This is rather unexpected. Traditionally one wants at least two successful unmanned flights before trying for a manned one. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next flight was also unmanned.
Uh, the only astronauts ever lost to a launch vehicle accident are the Challenger crew. No other manned US boosters have ever blown up. And even if they had, all earlier US spacecraft have had launch escape systems.
At least one Soviet manned booster has blown up, but the crew were saved by their escape system.
We did, of course, loose the Apollo 1 crew in our rush to the moon.
The Chinese system, with it's escape system is likely much safer than the shuttle.
Nasa scientists did not get th conversion wrong, but rather to save costs the navigation system was coded, but not tested.
Not quite. LockMart was supposed to provide the data in ISO format, but they provided it in Lbs/ft instead. Thus the calculation (of extremely small off-axis forces) was off by several orders of magnitude. The forces involved were so small, though, that it was very hard to notice that the data was wrong.
Now of course, the first manned mission is not that big. After all we did it back in the 40s.
Uh, that should read: They (the Soviets) did that on 12 April 1961.
And it had a huge impact on the US population. Yet again they had been bested by the communists. The reaction sent us to the moon.
Now, I don't see the Chinese doing all that much in space. There just isn't much value in it for them. The US and USSR had the cold war to spur on their space programs, China has nothing more then the egos of it's leaders.
On the other hand, if China does, for some queer reason, start to do big things in space, I don't see congress sitting around and doing nothing. If nothing else all our republicans will be up in arms trying to match them...
Incidentally, I've heard it's pretty unlikely that they'll launch soon: their tracking ships aren't in place.
Shenzhou appears to be functionally equivalent or superior to a Soyuz. While Soyuz started development in about 1962 it has evolved into a reasonably modern (mid 70s or so) spacecraft. This places it right next to the shuttle in terms of technology level.
Chinese missile technology also appears to be equivalent to or better then 70s or 80s era US technology.
Finally you have to remember that the US has been stuck at the same technological level since the end of shuttle development in the late 70s. We have been standing still since then. So China really doesn't have to go very far to surpass us.
Now, of course there's no way their economy can match the USs in terms of technological development, but if the US doesn't bother to try, that really doesn't make much difference.
This (TransHab is what you're talking about) has been canceled by congress. The only way it will fly is if nasa can find private funds to pay for it.
As if that wern't bad enough, congress has now cut funding for the original ISS Hab module as well. So unless TransHab makes it, ISS will only be able to support a 3 person crew.
This is a serious bummer. TransHab is one of the few truly worthwhile elements of the whole ISS program.
I'd like to know if NASA looked at inflatables for use as ISS crew return vehicles. Some of the earliest applications of this technology were designs for single-man emergency reentry craft. Some designs were little more then a guy in a space suit with the shield strapped to his back and a retro back strapped to his chest.
I'd be willing to bet they dismissed it out of hand, if they even looked at it at all.
This is one of the arguments put forth for the replacement US HAB module: TransHab... It is an inflatable two-story habitat module for the ISS. It's launched deflated and crammed into the shuttle cargo bay and inflated to 5-7 times it's original volume once in orbit.
It has done significantly better than the normal ISS hard-walled modules in impact tests.
Inflatable structures are yet another areospace technology that has been almost completely ignored for the last 30 years. There was significant research done during the late 50s and early 60s...but it was all abandoned when Apollo came around. Then it was never picked back up, as nasa was too busy wasting their time with the shuttle.
This IS privately funded (as much as Russia can privately fund).
Well, the experiment is, but the launch isn't.
The ability to return/reuse spent first stages, instead of burning them up in the atmosphere, seems like one of the most interesting aspects.
Uh, first stanges generally don't burn up... they just don't survive impact very well. In this case they are trying to recover the upper stage. First stages can easily (well, as easy as anything ever is in spaceflight) be recovered with parachutes.
Re:First we need a good launcher...
on
On to Mars
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how Beal turns out. I've heard somewhere recently that they've been having tank problems. Which is not at all surprising when you're dealing with the kind of pressures they're going to need.
They did fire their upper stage engine a while back, though. Now they just have to fire the first stage engine...the F1 class one.........
I put Beal in the midrange in terms of good approaches to cheap access to space. On the one hand they're trying really hard to come up with a super simple booster design. But on the other hand to do it they have to do something that no one has ever even attempted before: build a large scale pressure fed rocket.
I find it even more strange because of the fact that they want to recover their lower stage (with airbags...I think)...but if thats the case, why not just use turbopumps? Very strange.
Linux has over 400 global kernel locks (calls to lock_kernel()).
