Again, true. But the real cropper is 'b' - there are a lot of Orbiter systems that are no longer in production and no longer available. When Endeavour was assembled, Orbiters were essentially 'still in production', Atlantis having been delivered only two years previously.
There is nothing fundamental preventing production from being resumed apart from cost.
My (original) point 'b' holds because of the many things that Atlantis has and Enterprise lacks. Among other things Enterprise has no crew cabin, nor plumbing in her aft fuselage. She lacks the structure in her nose to support the inertial guidance systems and star trackers. Her RCS pods are dummies - mere aerodynamic shells. Her payload bay doors and associated systems are also not up to flight standards. etc... etc... None of these things will be replaced during Atlantis's refit - and comparing that refit to the near total rebuild that Enterprise would require is comparing apples to oranges.
But all that stuff still boils down to cost. There is none of it that we are incapable of doing if the money was available. It's not like Apollo where (allegedly) the original plans are no longer available.
It does make me wonder what will happen after this servicing misson and the shuttle retires?
Nothing, they'll keep using it as long as they can, and with reentry possibly as late as 2030 that could be a good long time.
How do we service it then? Can the CEV do it?
There is the possibility of robotic service missions, should we decide to service it. It's doubtful that the CEV could be used to service it, certainly the CEV is not going to have anything like the Canadarm to assist.
Will there be cries to ressurect the shuttle to service it again in 2015 or so?
No. If it can't be serviced robotically it'll be abandoned. The James Webb Space Telescope is due to go into space in 2013 and it's much better than the Hubble. It's going to be parked at the Sun-Earth L2 point and perform infrared astronomy with a 6.5 metre reflector. It currently planned to be in operation for at least 5 years, I think without any servicing. Many astronomers are dead against servicing the Hubble if that would in any way impact the JWST (e.g. if JWST budgets where to be used for an HST servicing mission).
Another proposal is the Hubble Origins Probe which would be based on the HST, but modernised to some degree to save weight. It would also be designed for a five year mission with no servicing.
Although it would be an irony if the mission so save hubble destroyed a space shuttle...
That's the major concern. A shuttle mission to the HST cannot also reach the ISS so if the shuttle was not capabile of reentry the options for rescue of the crew are much reduced.
This is both true and false... Endeavour could be built because a) there was most of an airframe sitting around in storage as a 'spare' and b) it was close enough to the original construction date that the logistical and manufacturing experience pipeline still worked.
Niether was true after the loss of Columbia.
Actually 'a' is certainly still true: Enterprise (the glide and landing test vehicle) still exists. Originally it was to be refitted for orbital use after Columbia was built, instead Challenger was built from the STA test vehicle. When Challenger was lost again NASA considered refitting Enterprise, but decided it would be cheaper to build Endeavour from spares. And given that Atlantis was due for a major refit in 2008 I doubt your point 'b' is true either. Cost is the only real reason why another shuttle can't be built now.
Astronauts are now able to go to low earth orbit, take pictures of the shuttle and land it safely.
Oh? The scientific experiments? We forgot about those. Maybe next time.
Nice piece of sarcasm, but you're a bit off base. Firstly, this mission had significant goals beyond testing new safety techniques - it delivered 28000 pounds of equipment and supplies to the ISS and also performed necessary repair and preparation for further ISS construction. Secondly, it's unlikely much scientific experimentation of the type you are thinking will take place on any of the remaining missions. What would be the point? The ISS is a far better platform for that sort of thing. The shuttle now has only two purposes: complete the ISS and if possible do work on the HST. There are better and cheaper ways of doing LEO scientific experiments.
Do you think it should be legal for one movie studio to copy a currently-in-theatres blockbuster that cost some other studio $100M to produce and market, and then to sell a trivially edited version to theatres at a fraction of the normal price?
That isn't what is going on here.
The post you replied to didn't say it was. They said that was the inevitable consequence of allowing this sort of thing.
"Weather reports indicated that today was the most likely launch date weather-wise for the next few days. Tomorrow is only rated a 40% chance to have clear weather (today was 60%). They really need to get this shuttle launched so they are taking every potential opportunity."
...sure you dont mean potential risk? im sure these guys arent the kind to put a 'no-go' stamp on a tiny risk... why disregard what they have to say?
