In reality it is exactly the opposite: he can call them whatever he damn well pleases because he has Free Speech, while they are restricted while on duty because they're representatives of the State.
I was with you until this one. Free speech does NOT give you the unlimited right to any platform you want for your speech. You're not allowed to yell fire in a crowded theatre, yadda yadda, and you're not allowed to interfere with the police. If the police are doing their job, and they tell you to "shut the F up", you do what they tell you. I have zero sympathy for idiots who make their job harder, and by extension, make the police have to be that much more confrontational to get the job done.
As for this story, I would totally be in favor of a law that gives citizens the absolute right to record any public official any time they want. I suspect in this case, the homeowner in question was being a total a-hole, so the police overreacted. Both are most likely in the wrong.
Oh, I was right. You're replying to some other websites and stuff. Okay. I thought you were replying to the things I said.
No, I was replying to you and specifically the things you said.
Likewise I don't think using the word "cooperation" makes me a utopian/self-righteous/Statist whatever-else-you-think-I-am.
And that's the crux of my point (maybe you need to go back and read it again) -- that wishing for a world of cooperation often necessitates using force to achieve it. You specifically mentioned the experiment in the Russia with Stalin, as though you agreed with the goals, if not the implementation. My point is that good intentions are wonderful, but it's rarely the case that people with good intentions are content to mind their own business.
Doesn't hurt that they have such nice ads for the MACs now....
They stopped running those annoying, smug and arrogant PC versus Mac ads? God, I hope so. I can't believe those ads sold one Mac, though I could believe it turned off a lot of people.
I don't see anything about forced equality or redistribution of wealth in my comment.
You talked about a world of "cooperation, not competition." The only way I know of to make that possible is to have a system of government that forces people to cooperate.
In other words, in your world, are you satisfied to simply cooperate between you and your friends, and let others who want to compete do so, even if it means the competitors live a lifestyle that is far above what you think is appropriate? If so, then I applaud you. But I suggest to you that you are in the minority of those who seek the socialist/communist utopia of cooperation over competition. It's not enough for them to "live and let live", they have to also righteously destroy the prosperous.
If you think that's not true, take a look at some socialist/communist web sites sometime. Intrinsic to their philosophy is forcible redistribution.
Some of us remmeber the old tube testers (with the bins of new tubes underneath).
The gut wrenching part in the site I linked to is the fact that they had the tube tester in their "museum". Couldn't it be in their "specialty part boutique" or something?:D
When electronics in the future is made up of carbon tubes of different sizes, will we have machine in the drug store with all sorts of various sockets that I can plug them into to test them?
Most people I know would prefer a world of cooperation rather than competition, if it were possible.
And I think most people, of whatever stripe, don't mind if you desire that for yourself. Where we start having problems is when people like you force everyone else to live in a world of "forced equality" (generally via the government forcibly taking from one person and giving to another, without benefit to the whole). Everyone should have the right to work to improve themselves, regardless of how high they end up relative to everyone else.
Google gets the lion's share of publicity, but there are a lot of AJAX toolkits out there that do a lot of the grunt work. I've been thinking about using some AJAX in a project I'm working on, and Yahoo was definitely one of the ones I'm considering. The "Sajax" one also looks interesting.
Who cares? I can barely tell the difference between my old 4 megabit connection and my current 10 megabit connection. Servers can't even typically send it that fast. It only comes in handy when I'm doing multiple downloads at the same time.
The publishing firm had claimed to be using just one font but in fact was found using 11,000.
How is it even possible to use 11,000 different type faces?? They have to be adding up all the fonts on all the PCs. 500 PCs with unlicensed Adobe Garamond = 500 fonts.
and in every way learning the hard way lessons I could have taught him
And professionals have never destroyed a rocket? The question isn't whether Carmack makes mistakes, it's whether he learns from them. And I submit that it's your attitude that makes space expensive -- plan for every contingency, generate millions of dollars worth of reports, and launch a rocket once a year (if you're lucky and don't run over budget, or out of money, or...).
I think it's better to launch a lot of rockets in a year, with the clear knowledge that something WILL go wrong, learn from mistakes and failure, and build another one with improvements over the last one.
If he claims ten million - he's bullshitting you. The last time I looked, by combining parts from LockMart, Sunstrand, and a few companies you've never heard of - the total cost was under a million dollars.