Which kernel are you speaking of? 2.3 is better at this then 2.2 was, as 2.2 was better then 2.0 was.
You speak of this as if it were a deliberate design decision. It wasn't. Linux started out as a single cpu kernel. SMP support came in with 2.0, became really usable in 2.2 and is still being tweaked in 2.3...
I don't need 400 day uptimes under the load of 500 users.
What sort of uptime do you need? Will 24 hours do? 10? 5? It rather depends on what your working on when the damned thing decides to crash, doesn't it? You do need 400 day uptimes. You need 1000 day uptimes. Otherwise you're always going to be clunking your way along in Word, saving your document after every paragraph.
Just think of how much time and energy could be saved if every computer user in every office on the planet no longer had to reboot two or three times a day... Think of how much more productive these people could be. How much more time off they could have. Think about it...
Re:the longer we wait the cheaper / easier it will
on
On to Mars
·
· Score: 1
The problem is none of this research gets turned into usable products. ie:
Ion engines: these have been tested on the ground since the 50s...yet the first large ion engine was just launched a year ago. The technology has been around in basically it's final form for decades.
Areospike / Plugnozzle rocket engines: These have been around since the 60s. Rocketdyne tested 250,000 lbs models on test stands hundreds of times. Yet none have ever even been tested on aircraft, let alone on a booster. Their first use will hopefully be on the X-33...although as we all know with it's tank problems it's looking more and more improbable. This is a technology that should have been used on the space shuttle, as it fits the performance profile of the SSMEs extreamly well (operation from sealevel all the way to vacuum), yet NASA decided to crap out and design yet another bell engine.
Nuclear rocket engines: another technology that has been around since the 60s. One again tested extensively on the ground, but no one ever bothered to stick one in orbit.
And the list goes on and on...
The only way to spur useful space technology development is to go out there and try to do things using current space technology, then we will have a drive to develope better replacements.
Re:Gas Core Nuclear Rocket
on
On to Mars
·
· Score: 1
I like the idea of a Zubrin-style "live off the land" approach, and maybe we should try that now since that's what we know we can do this minute.
The mars direct plan really is a snazzy one. It not only gets us to mars using current technology ( and boosters), but it would demonstrate that we can actually manufacture stuff there. It could really show people that mars could be useful in a financial sense.
The one problem with the plan is that it requires nuclear power. So you have to convince washington to let you launch nuclear reactors... And before that you have to convince washington to fund the development of said reactors. Don't get me wrong, there are no techical problems, their are just large political ones.
Re:Gas Core Nuclear Rocket
on
On to Mars
·
· Score: 1
Oh yes, this is what we need, more ill-reasoned kneejerk anti-nuclear responses.
A. Did you notice the Van allen belt comment above? Try to get to mars cheaply with gravity assist while not recieving huge doses of radiation from the belts.
B. Why do you think a nuclear powered craft would be any less tested then a chemical one? Noone said anything about expecting people to fly on unproved technology.
C. Do you know that nuclear rocket engines have already been tested? In the mid 60s several nuclear thermal rocket engines were tested in Nevada. One of them had a thrust of around 250,000 lbs, even.
I think one of the most helpful things we could all do for mankind is to start on an extensive nuclear technology public education project. We need to teach people that nuclear energy is really the key to our future. It can be done safely, and is already far cleaner than any other alternatives. Our future is nuclear, and it's about time we started pounding it into the public's collective mind.
Re:First we need a good launcher...
on
On to Mars
·
· Score: 2
What we really need is a hybrid space-plane, or a craft that can fly in 'air mode' while it's in the air, then switch on the rockets when it gets high enough.
The problem with this approach is that you don't really gain much. A normal booster is only within the lower atmosphere (where there is enough oxygen to possibly help with combustion) for maybe it's first minute of flight. After that there isn't enough atmosphere to make any real difference. But you still have to carry along either extra airbreathing engines, or air intakes and a dual mode engine (which usually makes a crappy rocket).
The second problem, of course, is that dual mode engines generally perform badly... Jet engines and rocket engines can be optimized for decent efficiency. A dual mode (any of the various types) generally makes a crappy jet/rocket combination.
The real problem with corrent booster technology is that it is still simply based on ICBMs... Cost isn't a concern with ICBMs. So when you take one and turn it into a launch vehicle you end up with a non-optimized design.
Look at the Titans: they all run on UDMH and Hydrazine, great for an ICBM because it's storable, horrible for a booster because they're both terribly toxic. Add excessive tank stretching and restructuring to handle solid boosters and you end up with one of the most expensive boosters in history: the Titan IV. Add to that a company trying to save money at every turn (ie LockMart) and you end up with the last few Titan IV "lanuches"....
