as i said previously, its natural for someone who is the subject of regulation to resist it.
i also never claimed that any government regulation would be perfect or "magical". it would merely be a measure to build upon. all regulations are amended, some more than others as new means are discovered of better achieving their objectives.
i could break down your argument and come up with counter-arguments, but it doesn't matter what i say, you will come up with something to argue otherwise till your blue in the face to protect your perceived right to violate copyright at will (hence why i said your argument is "moot" - look up the word in the dictionary). it also explains why much of your argument is colorful, extreme and desperate. do you really think i would have any hope of convincing someone who has basically admitted to thinking that he has the right to copyright infringement that regulations in place to help prevent it would be good? you've rendered the whole discussion pointless.
if you made a statement like "i don't care for copyright" in a copyright infringement case, you would be laughed out of the courtroom and into your cell, and everything you claimed before and after would be moot in the same way. you're just pissy because you dropped your pants and exposed your ass.
since you don't care for copyright, there is no reason for you not to install pirate software and download movies, so the rest of your argument is moot. you are the criminal being targeted by the regulation i proposed.
SpaceX isn't generating revenue, so how can they be profitable? Breaking even to recoup R&D costs is also a long way off. Their entire website is basically a big advertisement for milestones they are yet to achieve. From their "launch manifest" it appears many of their projected customers are government-based (subject to Congressional budget cuts no doubt). Billionaire support will get them so far, but even billionaires will eventually expect a return on their investment. SpaceX will also never be cheaper than the Russian system, which is about an mass-produced as spacecraft can get at the moment. The SpaceX craft aren't reusable, they are refurbishable, which is similar to the old STS, and will always be more expensive than mass-producing ballistic capsules like Soyuz. I would be interested to know where you're getting your info from. If your only source is SpaceX itself, you are rather gullible.
Paul has a great deal of humanity in his decisions
You know him personally do you? How do you think he got rich in the first place? Microsoft isn't exactly a model corporate citizen. Billionaires have more money than they need for their lifestyle, so they blow some of it on dickwaving like SpaceX. You can be sure that after Allen has his vacation in space to give him plenty to talk about with his billionaire mates, the technology that enabled it will take a back seat. You will obviously disagree, but only based on speculation and unfounded faith in those that have done nothing for you. Morons who get suckered into religious cults suffer from a similar mental incapacity.
Scaled Composites achieved a great milestone (relatively cheap access to suborbital space for trained test pilots) and I've sat in on a presentation by Burt Rutan who is a very smart man and an inspirational speaker, but no amount of finance from Dick Branson or Paul Allen will help get you or me closer to a holiday in Low Earth Orbit.
Much of our deficit is due to these bastards. When Boehner/O had a deal to drop spending 5 or 6 trillion (4-5 trillion in cuts and 1 trillion in tax increases), cantor jumped in and scaped it.
Do you have any idea what 4-5 trillion dollars in cuts actually means? Just because some politicians says his great plan will balance the budget doesn't mean it actually ever could. Money has to come from somewhere, and while funding NASA will satisfy the space fanatics, it may mean cutting the secondary education budget, which will affect a lot more people. Congress is by necessity a bureaucracy, but all its members are voted in and represent their constituent voters to some degree (if they wish to keep their seat at least). Congress can and will always fuck things up, but would you have some dictator come in and sort it all out? I'm sure you could get in there and make America grand again, although you'll probably need a much bigger soapbox than Slashdot.
That doesn't mean that we need to accept every form of 'regulation' simply because we like to have it in other areas. Not all of it makes sense.
Nobody "likes" to be regulated. That's not why we have it. Every regulatory instrument has a purpose (often related to safety of users or the public). You not understanding a regulation doesn't make it useless or wrong. Its also natural to resist regulation if it may affect your activities or income. Having worked in aviation compliance I can attest that the cost of regulatory compliance can be significant, but particularly in aviation, and particularly in the current economic climate (cost cutting), nobody would get on a jet airliner without it.
need to learn how to use a computer without being idiots
Unfortunately no amount of learning will help them. Computer security is broad and not easily understood even by security professionals (Bruce Schneier is considered to be a leading expert in this field, and "Cryptogram" has some very interesting takes on the world of security in general). Threats are changing rapidly. Its not the devil you know that concerns most people.
Most users are quite capable at using a computer for its intended purpose; inability to harden an iptables firewall doesn't make them idiots.
Any need for consumers to know about virus scanners or firewalls has come about because of a lack of regulation. You highlight a concern about abuse of regulation, but at the moment users are putting their personal details and in many cases their livelihoods in the hands of software developed for commercial interests. In Australia at least, I would trust government regulation to protect me much more than multinational corporations. There is no doubt that government regulation can be abused, but private regulation will definitely always be abused (look at how deregulation of the finance sector, especially in the US, has turned out). At least democratic governance has some level of responsibility to the voting public.
I'd say that most of them are saying, "Yes, this could be used for illegal purposes. However, it is also very useful for doing other things. Therefore, going overboard and trying to stop a few people from doing illegal things by ruining the technology for everyone isn't worth it."
Every technology is a double-edged sword that could potentially be used for good or evil. That is rather obvious, so merely stating that computers could be used for good or evil is stating the obvious an doesn't by any means negate any need for regulation. Regulation can't "ruin" the technology if its only purpose is to prevent you from operating it illegally. At most it may hinder the way you currently use a computer, requiring you to change the way you use it to achieve the same outcomes (which is common in any regulated industry if a regulation is amended). You're concern is apparently that regulation will stop you from operating a computer legally altogether, but that is a very unlikely scenario.
Using the case against DRM is common in this instance, but DRM is also not a form of regulation if it is implemented by the corporate sector. It is in fact the consequence of a lack of regulation (its the response of corporations to attempt to fill the gap, which as I've argued above will always be abused). I don't condone the use of DRM by corporations. Regulatory controls wouldn't likely be as strict as what the RIAA is gradually implementing (there is lots of politics and red tape so it is usually a more gradual process), and even though the RIAA would no doubt lobby for the tightest controls possible they would be hindered by the regulatory process themselves. Even corporate-implemented DRM is at most an inconvenience or an added cost if it fucks up, which apparently isn't uncommon, but that is also due to lack of enforced quality standards; DRM doesn't ruin the technology that it controls.
there's probably nothing wrong with regulation of computing. everything else is regulated, and we accept that because it contributes to our feeling of safety and comfort. when you buy groceries from a supermarket you cook them up without worrying that you might get sick because there are regulations governing the whole supply chain of those groceries.
unfortunately, when you use a computer there is no guarantee that you won't get a virus or a porn banner or some hacker won't skim all your personal details. that's because its up to the user, and most users aren't experts in computer security. its also unfair to expect them to be because it would be like expecting anyone to be able to identify salmonella in the food that they buy before eating it.
those that defend freedom to use a computer for whatever they like are in a sense admitting that they would like to reserve the right to use it for questionable purposes (even if they never actually do). everyone knows that downloading movies is illegal, so how can preventing the illegal download of movies from the internet be seen as wrong?
having said all this, enforcement or control of computers shouldn't be by some conglomerate of corporate interests or by the supplier of a product, but by a government agency, and perhaps this level of independent enforcement isn't possible with computers yet. cloud computing may offer some opportunities for enforcement through government agencies though.
china is probably on the forefront of enforcement of the internet and computing. western countries see this as a bad thing, but when the "western internet" collapses from a deluge of ddos attacks, malware and kiddie porn, we might realize that maybe they were onto something.
Sadly, Boeing has ZERO intention of doing this on their own.
Boeing has the corporate level-headiness that the new players lack. It's not ingenuity or enthusiasm that is needed, its finance, and the new players will run out of it eventually. Paul Allen is a businessman, so you can be sure his intentions have little to do with the greater good of humanity.
Congress is actually the best thing you have going for you as far as controlling financial black holes. The US is straining under 15 trillion dollars of debt and a failing reserve currency. Your public health system is a shambles and the military hardware corporations continue to lobby for the pointless wars being carried off in far flung places that have little meaning to the common citizen. The Congress represents the people and is the symbol of the democracy and freedom you all so faithfully and blindly defend. Reigning in the pointless bureaucratic and academic paper shuffling inside NASA is something positive that Congress could achieve right now. Do you really need to still be spending $400 of taxpayer money on a spanner for some spacecraft that at most could offer a bunch of PHDs something to write a paper about when ordinary people can't even afford to own a home?
I think the progress made is space during the cold war was remarkable (if unsustainable). Its certainly not that NASA and the CCCP didn't achieve great things, but they were essentially military projects with budgets will never again be justified. Its pretty hard to expect RTGs in the first satellites, and I think Earth's gravity well is safe for the foreseeable future. I also don't think the space junk problem is as bad as some people make out, as everything floating around the Earth is in a decaying orbit, the only variable being how long it takes to reenter the atmosphere. The only points that are safe from a fiery plunge (or a lunar crash landing) are the lagrange points where the gravity from two bodies (Earth/Moon, Earth/Sun) balance each other, and it isn't a piece of cake to remain at these points either. For small applications solar is probably the way to go. The problem with RTGs is what happens when they reenter the atmosphere. If they land near some farmer's tomato and tobacco fields, he may end up growing tomacco if there is a radiation leak from the RTG.
God help us if we can't figure out a way to un-fuck the mistakes of the past and move towards the future in time to form a self-sufficient colony before we get wiped out by the next big fucking asteroid
I think the best we can do is work on the problems facing us here on Earth. Renewable energy to eliminate the reliance on oil, coal and gas, population control or some means to feed everyone adequately and fairly, economic stability and cooperation (most likely requiring economic meltdown of the current competitive systems), political unification (most likely requiring the disbanding of the UN Security Council and more authority to the General Assembly), global military disarmament, and religious rationalization (religious organizations should be limited in their scope of operation so as to prevent abuse as a political tool). There are many other problems too, and many answers and challenges, but simply moving into space with our current attitudes will only shift the problems. No venture would last longer than a few years due to civil unrest, crime and terrorism.
Most people seem to be apathetic about the future beyond the term of their own lifespan. Clearly our culture has failed somewhere along the way that respect has faltered for the legacy we have inherited from our ancestors from the past 65 million years.
You can thank human nature for that, but Adam Smith certainly didn't help (though if not him it would have been someone else).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
Perhaps the solution to renewable energy lies in permanent magnets. Just pick up two plain old bar magnets and have a play. They have uncanny properties, and I think their potential as apparent storage devices of one of the most fundamental energies is yet to be unlocked. There aren't too many places in the known universe lacking in the energy required to keep electrons perpetually orbiting their nucleus, so permanent magnetism may be the source of future "nuclear energy". There are a lot of crackpots out to try make a buck and secure all sorts of ridiculous patents from ill-thought-out contraptions, and I know about the laws of thermodynamics (I'm an engineer), but anyone who believes that the universe is limited by a bunch of laws surmised by man are idiots. Such laws are made to be broken, and will be (just not by the idiots limited by them). "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it." - George Bernard Shaw
Corporations are making money in space. All governments that provide any kind of service (be it launches or academic) are wasting money in space on a grand scale and have been for years.
The problem with any government sponsored program is that taxpayers pay twice; once for the grants and subsidies, and then as consumers when the corporations turn their government-funded research and development into commodities.
On the flip-side, its difficult to justify a large R&D budget in any private company because if you come up with something truly innovative, it will be plundered by other companies to the point where its impossible to defend your rights to the IP and recover your costs.
mil specs have been around a long time, but a lot of mil specs were developed or at least refined as a result of space programs, so you can at least thank NASA for providing impetus and raw data for some of the quality standards that go into modern aviation. just have a look at the amendment histories of FARs 23 and 25 and see how they have changed. standards for new material grades, dynamic response, electronics interference, lightning protection, etc. have been influenced by space programs of mid last century.
mil specs are more than tolerances and material data based on so many tests. its an entire quality system and a papertrail of accountability. manufacturing processes may not vary much, but the supplier of mil spec parts will be required to purchase higher quality manufacturing equipment and use more highly skilled labor than a supplier of commercial quality parts (merely to meet the tolerance requirements without a crippling amount of waste). even civilian standards and regulations are being influenced more and more by mil specs, so much so that for an equivalent application, a mil spec part would probably be accepted as complying with the requirements of any other standard around the world.
mil specs are the only reason why people feel safe flying on commercial jets
the difference between commercial & mil spec has nothing to do with the paint color; it's the guarantee you supply with your product. if your valves caused an accident and you were caught out, you're in deeper shit than if you were making valves for commercial applications. indemnity insurance won't cover you for criminal negligence.
if the mil spec valves were painted a different color to indicate a certain material used or to indicate certification for use in certain temperature range, and the commercial versions you spray painted don't meet the same standards, then both you and the inspector who passed them wanna make sure you have good lawyers if something fucks up as a result. mil specification involves a paper trail that doesn't come with commercial products, so even if the only difference was the color, just spray painting a commercial item to look like a mil spec item isn't usually enough to make it mil spec.
thank goodness i don't fly with the canadian military
there are a few notable differences between terrestrial and space tech; one being that most of the time is has one chance to work and one only. with such a low frequency and high cost of launches, there is no room for infant mortality or MTBF data or consumer grade crapware. its a good industry for QA people to refine their knowledge. as with aviation, everything is MIL spec (or equivalent) and traceable back to the billet of origin material, with dozens of inspections at various levels. its also an industry that demands the highest performance-to-weight ratio. in the good old days (before the financial black hole space programs of today) plastics and microchips were technologies that came about due to the needs of space programs, and what starts out as space-tech can find its way into everyday life such that it loses its "space-techiness". the Lexan cutlery you can get now started life in the helmets of the astronauts that walked on the moon for instance.
there are technologies in waiting for the next generation of space programs. aerospikes, aerogels, nanotubes, biosteel/silk, etc.
when the world wakes up and realizes that corporations and governments will never have the money to tinker in space with anything more than flying washing machines, and that non-profit cooperation is essential for large-scale colonization, these technologies will go to space and new ones will join them as new challenges are met and overcome. the problem with today's space programs is that they aren't really coming across technological challenges that haven't already been solved. there are a lot of studies of effects of long term microgravity environment on the human body to justify the cost of the ISS, but even much of this stuff was already studied on Mir.
the real challenges like cheap, safe, reliable and regular access to low earth orbit (the true enabler of space colonization) is being tossed into the too hard basket (especially with the economic failure of the X-33), but when someone finds the answer, you can bet that patents, copyright and a even a healthy head start won't save them from the corporate copycats. just don't be stupid enough to buy tickets on the first 100,000 rides in a corporate-sponsored SSTO space shuttle.
putting a man on the moon was an awesome achievement, but the challenge there that will require development of new technologies will be mining and smelting ore to create structural materials that can be used in lagrange point space stations. aluminium cans and inflatables aren't going to be enough to permit large-scale colonization.
i think there was one USSR spacecraft that may have been designed to carry weapons, but i think it failed during takeoff and i'm not sure it actually carried any weapons. unfortunately i couldn't find a website that mentions it.
one country stationing nukes in space would be a sure fire way to trigger global space race though. too bad science would take a back seat
The cost of insurance and regulatory compliance will be what kills them, along with short-term shareholder apathy.
"[investors] will finance space systems built with existing technology, but [investors] will not finance systems built with promising revolutionary technologies - not at any price"
Source: TESTIMONY OF PETER B. TEETS, President and Chief Operating Officer, Lockheed Martin Corporation, BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SPACE OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION, May 20, 1999, Page 2
If the likes of Lockheed Martin and Boeing (VentureStar) can't get it right even with significant government backing, what hopes have the little guys like SpaceX got? Their little wanking party will be over soon enough.
the US merely built some big missiles based on captured German technology and found some nutcases from the USAF to ride them. they haven't gone back since because the budget was justified by the Cold War, not science & exploration.
the ISS and defunct STS have always been massive financial black holes and i'm thankful the Aussie government has been smart (or stupid) enough avoid them and to remain a "user" rather than "provider" of space services.
china will have their play and show the world how great they are, then realize how pointless it is, and put it all on the back burner. russia is probably the only country in any position to actually make some money from launch services, but they're smart enough to balance the risk
until the "moron" gene is discovered and eliminated, humanity isn't ready for space. we are still a bunch of feudal states teeming full of all the seven sins. nothing we do in space could possibly be for the good of anything but self-serving corporate shareholders, and the more we go there the more we're likely to fuck it up for future generations.
believe it or not i'm a space fanatic - i'm just a bit more pragmatic than the pathetic mars-roving wannabes
pascal does, but with delphi you can also jump freely into asm. never found an app that required a goto yet, but i've reworked plenty of really old unstructured stuff that was full of em. same with fortran, which i reckon is a dog of a language even though its used a lot by some really smart people.
everyone WANTS computers to be easy, but I don't think they EXPECT it. in fact, they often expect that things will go wrong at every upgrade. the IT department is always at the receiving end of a long list of expletives from all and sundry, so to man the trenches of IT you have to be hardy enough to brush off the insults and realize that it isn't really you personally that they are swearing at, but the system itself (hardware, software, procedures, etc). a lot of people hate being dependent on an IT department, particularly if they are a little savvy and reckon they could fix the problem themselves in half the time, but most people also realize that an IT department is a necessary evil. in many companies there is a mystique about the IT people; many don't even know what IT people do on a daily basis. ask some people and they would be convinced that they look at porn or play solitaire all day (especially if they haven't heard of UT or Battlefield). to a lot of people computers are to be feared, holding them at ransom, a threatening menace that will destroy them should they do something wrong, or that they will get dragged off to prison if they trigger an "illegal exception".
the only other profession that comes close to IT in its ability to baffle the common folk would be the various fields of professional engineering, with all their respective hodge-podge of numbers and symbols.
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as i said previously, its natural for someone who is the subject of regulation to resist it.
i also never claimed that any government regulation would be perfect or "magical". it would merely be a measure to build upon. all regulations are amended, some more than others as new means are discovered of better achieving their objectives.
i could break down your argument and come up with counter-arguments, but it doesn't matter what i say, you will come up with something to argue otherwise till your blue in the face to protect your perceived right to violate copyright at will (hence why i said your argument is "moot" - look up the word in the dictionary). it also explains why much of your argument is colorful, extreme and desperate. do you really think i would have any hope of convincing someone who has basically admitted to thinking that he has the right to copyright infringement that regulations in place to help prevent it would be good? you've rendered the whole discussion pointless.
if you made a statement like "i don't care for copyright" in a copyright infringement case, you would be laughed out of the courtroom and into your cell, and everything you claimed before and after would be moot in the same way. you're just pissy because you dropped your pants and exposed your ass.
since you don't care for copyright, there is no reason for you not to install pirate software and download movies, so the rest of your argument is moot. you are the criminal being targeted by the regulation i proposed.
since I don't care for copyright
'nuff said
Paul has a great deal of humanity in his decisions
You know him personally do you? How do you think he got rich in the first place? Microsoft isn't exactly a model corporate citizen. Billionaires have more money than they need for their lifestyle, so they blow some of it on dickwaving like SpaceX. You can be sure that after Allen has his vacation in space to give him plenty to talk about with his billionaire mates, the technology that enabled it will take a back seat. You will obviously disagree, but only based on speculation and unfounded faith in those that have done nothing for you. Morons who get suckered into religious cults suffer from a similar mental incapacity.