That was me making up a big number, not him. Oh, but it's only a million dollars? Boy, what a deal for about $20-30K worth of parts (I think that's about what Carmack said it cost, but I can't recall exactly. Definitely less than $50K).
Carmack is building the Wright Flyer - but commercial operators will want a 737. His error lies in thinking that you can build a 737 on a Flyer budget.
We don't disagree that everyone wants a commercial-grade cheap rocket, but given that, by your own admission, he's reduced the cost of a guidance system 20 to 1 (at least), he at least has some success to use as a counter-argument to the idea that everything has to be expensive.
Doesn't matter how much the DC-X costs - I need merely demonstrated the fallacy of the Carmack's claim that he's done something special and unique, or your belief that he's doing basic research. The DC-X by existence proof does both of these things.
Where did Carmack claim he'd done something special and unique?
And my claim on basic research wasn't that his technology was unique, but that his incremental, cheap approach was. His goal is CHEAP Access To Space, not access to space. The latter has been done, the former has not, and the former is what makes his work interesting. He's a smart guy willing to learn from others (as his posts indicate), with his own money, and a successful BUSINESS track record. Those three things in combination puts him ahead of a lot of others who do a lot of talking, but precious little building.
I ALWAYS do this, and it makes me wonder what idiots bid on something early? What advantage is there to ever do that? I suppose I could see if you didn't have time to bid at the end of the auction, but driving the price up yourself is hardly the way to get the lowest price.
By using a carrier vehicle to take the space vehicle to very high altitudes, his solution doesn't need as much rocket fuel to accelerate the rocket from 0 through a thick atmosphere.
It's the carrier vehicle I'm concerned about so much as the main vehicle itself.
The Scaled Composites (Burt's company) solution gets rid of this safety problem by launching the vehicle with an initial velocity, well away from the ground. If something happens, the rocket is killed and the ship coasts to landing.
That's certainly an advantage of horizontal landing vehicles, but as I alluded to in another post, I don't consider suborbital "real" space flight. To me, it's orbital or it's not space flight, and in my humble opinion, the real problems with space vehicles that look like airplanes really manifest themselves in orbital flight. I'm not sure Burt Rutan is prepared to make an orbital vehicle that isn't an airplane.
But the capsule versus airframe argument is an old one. He certainly can get there; I'm just not sure that he will. But he's a smart guy, so we'll see.
I also know that guidance systems/actuators/etc have been available off the shelf for just about that long capable of performing a flight like that. but Carmack's DIY tinkerer attitude (impressive to the fanboys) forces him to reinvent the wheel every time. He talks a great game - but he never talks about what that.
Actually, I should've said something else about this. Carmack has posted in the past about various parts that are available off-the-shelf, but at an insane cost. Sure, that guidance system may be available from one of the big rocket companies, but you're going to pay ten million dollars for it. Carmack developed one from scratch for a fraction of that price -- in a garage, in his spare time -- and learned a hell of lot in the process.
Yah - I've seen the update. I also know that the DC-X did that a decade ago.
And how much did the DC-X cost to develop?
also know that guidance systems/actuators/etc have been available off the shelf for just about that long capable of performing a flight like that. but Carmack's DIY tinkerer attitude (impressive to the fanboys) forces him to reinvent the wheel every time.
Give me a link to an off-the-shelf VTVL control system. I highly doubt you can, otherwise we'd see a lot more flights like that, not to mention the concerns that you could bolt one onto a big rocket and get an instant ICBM.
That's just it - it's not bullshit, Carmack doesn't have the experience or knowledge to know that it's not. But fanboys, utterly unfamiliar with the full picture and the real history eat up his words.
You know, I read all sorts comments exactly like that for the X-prize -- that it was IMPOSSIBLE to build a suborbital craft for less than hundreds of millions of dollars. Now that it was done, those same people roll their eyes that it was a nothing accomplishment. (not that I disagree -- I think suborbital flight isn't real spaceflight, but it shows the attitude when "real rocket engineers" are threatened by people who try and do things cheaply).
Reading comments like this, I'm reminded of the old saying, "those that say it can't be done should never interrupt the person who is doing it."
Anyway, we'll know in five or ten years if Carmack is the real thing or a pretender.
Why? Let's face it - he's piddled away most of what he has spent to date on dead ends. (Or more accurately, on things he's given up on when the going gets tough.)