The parent was talking about weather specifically. But to address your argument, the advice of Scolese and O'Conner was certainly not disregarded, however their concerns are not the only factor. NASA needs to complete 16 missions before the shuttles are retired in 2010, and the problem in question has no apparent medium term fix. Waiting now will increase pressure on the schedule and could result in more serious risk taking later. Additionally consider that the risk is not to the crew - they can wait for rescue on the ISS. For those reasons (and others) the NASA Administrator has decided to proceed. The two advisors who voted no-go agree that the crew is not endangered and do not object to the flight proceeding, they simply wanted it noted that problems remain with the vehicle.
So if the engineer says no, and the safety officer says no then who is saying yes? Whose opinion could be more important than these two people?
The chief engineer Chris Scolese and the associate administrator of Safety and Mission Assurance Bryan O'Conner are there to advise. That is what they do. The decision is made by the NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. His rationale for proceeding include that there is no undue risk posed to the crew (the crew can wait for rescue at the ISS), no short or medium term fix has been identified, and continued delays may cause greater risk down the line as NASA scrambles to complete the 16 missions they need to before the fleet is grounded in 2010. There is also the feeling that since the external tank redesign they've just done is so significant (biggest change to the aerodynamics since the shuttle started flying), it would be wise to have a flight with that change alone rather than waiting for further redesigns.
I'm almost surprised they even decided to proceed to the point that they did today (the hold with T-9 minutes to go). Standing on
the ground at Kennedy, if you looked West, the sky was almost black with storm clouds over the runway at the Shuttle landing faciliity. You know, the one that needs to be clear for the Shuttle to land if there's an emergency? Seems like a bit of a waste.
Weather reports indicated that today was the most likely launch date weather-wise for the next few days. Tomorrow is only rated a 40% chance to have clear weather (today was 60%). They really need to get this shuttle launched so they are taking every potential opportunity.
According to the editors people who even read the comments are a tiny minority of the readership of the site. This sort of recap story is going to make Slashdot money - it's likely to be popular (since the story it recaps got so many comments). But it's also a useful service to the readership as most people don't have the time or inclination to wade through the 50-odd 4+ posts in the original story.
The whole "by invite only" thing was a joke really, when you consider how easy it was to get an invite.
It probably started as a way to keep the numbers down for testing and to generate buzz at the same time. It was certainly not easy to get an invite at first. Now it's just a way to try to stop spammers from automatically generating accounts.
The article only cares about market share which is a very limited measure of success. Google's defining quality is that they raise the bar, and they've done this with several products: search, mail, maps. Each of these has revolutionised that product's market. In the case of search the way they achieved that vast improvement over their competitors is secret and so no one has really caught up. With Gmail and Google Maps others have been able to duplicate Google's advances, and so they haven't dominated in terms of market share. But they've still proven to be leaders in terms of inovation.
Another example is SketchUp. It's not an internal project - they bought the developers, but it's the easiest to use 3D app I've seen. It reinforces that what Google excels at is user interface design.
I missed that. Still the C64 wasn't that different hardware-wise from the PCs of the mid 80's. It was the ST and the Amiga that really pushed the limits and forced the PC industry to catch up.
It follows mostly console development and visual development and is severely biased towards shoot-em-up retards and their taste. The other branches of game genealogy are not followed at all.
It also completely ignored the impact of home computers like the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST. In fact I don't even remember it mentioning the Commodore 64. Those machines were critical in making PC hardware developers realise that there was a market for highly capable audio and video hardware.
One thing I personally feel is you don't develop a bond with your co-workers if you don't see them face to face.... My direct boss lives and works 300 miles from my office and I rarely see him, maybe 6 times a year. We talk over the phone and email frequently but we don't have the kind of boss/employee relationship that I've had in the past. Very hard to feel comfortable working/trusting other people when they seem almost like strangers to you.
I think it's got more to do with the people involved. I've had great working relationships with people who work in offices in other countries and who I've only met in person a couple of times.
I don't see anyone asking the question: "what effect does telecommuting have on productivity?" I work in the R&D arm of a major multinational corporation and the projects I work on are highly collaborative. I can often accomplish more in 15-30 minutes of face-to-face conversation with a colleague than in an hour or more over the phone or video conference, even with fancy collaboration tools like Lotus Sametime and Microsoft NetMeeting.