Scaled Composites achieved a great milestone (relatively cheap access to suborbital space for trained test pilots) and I've sat in on a presentation by Burt Rutan who is a very smart man and an inspirational speaker, but no amount of finance from Dick Branson or Paul Allen will help get you or me closer to a holiday in Low Earth Orbit.
Much of our deficit is due to these bastards. When Boehner/O had a deal to drop spending 5 or 6 trillion (4-5 trillion in cuts and 1 trillion in tax increases), cantor jumped in and scaped it.
Do you have any idea what 4-5 trillion dollars in cuts actually means? Just because some politicians says his great plan will balance the budget doesn't mean it actually ever could. Money has to come from somewhere, and while funding NASA will satisfy the space fanatics, it may mean cutting the secondary education budget, which will affect a lot more people. Congress is by necessity a bureaucracy, but all its members are voted in and represent their constituent voters to some degree (if they wish to keep their seat at least). Congress can and will always fuck things up, but would you have some dictator come in and sort it all out? I'm sure you could get in there and make America grand again, although you'll probably need a much bigger soapbox than Slashdot.
That doesn't mean that we need to accept every form of 'regulation' simply because we like to have it in other areas. Not all of it makes sense.
Nobody "likes" to be regulated. That's not why we have it. Every regulatory instrument has a purpose (often related to safety of users or the public). You not understanding a regulation doesn't make it useless or wrong. Its also natural to resist regulation if it may affect your activities or income. Having worked in aviation compliance I can attest that the cost of regulatory compliance can be significant, but particularly in aviation, and particularly in the current economic climate (cost cutting), nobody would get on a jet airliner without it.
need to learn how to use a computer without being idiots
Unfortunately no amount of learning will help them. Computer security is broad and not easily understood even by security professionals (Bruce Schneier is considered to be a leading expert in this field, and "Cryptogram" has some very interesting takes on the world of security in general). Threats are changing rapidly. Its not the devil you know that concerns most people.
Most users are quite capable at using a computer for its intended purpose; inability to harden an iptables firewall doesn't make them idiots.
Any need for consumers to know about virus scanners or firewalls has come about because of a lack of regulation. You highlight a concern about abuse of regulation, but at the moment users are putting their personal details and in many cases their livelihoods in the hands of software developed for commercial interests. In Australia at least, I would trust government regulation to protect me much more than multinational corporations. There is no doubt that government regulation can be abused, but private regulation will definitely always be abused (look at how deregulation of the finance sector, especially in the US, has turned out). At least democratic governance has some level of responsibility to the voting public.
I'd say that most of them are saying, "Yes, this could be used for illegal purposes. However, it is also very useful for doing other things. Therefore, going overboard and trying to stop a few people from doing illegal things by ruining the technology for everyone isn't worth it."
Every technology is a double-edged sword that could potentially be used for good or evil. That is rather obvious, so merely stating that computers could be used for good or evil is stating the obvious an doesn't by any means negate any need for regulation. Regulation can't "ruin" the technology if its only purpose is to prevent you from operating it illegally. At most it may hinder the way you currently use a computer, requiring you to change the way you use it to achieve the same outcomes (which is common in any regulated industry if a regulation is amended). You're concern is apparently that regulation will stop you from operating a computer legally altogether, but that is a very unlikely scenario.
Using the case against DRM is common in this instance, but DRM is also not a form of regulation if it is implemented by the corporate sector. It is in fact the consequence of a lack of regulation (its the response of corporations to attempt to fill the gap, which as I've argued above will always be abused). I don't condone the use of DRM by corporations. Regulatory controls wouldn't likely be as strict as what the RIAA is gradually implementing (there is lots of politics and red tape so it is usually a more gradual process), and even though the RIAA would no doubt lobby for the tightest controls possible they would be hindered by the regulatory process themselves. Even corporate-implemented DRM is at most an inconvenience or an added cost if it fucks up, which apparently isn't uncommon, but that is also due to lack of enforced quality standards; DRM doesn't ruin the technology that it controls.