What you call "piddled away", I call "research". Do you think other companies that have tried to do something that has never been done before (in this case, cheap access to space) never run into dead ends? Do you think the Wright Brothers went from metal bars to airplanes in one step without any dead ends?
The reason Carmack appears to have so many dead ends is because he lets us see them, unlike other companies who don't have that kind of confidence in themselves, and I give Carmack all the respect in the world for it.
He's a dilettante who talks a great game - bur jumps from plan to scheme to gizmo like a frog in a frying pan.
That's EXACTLY what Carmack isn't -- a talker. The world is FULL of rocket people who are all talk, but don't build a damn thing. Have you seen the video on this update? The rocket goes up and down perfectly, like it's on a rail. That is not easy. That's a full-blown world-class guidance system. Note that rocket was a perfect demonstration of an OTRAG module.
(And he's not an engineer - so far as costing etc... goes his comments you quote above are about as valid as those of the average slashdot poster. I.E. not very.)
Yes, and the Wright Bros were "just bicycle mechanics". Carmack may not have a piece of paper, but he's already built -- with his own hands -- more rocket engines and guidance systems than 98% of all supposed rocket engineers. If you follow his posts, it's obvious he's studied the subject and knows what he's talking about.
But don't take my word for it. In this post, Carmack talks about Lutz Kayser, the principle behind the OTRAG project, visiting his shop and talking to Carmack. Not only that, he left some of OTRAG's proprietary hardware for them to look at. He's met with a lot of the principals who are doing good work. You may not take Carmack seriously, but they do.
Apparently you didn't like his post, but he was absolutely right. There is so much talk about "billion dollar this" and "just give 10 billion for that", and it's ALL bullshit. The only other one I give any credit to who actually has built something that flew is Burt Rutan, but I don't trust him because everything looks like an airplane to him. But it's possible he might get to orbit.
Carmack definitely will, and he'll do it for peanuts. The more I watch his process, the more impressed I get.
If you're interested in what John Carmack is doing these days, he's made a bunch of interesting posts on the aRocket list, specifically about developing an OTRAG modular rocket engine vehicle. He recently made this post (he has specifically given premission to reprint his words in the past, BTW). Exciting stuff. Carmack is the only one who I have any confidence in that will be able to go to orbit cheaply.
--------------------- Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> >> First, $100 million isn't enough, several people have tried > >> and failed at $100 million projects. > > > > Failure has not been limited to $100 million projects. I suspect the > > failures you speak of are where people tried to build $1 billion > > vehicles for $100 million price tags. > >Yes - and a reasonable LEO launch system needs a half-billion-dollar >vehicle. You can't really do it more cheaply. Reread the minimum mass to >orbit thread, and then remember we need a decent payload as well.
We have been discussing the modular OTRAG designs for a reason -- they offer an incremental, scaleable, low cost development path to inexpensive access to LEO.
I'm completely confident that "per-tube" costs can be under $10k, and they might get below $5k. You should be able to get 10 - 20 pounds of payload to LEO per-tube, depending on final Isp and mass ratios.
The size, scope, and complexity of the individual modules is lower than the work we are currently doing at Armadillo, so development and tooling expenses are modest. Module design and production can be improved incrementally to decrease costs, like any mass produced item.
A few screw ups on the way to orbit are probably inevitable, so you might need to produce several hundred tubes before entering revenue service, but it still looks like it could be done in the low tens of millions of dollars, even being rather pessimistic. You could even buy a few pacific islands for yourself if you really needed to. That is a long way from half a billion, let alone ten billion.
A system like this won't get to $100 / lb to LEO, but it will outperform a conventional expendable upper stage on a hypersonic booster, even disregarding development costs, plus it scales to a wider range of payloads.
The real point though, is that billion dollar reusable space booster developments are just fantasy projects at this point. You might as well posit that you will develop anti-gravity in your garage. If you were to say something like "The next generation of space vehicles will prove out an elastic market for space launch, at which point my ten billion dollar project will look like a sure thing to the smart money investors" it might be a little more credible, and only have more standard business and technical arguments against it, instead of being just nuts.
Is the average Linux advocate really this pathetic and sad? Microsoft buys a bunch of freaking wireless appliances that happen to use Linux, and this warrants a big freaking article? I bet the Cisco routers they're replacing don't use Windows, either. Is Microsoft supposed to have a "WINDOWS ONLY LOL ROXR" policy on any electronic device down the copy machines?