I don't see anyone claiming that telecommuting is a good option for every situation. But just because it would make you less productive doesn't mean the same applies in all cases either. In my case there is no one in the local office I need to collaborate with and I report to a manager in a different country. So telecommuting makes no difference.
i think it's a bit further than that. downloading illegally is primarily a male bastion, whereas music purchasing skews towards girls and women. Females are less likely to download and more likely to buy music and less likely to be tech savvy.
Cites? Sources? A single shred of empirical evidence published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal?
According to the MPAA, at least, the OP is correct - more males than females do illegal downloading, copying, and bootlegging. You can ask the MPAA to email you the report from this page (it's the last report in the list).
I would think (on the average) more yahoos are buying the car with more power and driving recklessly and that this will outweigh the event of being able to accelerate away from an accident. (Not that I'm saying this a valid reason to raise insurance rates on these cars - drivers shouldn't be presumed guilty before an accident.)
I suspect that's the justification for those premiums though. But insurance companies are usually pretty rigorous with their statistics so I think more powerful cars statistically do have more or more serious accidents.
Along with statistics that show more powerful cars are less likly to get into accidents.
Can you back that up with a reference? I'd love to be able to use that argument, but I've never seen a source. Incidentally my insurance company believes otherwise - power is a major factor in the level of premiums.
Books are sold to distributors at about 25% of retail cost (and there has to be a small profit on that), so, if you just cut out the physical costs of the books, you will save about 15-20 percent.
But no distributor or retailer is required. So they could be selling the PDFs at 25% or less of the retail cost. You're right about them not wanting to undercut the retailers though.
You don't need these. Aside from the lovely consept art, most of the D&D content can be found in the SRD (System Reference Document).
The SRD does not cover any of the stuff in (e.g.) The Complete Adventurer. You're correct in that you don't need these to play, but the implication that there is little or no new material in these books is false.
The scientists in the article claim that during a period where the Earth's atmosphere had 10 times the CO2 it has now, the warming was less than it is now. If that were true, then that would indicate that the warming we are seeing at the moment may be primarily caused by something external.
How certain are we that the CO2 level was that high? We're not getting that data from a direct source like ice cores. Also, even if it were that high, the conclusion that today's warming is primarily caused by something external doesn't necessarily follow. There is the possibility that something else was mitigating the effect of the CO2 back then. Certainly in the last half million or so years, for which we have direct CO2 level evidence from ice cores, the correlation between CO2 levels and temperature are very strong.
Will reducing CO2 emissions have anything but a negligible effect, or should we be investing in big Monte Burns-esque sun shields to reflect the extra light we might be getting from the sun lately?
Funnily enough the Food Program (radio program) dealt with global warming's effect on wine makers this week. In the show they mentioned how England had been much hotter when the romans first introduced vinyards in England. This was the first concrete evidence I had heard that 'global warming' was - ' the sky is falling ballyhoo' that I felt it was.
To draw the conclusion that "it used to be warmer than it is now so therefore there is no problem" is asinine at best. The fact is that atmospheric CO2 levels are higher now that they were in Roman times (and indeed for the half million years before that), they continue to increase, and there is a clear, indisputable mechanism for increased atmospheric CO2 to reduce the amount of energy radiated away from the planet.
While data going back to 1973 is valid, the only way to identify a trend would be to go back much, much farther (ice cores can do this). The trends over the last 10,000 years, for example, may go along ways to explaining things, to disprove or prove things.
Ice core data shows that atmospheric CO2 levels are the highest they have been in the last half a million years. This has been widely reported in the last 6 months or so, see for example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4467420.stm. They also show a significant correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperatures.
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Another proposal is the Hubble Origins Probe which would be based on the HST, but modernised to some degree to save weight. It would also be designed for a five year mission with no servicing.
That's the major concern. A shuttle mission to the HST cannot also reach the ISS so if the shuttle was not capabile of reentry the options for rescue of the crew are much reduced.According to the editors people who even read the comments are a tiny minority of the readership of the site. This sort of recap story is going to make Slashdot money - it's likely to be popular (since the story it recaps got so many comments). But it's also a useful service to the readership as most people don't have the time or inclination to wade through the 50-odd 4+ posts in the original story.
Another example is SketchUp. It's not an internal project - they bought the developers, but it's the easiest to use 3D app I've seen. It reinforces that what Google excels at is user interface design.
I missed that. Still the C64 wasn't that different hardware-wise from the PCs of the mid 80's. It was the ST and the Amiga that really pushed the limits and forced the PC industry to catch up.
Specifically the MPAA's studies shows: