 'similar technology to that developed for' rather than it being the same code; which it clearly wouldn't be.
In other words, it was an PA-8000 emulator, running on PA-8000. And it very often ran faster!!!! (Between 5 and 40%, occasionally slower, but then it switched itself off and ran natively.)
Obviously there was a trick; and it was that it was able to do stuff like straighten out code, which improved cache usage, and measure how the code actually ran, rather than how the compiler thought it might run, and generally do great run-time decisions.
Hey, nice karma. Must be something to do with your positive and sunny disposition.
Knew once I a software engineer that dabbled in the hardware, and destroyed him did it.
"How do I know the difference between hardware and software, it's all digital isn't it?"
When alone and peace at are you, clear it will be. Or you could always ask a systems engineer.
Basically, it has been suggested that if the cable breaks a 'spray' of fragments will be thrown up and down the cable, possibly causing further damage.
Freeman Dyson is on record as saying that he doesn't think it will work for essentially this reason "but he's willing to be persuaded". This from a man who once wanted to sit on a few thousand exploding nuclear bombs- he's clearly getting cautious in his old age.
However, if this shrapnel effect can be dealt with, concepts like a 'hoytether' can be considered (basically make the ribbon like a fishnet, so small threads being cut wouldn't cause the whole elevator snapping.) Overbuilding the cable by a few percent would then mean that there would be ample reservoir to deal with any local lack of strength from broken threads.
Also orgasm...
Well, first it needs to start distributing information.
You're saying that slashdot isn't blocked, but the BBC is? Well, for whatever reason it is blocked, it's not blocked for productivity reasons, that's for sure. :-)
I actually had this. Well, it didn't come that way...
I levered off the keycaps on my keyboard (they were only clipped on), and swapped them around- keeping them in the same row due to offsets. (n.b. not all keyboards can do this, but quite a few can- some just break when you try it :-) )
It actually really helped, whilst I knew where the keys were, I kept looking down to see where they were all the time.
By swapping them around I soon broke the habit.
The main downside were the people who 'wanted to show me something' and tried to grab the keyboard, followed by a yell: 'what have you done to your keyboard!'
LOL. Guess they weren't touch typists.
Eventually I graduated to being a touch typist, and I swapped them back again.
I must admit this new keyboard looks darn cool though.
If you choose the encryption carefully, you shouldn't have any problem with OS specificity.
Also, there are encryption systems that can be run literally on a pack of cards(!) or with pen and paper, but I'm not sure how secure they are.
However, even in the UK, there's a problem- the street lights are run off the mains too. So you have a whole row of transmitters all neatly lined up. Gah. Presumably it's possible to put a filter on each and every one at ground level, but it's fairly expensive I guess.
I talked to some of the guys that worked for Nortel on it, they were very enthusiastic, and seemed to think it would work.
One problem they got around was the streetlights again. At UK lighting up time, all the streetlights turn on, something like: blink, blinkety-blink, blink blink blink, on. Now each blink throws a whole mess of noise on the mains. And you have a whole street full of them. Essentially, the internet connection would go down for a minute or two everyday at lighting up time :-)
I think they changed their filtering or shortened the packet size or something, and the problem mostly went away... But it was funny.
Still, I don't see powerline internet really taking off, never did.
In practice, for the ISS, the recalcitrant oxygen generator is mainly just a nuisance, at worst, because it operates atleast part of the time, it still cuts down on the amount of oxygen that needs shipping up from the ground and leaves room in the supply vessels for other equipment.
Well, Bigelow has cheap space hotels in the pipeline, and there's a fair amount of capacity if the launch process can be streamlined.
Also it's in Russia; it's questionable if such a venture would even be profitable in the US.
So, are Nike shoes; they're profitable because they don't make them in Russia. That's why NASA doing manned flight is so bad- it helps prevent launching using cheap Russian kit. Also, there's no reason why Russian stuff couldn't be launched from America; they already have deals with ESA.
Really? I have no problem with genuine exploration, but I have extreme difficulty in understanding what exploration the ISS was all about. It's not like there's been thousands of new discoveries from the ISS. On the other hand check out Cassini.
Basically, for human flight, to put it extremely crudely, NASA should piss or get off the pot. The evidence of the Shuttle and the ISS is that NASA is not as good at it as the Russians. Russia launches for a fraction of the cost, even allowing for the lower wages, and with better than half the deaths per person launched.
Yup. Everyone that has gone thinks zero-g is a blast; and the Earth looks pretty whizzing past at 8km/s. Facile? Maybe. Unique- definitely.
The more people that launch to there, the more facilities are needed, and the cheaper it becomes to use lunar resources than launch everthing from the Earth- it turns out that that is cheaper, but the startup costs are high.
Humanity doesn't gain anything and most people can't afford it anyway. Hell the launch costs alone are probably around $300k+ per person, and that won't go down without either a space elevator, nuclear rocket or a lot more space travel (and I mean a lot).
Actually, the space elevator probably doesn't work for humans because of the Van Allen belts, (but it might be good for cargo); but simply launching a LOT probably does.
Why does it matter?
Cheap energy (Solar Power Satellites), colonisation of other planets, reduction of CO2 production, exploration of the solar system. Basically launching a lot reduces the costs, and opens up space so that we can actually use it and go places other than the Earth. Is that bad or wrong?
And the only reason Russia is even sending ordinary peopel into space is because they're broke.
So what you're saying is that Russia is doing it to make money, and there is a market. And this is a problem because?
Atleast the Russians will send you up if you're fit enough and loaded, NASA doesn't even do that.
So why would this plan be a good one?
Yes, he has Wolfram envy. Which is a shame, because it's not the size it's what you do with it that counts.
Yes, but I wasn't. The safety of mineral oil is quite high, it's difficult to ignite and generally requires a wick or vapourisation. In this application where everything is submerged it's very difficult for me to see how anything bad can happen.
Apparently people should only play on the beach in positive pressure respiration equipment, and sand pits for kids; what are you nuts? :-)
Whilst silicosis is a real disease, and lots of people have actually died of ethanol toxicity, I'm not entirely sure that somebody isn't having a laugh at us when I read these sheets.