I bet they might have a coffee machine that uses embedded Linux as well. Maybe LinuxWorld needs to send in a few spies to rat it out.
Anyone who found enough reasons to download Firefox before (Adblock? Mouse gestures?) is certainly going to find enough reasons after IE7's release.
I disagree. I believe the vast majority of people downloaded Firefox for one reason -- it was more resistent to spyware. Hell, that's the only reason *I* downloaded it. And that's the reason I've downloaded it for some of my family, pretty much to avoid having to fix their computer. I was perfectly happy with IE. I've learned to like tabs, so that'd be another reason I might download it again.
But if IE7 is better with spyware and has tabs? Good-bye Firefox. And the bugs in Firefox (memory leaks, runaway CPU hogging) and the incompatibilities (video doesn't work on the CNN and Sports Illustrated web sites) is already annoying. I don't run any other significant plug-ins (especially ad blockers, which I think are somehwat immoral -- I want my favorite web sites to make money).
Those are way too recent. The one I thinking of was at least six months ago, and possibly a year (I'm bad with pinning dates to things). I don't remember how long it had been there, but it seems like it had been a couple of days.
The only problem here is the (extremely small) probability of viewing a page whilst it has "fuck" on it
Extremely small? Hardly. I've seen all sorts of vandalism on Wikipedia. The one case I remember specifically is visiting the page of [can't remember his name], the tallest man on record. It had a bunch of nonsense about the man's penis size, obviously inserted by a bored teenager. It wasn't like I had caught a one-in-a-million shot, either, it had been there awhile. I don't know if it's still there (I doubt it); I didn't care enough at the time to fix it.
The upshot is that very popular pages are fixed pretty quickly. Less popular pages that aren't on someone's watch list are not going to be.
Slashdot Mirror
In reality it is exactly the opposite: he can call them whatever he damn well pleases because he has Free Speech, while they are restricted while on duty because they're representatives of the State.
I was with you until this one. Free speech does NOT give you the unlimited right to any platform you want for your speech. You're not allowed to yell fire in a crowded theatre, yadda yadda, and you're not allowed to interfere with the police. If the police are doing their job, and they tell you to "shut the F up", you do what they tell you. I have zero sympathy for idiots who make their job harder, and by extension, make the police have to be that much more confrontational to get the job done.
As for this story, I would totally be in favor of a law that gives citizens the absolute right to record any public official any time they want. I suspect in this case, the homeowner in question was being a total a-hole, so the police overreacted. Both are most likely in the wrong.
Oh, I was right. You're replying to some other websites and stuff. Okay. I thought you were replying to the things I said.
No, I was replying to you and specifically the things you said.
Likewise I don't think using the word "cooperation" makes me a utopian/self-righteous/Statist whatever-else-you-think-I-am.
And that's the crux of my point (maybe you need to go back and read it again) -- that wishing for a world of cooperation often necessitates using force to achieve it. You specifically mentioned the experiment in the Russia with Stalin, as though you agreed with the goals, if not the implementation. My point is that good intentions are wonderful, but it's rarely the case that people with good intentions are content to mind their own business.
Doesn't hurt that they have such nice ads for the MACs now....
They stopped running those annoying, smug and arrogant PC versus Mac ads? God, I hope so. I can't believe those ads sold one Mac, though I could believe it turned off a lot of people.
I don't see anything about forced equality or redistribution of wealth in my comment.
You talked about a world of "cooperation, not competition." The only way I know of to make that possible is to have a system of government that forces people to cooperate.
In other words, in your world, are you satisfied to simply cooperate between you and your friends, and let others who want to compete do so, even if it means the competitors live a lifestyle that is far above what you think is appropriate? If so, then I applaud you. But I suggest to you that you are in the minority of those who seek the socialist/communist utopia of cooperation over competition. It's not enough for them to "live and let live", they have to also righteously destroy the prosperous.
If you think that's not true, take a look at some socialist/communist web sites sometime. Intrinsic to their philosophy is forcible redistribution.
Some of us remmeber the old tube testers (with the bins of new tubes underneath).