Now look at the Atlas... It burns RP-1 and LOX, far more benign propellants, and far cheaper then UDMH and Hydrazine to boot. The problem here is that Atlas was the US's very first ICBM. This thing started development in the 50s. It is truly the oldest US booster flying. It really is an elegant design, with the balloon tanks and booster/sustainer engines. Yet the modern varients haven't incorporated hardly any new technology. All Atlas IIs are bascally 1950s ICBMs. The real bummer is that, instead of building on 40 years of experience, Boeing has decided, with the Atlas III and IV, to throw everything away and start over. Atlas III and IV will not use balloon tanks, nor will they use the 1.5 stage design.
Cheap access to space does not require revolutionary launch systems. You don't need SSTO, nor do you really need RLVs... All you need is someone to sit down and design a new booster, from scratch, with economy as it's main point. And you have to do with by looking at other older boosters. One of the reasons the shuttle is so horrible is that the people designing it didn't look around at the problems of existing designs. They just assumed they could build a better system from a purely theoretical basis.
As always in this stupid industry it all comes down to political will and money. Find a way to fund commerical development of a new booster and we'll be well on our way to cheap access to space...
The bigger problem is indeed that Saturn V used early 60s parts. Some of these parts were hard to come by even during the late 60s.
One also has to remember that much of the Saturn V design was never written down. Each booster was slightly different, as the design was altered a bit after each flight. Much of the practical knowledge was stored in engineer's heads...which generally are no longer functioning.
Netscape will allow you to reject all cookies or it can be set to warn you before accepting cookies. This may not be the most efficient way of stopping them, but it does work.
This isn't terribly safe, though... letting just one doubleclick cookie through will let them track you from that point on. It's quite easy to screw up when you're trying to work your way into some site which tries to set 20 cookies per page. A much better option is either a blocker like Junkbuster, or aliasing.
Slashdot Mirror
clearly indicates that they see the massive economic advantages awaiting
above the stratosphere.
Nah, it's just the chinese leaders flexing their muscles. Manned spaceflight is simply not going to be profitable for a long time to come.
This is rather unexpected. Traditionally one wants at least two successful unmanned flights before trying for a manned one. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next flight was also unmanned.
Uh, the only astronauts ever lost to a launch vehicle accident are the Challenger crew. No other manned US boosters have ever blown up. And even if they had, all earlier US spacecraft have had launch escape systems.
At least one Soviet manned booster has blown up, but the crew were saved by their escape system.
We did, of course, loose the Apollo 1 crew in our rush to the moon.
The Chinese system, with it's escape system is likely much safer than the shuttle.
Nasa scientists did not get th conversion wrong, but rather to save costs the navigation system was coded, but not tested.
Not quite. LockMart was supposed to provide the data in ISO format, but they provided it in Lbs/ft instead. Thus the calculation (of extremely small off-axis forces) was off by several orders of magnitude. The forces involved were so small, though, that it was very hard to notice that the data was wrong.
it will take the Chinese longer to catch up to us than it will take us to colonize Mars ...
You're assuming we will even try to run the race...a mighty big assumption given space funding levels of the last 20 years.....
Now of course, the first manned mission is not that big. After all we did it back in the 40s.
Uh, that should read: They (the Soviets) did that on 12 April 1961.
And it had a huge impact on the US population. Yet again they had been bested by the communists. The reaction sent us to the moon.
Now, I don't see the Chinese doing all that much in space. There just isn't much value in it for them. The US and USSR had the cold war to spur on their space programs, China has nothing more then the egos of it's leaders.
On the other hand, if China does, for some queer reason, start to do big things in space, I don't see congress sitting around and doing nothing. If nothing else all our republicans will be up in arms trying to match them...
Incidentally, I've heard it's pretty unlikely that they'll launch soon: their tracking ships aren't in place.
Shenzhou appears to be functionally equivalent or superior to a Soyuz. While Soyuz started development in about 1962 it has evolved into a reasonably modern (mid 70s or so) spacecraft. This places it right next to the shuttle in terms of technology level.
Chinese missile technology also appears to be equivalent to or better then 70s or 80s era US technology.
Finally you have to remember that the US has been stuck at the same technological level since the end of shuttle development in the late 70s. We have been standing still since then. So China really doesn't have to go very far to surpass us.
Now, of course there's no way their economy can match the USs in terms of technological development, but if the US doesn't bother to try, that really doesn't make much difference.