The gut wrenching part in the site I linked to is the fact that they had the tube tester in their "museum". Couldn't it be in their "specialty part boutique" or something? :D
When electronics in the future is made up of carbon tubes of different sizes, will we have machine in the drug store with all sorts of various sockets that I can plug them into to test them?
(this joke may reference things that are too old for the average Slashdotter to get. :D)
Most people I know would prefer a world of cooperation rather than competition, if it were possible.
And I think most people, of whatever stripe, don't mind if you desire that for yourself. Where we start having problems is when people like you force everyone else to live in a world of "forced equality" (generally via the government forcibly taking from one person and giving to another, without benefit to the whole). Everyone should have the right to work to improve themselves, regardless of how high they end up relative to everyone else.
Google gets the lion's share of publicity, but there are a lot of AJAX toolkits out there that do a lot of the grunt work. I've been thinking about using some AJAX in a project I'm working on, and Yahoo was definitely one of the ones I'm considering. The "Sajax" one also looks interesting.
Who cares? I can barely tell the difference between my old 4 megabit connection and my current 10 megabit connection. Servers can't even typically send it that fast. It only comes in handy when I'm doing multiple downloads at the same time.
The publishing firm had claimed to be using just one font but in fact was found using 11,000.
How is it even possible to use 11,000 different type faces?? They have to be adding up all the fonts on all the PCs. 500 PCs with unlicensed Adobe Garamond = 500 fonts.
and in every way learning the hard way lessons I could have taught him
And professionals have never destroyed a rocket? The question isn't whether Carmack makes mistakes, it's whether he learns from them. And I submit that it's your attitude that makes space expensive -- plan for every contingency, generate millions of dollars worth of reports, and launch a rocket once a year (if you're lucky and don't run over budget, or out of money, or...).
I think it's better to launch a lot of rockets in a year, with the clear knowledge that something WILL go wrong, learn from mistakes and failure, and build another one with improvements over the last one.
If he claims ten million - he's bullshitting you. The last time I looked, by combining parts from LockMart, Sunstrand, and a few companies you've never heard of - the total cost was under a million dollars.
That was me making up a big number, not him. Oh, but it's only a million dollars? Boy, what a deal for about $20-30K worth of parts (I think that's about what Carmack said it cost, but I can't recall exactly. Definitely less than $50K).
Carmack is building the Wright Flyer - but commercial operators will want a 737. His error lies in thinking that you can build a 737 on a Flyer budget.
We don't disagree that everyone wants a commercial-grade cheap rocket, but given that, by your own admission, he's reduced the cost of a guidance system 20 to 1 (at least), he at least has some success to use as a counter-argument to the idea that everything has to be expensive.
Doesn't matter how much the DC-X costs - I need merely demonstrated the fallacy of the Carmack's claim that he's done something special and unique, or your belief that he's doing basic research. The DC-X by existence proof does both of these things.
Where did Carmack claim he'd done something special and unique?
And my claim on basic research wasn't that his technology was unique, but that his incremental, cheap approach was. His goal is CHEAP Access To Space, not access to space. The latter has been done, the former has not, and the former is what makes his work interesting. He's a smart guy willing to learn from others (as his posts indicate), with his own money, and a successful BUSINESS track record. Those three things in combination puts him ahead of a lot of others who do a lot of talking, but precious little building.
I ALWAYS do this, and it makes me wonder what idiots bid on something early? What advantage is there to ever do that? I suppose I could see if you didn't have time to bid at the end of the auction, but driving the price up yourself is hardly the way to get the lowest price.
Oops, I meant to say that it's NOT the carrier vehicle I'm concerned about so much as the main vehicle itself.
By using a carrier vehicle to take the space vehicle to very high altitudes, his solution doesn't need as much rocket fuel to accelerate the rocket from 0 through a thick atmosphere.
It's the carrier vehicle I'm concerned about so much as the main vehicle itself.
The Scaled Composites (Burt's company) solution gets rid of this safety problem by launching the vehicle with an initial velocity, well away from the ground. If something happens, the rocket is killed and the ship coasts to landing.
That's certainly an advantage of horizontal landing vehicles, but as I alluded to in another post, I don't consider suborbital "real" space flight. To me, it's orbital or it's not space flight, and in my humble opinion, the real problems with space vehicles that look like airplanes really manifest themselves in orbital flight. I'm not sure Burt Rutan is prepared to make an orbital vehicle that isn't an airplane.
But the capsule versus airframe argument is an old one. He certainly can get there; I'm just not sure that he will. But he's a smart guy, so we'll see.
I also know that guidance systems/actuators/etc have been available off the shelf for just about that long capable of performing a flight like that. but Carmack's DIY tinkerer attitude (impressive to the fanboys) forces him to reinvent the wheel every time. He talks a great game - but he never talks about what that.
Actually, I should've said something else about this. Carmack has posted in the past about various parts that are available off-the-shelf, but at an insane cost. Sure, that guidance system may be available from one of the big rocket companies, but you're going to pay ten million dollars for it. Carmack developed one from scratch for a fraction of that price -- in a garage, in his spare time -- and learned a hell of lot in the process.
Yah - I've seen the update. I also know that the DC-X did that a decade ago.
And how much did the DC-X cost to develop?
also know that guidance systems/actuators/etc have been available off the shelf for just about that long capable of performing a flight like that. but Carmack's DIY tinkerer attitude (impressive to the fanboys) forces him to reinvent the wheel every time.
Give me a link to an off-the-shelf VTVL control system. I highly doubt you can, otherwise we'd see a lot more flights like that, not to mention the concerns that you could bolt one onto a big rocket and get an instant ICBM.
That's just it - it's not bullshit, Carmack doesn't have the experience or knowledge to know that it's not. But fanboys, utterly unfamiliar with the full picture and the real history eat up his words.
You know, I read all sorts comments exactly like that for the X-prize -- that it was IMPOSSIBLE to build a suborbital craft for less than hundreds of millions of dollars. Now that it was done, those same people roll their eyes that it was a nothing accomplishment. (not that I disagree -- I think suborbital flight isn't real spaceflight, but it shows the attitude when "real rocket engineers" are threatened by people who try and do things cheaply).
Reading comments like this, I'm reminded of the old saying, "those that say it can't be done should never interrupt the person who is doing it."
Anyway, we'll know in five or ten years if Carmack is the real thing or a pretender.
Why? Let's face it - he's piddled away most of what he has spent to date on dead ends. (Or more accurately, on things he's given up on when the going gets tough.)
What you call "piddled away", I call "research". Do you think other companies that have tried to do something that has never been done before (in this case, cheap access to space) never run into dead ends? Do you think the Wright Brothers went from metal bars to airplanes in one step without any dead ends?
The reason Carmack appears to have so many dead ends is because he lets us see them, unlike other companies who don't have that kind of confidence in themselves, and I give Carmack all the respect in the world for it.
He's a dilettante who talks a great game - bur jumps from plan to scheme to gizmo like a frog in a frying pan.
That's EXACTLY what Carmack isn't -- a talker. The world is FULL of rocket people who are all talk, but don't build a damn thing. Have you seen the video on this update? The rocket goes up and down perfectly, like it's on a rail. That is not easy. That's a full-blown world-class guidance system. Note that rocket was a perfect demonstration of an OTRAG module.
(And he's not an engineer - so far as costing etc... goes his comments you quote above are about as valid as those of the average slashdot poster. I.E. not very.)
Yes, and the Wright Bros were "just bicycle mechanics". Carmack may not have a piece of paper, but he's already built -- with his own hands -- more rocket engines and guidance systems than 98% of all supposed rocket engineers. If you follow his posts, it's obvious he's studied the subject and knows what he's talking about.
But don't take my word for it. In this post, Carmack talks about Lutz Kayser, the principle behind the OTRAG project, visiting his shop and talking to Carmack. Not only that, he left some of OTRAG's proprietary hardware for them to look at. He's met with a lot of the principals who are doing good work. You may not take Carmack seriously, but they do.
Apparently you didn't like his post, but he was absolutely right. There is so much talk about "billion dollar this" and "just give 10 billion for that", and it's ALL bullshit. The only other one I give any credit to who actually has built something that flew is Burt Rutan, but I don't trust him because everything looks like an airplane to him. But it's possible he might get to orbit.
Carmack definitely will, and he'll do it for peanuts. The more I watch his process, the more impressed I get.
If you're interested in what John Carmack is doing these days, he's made a bunch of interesting posts on the aRocket list, specifically about developing an OTRAG modular rocket engine vehicle. He recently made this post (he has specifically given premission to reprint his words in the past, BTW). Exciting stuff. Carmack is the only one who I have any confidence in that will be able to go to orbit cheaply.