This (TransHab is what you're talking about) has been canceled by congress. The only way it will fly is if nasa can find private funds to pay for it.
As if that wern't bad enough, congress has now cut funding for the original ISS Hab module as well. So unless TransHab makes it, ISS will only be able to support a 3 person crew.
This is a serious bummer. TransHab is one of the few truly worthwhile elements of the whole ISS program.
There are several designs described on Mark Wade's site:
e scue.htm
http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/craftfam/r
Yet another example of why brand new boosters shouldn't fly real payloads on their first launches. We seem to have forgotten this fact....
I'd like to know if NASA looked at inflatables for use as ISS crew return vehicles. Some of the earliest applications of this technology were designs for single-man emergency reentry craft. Some designs were little more then a guy in a space suit with the shield strapped to his back and a retro back strapped to his chest.
I'd be willing to bet they dismissed it out of hand, if they even looked at it at all.
This is one of the arguments put forth for the replacement US HAB module: TransHab... It is an inflatable two-story habitat module for the ISS. It's launched deflated and crammed into the shuttle cargo bay and inflated to 5-7 times it's original volume once in orbit.
It has done significantly better than the normal ISS hard-walled modules in impact tests.
Inflatable structures are yet another areospace technology that has been almost completely ignored for the last 30 years. There was significant research done during the late 50s and early 60s...but it was all abandoned when Apollo came around. Then it was never picked back up, as nasa was too busy wasting their time with the shuttle.
This IS privately funded (as much as Russia can privately fund).
Well, the experiment is, but the launch isn't.
The ability to return/reuse spent first stages, instead of burning them up in the atmosphere, seems like one of the most interesting aspects.
Uh, first stanges generally don't burn up... they just don't survive impact very well. In this case they are trying to recover the upper stage. First stages can easily (well, as easy as anything ever is in spaceflight) be recovered with parachutes.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how Beal turns out. I've heard somewhere recently that they've been having tank problems. Which is not at all surprising when you're dealing with the kind of pressures they're going to need.
They did fire their upper stage engine a while back, though. Now they just have to fire the first stage engine...the F1 class one.........
I put Beal in the midrange in terms of good approaches to cheap access to space. On the one hand they're trying really hard to come up with a super simple booster design. But on the other hand to do it they have to do something that no one has ever even attempted before: build a large scale pressure fed rocket.
I find it even more strange because of the fact that they want to recover their lower stage (with airbags...I think)...but if thats the case, why not just use turbopumps? Very strange.
Linux has over 400 global kernel locks (calls to lock_kernel()).
Which kernel are you speaking of? 2.3 is better at this then 2.2 was, as 2.2 was better then 2.0 was.
You speak of this as if it were a deliberate design decision. It wasn't. Linux started out as a single cpu kernel. SMP support came in with 2.0, became really usable in 2.2 and is still being tweaked in 2.3...
adopt egcs like the rest of the friggin computer world.
Why? What does it get us?
I don't need 400 day uptimes under the load of 500 users.
What sort of uptime do you need? Will 24 hours do? 10? 5? It rather depends on what your working on when the damned thing decides to crash, doesn't it? You do need 400 day uptimes. You need 1000 day uptimes. Otherwise you're always going to be clunking your way along in Word, saving your document after every paragraph.
Just think of how much time and energy could be saved if every computer user in every office on the planet no longer had to reboot two or three times a day... Think of how much more productive these people could be. How much more time off they could have. Think about it...
The problem is none of this research gets turned into usable products. ie:
Ion engines: these have been tested on the ground since the 50s...yet the first large ion engine was just launched a year ago. The technology has been around in basically it's final form for decades.
Areospike / Plugnozzle rocket engines: These have been around since the 60s. Rocketdyne tested 250,000 lbs models on test stands hundreds of times. Yet none have ever even been tested on aircraft, let alone on a booster. Their first use will hopefully be on the X-33...although as we all know with it's tank problems it's looking more and more improbable. This is a technology that should have been used on the space shuttle, as it fits the performance profile of the SSMEs extreamly well (operation from sealevel all the way to vacuum), yet NASA decided to crap out and design yet another bell engine.
Nuclear rocket engines: another technology that has been around since the 60s. One again tested extensively on the ground, but no one ever bothered to stick one in orbit.
And the list goes on and on...
The only way to spur useful space technology development is to go out there and try to do things using current space technology, then we will have a drive to develope better replacements.
I like the idea of a Zubrin-style "live off the land" approach, and maybe we should try that now since that's what we know we can do this minute.