---------------------
Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> >> First, $100 million isn't enough, several people have tried
> >> and failed at $100 million projects.
> >
> > Failure has not been limited to $100 million projects. I suspect the
> > failures you speak of are where people tried to build $1 billion
> > vehicles for $100 million price tags.
>
>Yes - and a reasonable LEO launch system needs a half-billion-dollar
>vehicle. You can't really do it more cheaply. Reread the minimum mass to
>orbit thread, and then remember we need a decent payload as well.
We have been discussing the modular OTRAG designs for a reason --
they offer an incremental, scaleable, low cost development path to
inexpensive access to LEO.
I'm completely confident that "per-tube" costs can be under $10k, and
they might get below $5k. You should be able to get 10 - 20 pounds
of payload to LEO per-tube, depending on final Isp and mass ratios.
The size, scope, and complexity of the individual modules is lower
than the work we are currently doing at Armadillo, so development and
tooling expenses are modest. Module design and production can be
improved incrementally to decrease costs, like any mass produced item.
A few screw ups on the way to orbit are probably inevitable, so you
might need to produce several hundred tubes before entering revenue
service, but it still looks like it could be done in the low tens of
millions of dollars, even being rather pessimistic. You could even
buy a few pacific islands for yourself if you really needed to. That
is a long way from half a billion, let alone ten billion.
A system like this won't get to $100 / lb to LEO, but it will
outperform a conventional expendable upper stage on a hypersonic
booster, even disregarding development costs, plus it scales to a
wider range of payloads.
The real point though, is that billion dollar reusable space booster
developments are just fantasy projects at this point. You might as
well posit that you will develop anti-gravity in your garage. If you
were to say something like "The next generation of space vehicles
will prove out an elastic market for space launch, at which point my
ten billion dollar project will look like a sure thing to the smart
money investors" it might be a little more credible, and only have
more standard business and technical arguments against it, instead of
being just nuts.
Is the average Linux advocate really this pathetic and sad? Microsoft buys a bunch of freaking wireless appliances that happen to use Linux, and this warrants a big freaking article? I bet the Cisco routers they're replacing don't use Windows, either. Is Microsoft supposed to have a "WINDOWS ONLY LOL ROXR" policy on any electronic device down the copy machines?
I bet they might have a coffee machine that uses embedded Linux as well. Maybe LinuxWorld needs to send in a few spies to rat it out.
Video in Firefox works with CNN, SI and ESPN. Actually I haven't run across a video I *can't* run in Firefox.
Then put that in the "bug" column for my computer, rather than an incompatibility. Works in IE, doesn't work in Firefox.
Anyone who found enough reasons to download Firefox before (Adblock? Mouse gestures?) is certainly going to find enough reasons after IE7's release.
I disagree. I believe the vast majority of people downloaded Firefox for one reason -- it was more resistent to spyware. Hell, that's the only reason *I* downloaded it. And that's the reason I've downloaded it for some of my family, pretty much to avoid having to fix their computer. I was perfectly happy with IE. I've learned to like tabs, so that'd be another reason I might download it again.
But if IE7 is better with spyware and has tabs? Good-bye Firefox. And the bugs in Firefox (memory leaks, runaway CPU hogging) and the incompatibilities (video doesn't work on the CNN and Sports Illustrated web sites) is already annoying. I don't run any other significant plug-ins (especially ad blockers, which I think are somehwat immoral -- I want my favorite web sites to make money).
Those are way too recent. The one I thinking of was at least six months ago, and possibly a year (I'm bad with pinning dates to things). I don't remember how long it had been there, but it seems like it had been a couple of days.
The only problem here is the (extremely small) probability of viewing a page whilst it has "fuck" on it
Extremely small? Hardly. I've seen all sorts of vandalism on Wikipedia. The one case I remember specifically is visiting the page of [can't remember his name], the tallest man on record. It had a bunch of nonsense about the man's penis size, obviously inserted by a bored teenager. It wasn't like I had caught a one-in-a-million shot, either, it had been there awhile. I don't know if it's still there (I doubt it); I didn't care enough at the time to fix it.
The upshot is that very popular pages are fixed pretty quickly. Less popular pages that aren't on someone's watch list are not going to be.