The mars direct plan really is a snazzy one. It not only gets us to mars using current technology ( and boosters), but it would demonstrate that we can actually manufacture stuff there. It could really show people that mars could be useful in a financial sense.
The one problem with the plan is that it requires nuclear power. So you have to convince washington to let you launch nuclear reactors... And before that you have to convince washington to fund the development of said reactors. Don't get me wrong, there are no techical problems, their are just large political ones.
Oh yes, this is what we need, more ill-reasoned kneejerk anti-nuclear responses.
A. Did you notice the Van allen belt comment above? Try to get to mars cheaply with gravity assist while not recieving huge doses of radiation from the belts.
B. Why do you think a nuclear powered craft would be any less tested then a chemical one? Noone said anything about expecting people to fly on unproved technology.
C. Do you know that nuclear rocket engines have already been tested? In the mid 60s several nuclear thermal rocket engines were tested in Nevada. One of them had a thrust of around 250,000 lbs, even.
I think one of the most helpful things we could all do for mankind is to start on an extensive nuclear technology public education project. We need to teach people that nuclear energy is really the key to our future. It can be done safely, and is already far cleaner than any other alternatives. Our future is nuclear, and it's about time we started pounding it into the public's collective mind.
What we really need is a hybrid space-plane, or a craft that can fly in 'air mode' while it's in the air, then switch on the rockets when it gets high enough.
The problem with this approach is that you don't really gain much. A normal booster is only within the lower atmosphere (where there is enough oxygen to possibly help with combustion) for maybe it's first minute of flight. After that there isn't enough atmosphere to make any real difference. But you still have to carry along either extra airbreathing engines, or air intakes and a dual mode engine (which usually makes a crappy rocket).
The second problem, of course, is that dual mode engines generally perform badly... Jet engines and rocket engines can be optimized for decent efficiency. A dual mode (any of the various types) generally makes a crappy jet/rocket combination.
The real problem with corrent booster technology is that it is still simply based on ICBMs... Cost isn't a concern with ICBMs. So when you take one and turn it into a launch vehicle you end up with a non-optimized design.
Look at the Titans: they all run on UDMH and Hydrazine, great for an ICBM because it's storable, horrible for a booster because they're both terribly toxic. Add excessive tank stretching and restructuring to handle solid boosters and you end up with one of the most expensive boosters in history: the Titan IV. Add to that a company trying to save money at every turn (ie LockMart) and you end up with the last few Titan IV "lanuches"....
Now look at the Atlas... It burns RP-1 and LOX, far more benign propellants, and far cheaper then UDMH and Hydrazine to boot. The problem here is that Atlas was the US's very first ICBM. This thing started development in the 50s. It is truly the oldest US booster flying. It really is an elegant design, with the balloon tanks and booster/sustainer engines. Yet the modern varients haven't incorporated hardly any new technology. All Atlas IIs are bascally 1950s ICBMs. The real bummer is that, instead of building on 40 years of experience, Boeing has decided, with the Atlas III and IV, to throw everything away and start over. Atlas III and IV will not use balloon tanks, nor will they use the 1.5 stage design.
Cheap access to space does not require revolutionary launch systems. You don't need SSTO, nor do you really need RLVs... All you need is someone to sit down and design a new booster, from scratch, with economy as it's main point. And you have to do with by looking at other older boosters. One of the reasons the shuttle is so horrible is that the people designing it didn't look around at the problems of existing designs. They just assumed they could build a better system from a purely theoretical basis.
As always in this stupid industry it all comes down to political will and money. Find a way to fund commerical development of a new booster and we'll be well on our way to cheap access to space...
Some of the plans exist, some don't.
The bigger problem is indeed that Saturn V used early 60s parts. Some of these parts were hard to come by even during the late 60s.
One also has to remember that much of the Saturn V design was never written down. Each booster was slightly different, as the design was altered a bit after each flight. Much of the practical knowledge was stored in engineer's heads...which generally are no longer functioning.
Even if you tell Netscape to not send cookies and delete your cookie file? How is that possible?
It isn't. The original suggestion was to set netscape to "ask befor accepting cookie".
Turing cookies completely off and deleting the cookie file should do the trick.
Who was it who said "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from." ?
Andrew Tanenbaum... Although he probably stole it from someone else.
Netscape will allow you to reject all cookies or it can be set to warn you before accepting cookies. This may not be the most efficient way of stopping them, but it does work.
This isn't terribly safe, though... letting just one doubleclick cookie through will let them track you from that point on. It's quite easy to screw up when you're trying to work your way into some site which tries to set 20 cookies per page. A much better option is either a blocker like Junkbuster, or aliasing.