Who is this "everyone"? Not all cou
fucking mongorians... get off mah shitty wall!!!!
there's probably nothing wrong with regulation of computing. everything else is regulated, and we accept that because it contributes to our feeling of safety and comfort. when you buy groceries from a supermarket you cook them up without worrying that you might get sick because there are regulations governing the whole supply chain of those groceries.
unfortunately, when you use a computer there is no guarantee that you won't get a virus or a porn banner or some hacker won't skim all your personal details. that's because its up to the user, and most users aren't experts in computer security. its also unfair to expect them to be because it would be like expecting anyone to be able to identify salmonella in the food that they buy before eating it.
those that defend freedom to use a computer for whatever they like are in a sense admitting that they would like to reserve the right to use it for questionable purposes (even if they never actually do). everyone knows that downloading movies is illegal, so how can preventing the illegal download of movies from the internet be seen as wrong?
having said all this, enforcement or control of computers shouldn't be by some conglomerate of corporate interests or by the supplier of a product, but by a government agency, and perhaps this level of independent enforcement isn't possible with computers yet. cloud computing may offer some opportunities for enforcement through government agencies though.
china is probably on the forefront of enforcement of the internet and computing. western countries see this as a bad thing, but when the "western internet" collapses from a deluge of ddos attacks, malware and kiddie porn, we might realize that maybe they were onto something.
they both serve the same purpose (capitalism & communism)... help the rich get richer
they have sim-city for the iPad?!
...not to mention funding your competition via interest payments on an impossible-to-ever-fully-repay national debt
If a space station falls to Earth, I'd say gravity is doing its job pretty well.
Sadly, Boeing has ZERO intention of doing this on their own.
Boeing has the corporate level-headiness that the new players lack. It's not ingenuity or enthusiasm that is needed, its finance, and the new players will run out of it eventually. Paul Allen is a businessman, so you can be sure his intentions have little to do with the greater good of humanity.
Congress is actually the best thing you have going for you as far as controlling financial black holes. The US is straining under 15 trillion dollars of debt and a failing reserve currency. Your public health system is a shambles and the military hardware corporations continue to lobby for the pointless wars being carried off in far flung places that have little meaning to the common citizen. The Congress represents the people and is the symbol of the democracy and freedom you all so faithfully and blindly defend. Reigning in the pointless bureaucratic and academic paper shuffling inside NASA is something positive that Congress could achieve right now. Do you really need to still be spending $400 of taxpayer money on a spanner for some spacecraft that at most could offer a bunch of PHDs something to write a paper about when ordinary people can't even afford to own a home?
God help us if we can't figure out a way to un-fuck the mistakes of the past and move towards the future in time to form a self-sufficient colony before we get wiped out by the next big fucking asteroid
I think the best we can do is work on the problems facing us here on Earth. Renewable energy to eliminate the reliance on oil, coal and gas, population control or some means to feed everyone adequately and fairly, economic stability and cooperation (most likely requiring economic meltdown of the current competitive systems), political unification (most likely requiring the disbanding of the UN Security Council and more authority to the General Assembly), global military disarmament, and religious rationalization (religious organizations should be limited in their scope of operation so as to prevent abuse as a political tool). There are many other problems too, and many answers and challenges, but simply moving into space with our current attitudes will only shift the problems. No venture would last longer than a few years due to civil unrest, crime and terrorism.
Most people seem to be apathetic about the future beyond the term of their own lifespan. Clearly our culture has failed somewhere along the way that respect has faltered for the legacy we have inherited from our ancestors from the past 65 million years.
You can thank human nature for that, but Adam Smith certainly didn't help (though if not him it would have been someone else).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
Perhaps the solution to renewable energy lies in permanent magnets. Just pick up two plain old bar magnets and have a play. They have uncanny properties, and I think their potential as apparent storage devices of one of the most fundamental energies is yet to be unlocked. There aren't too many places in the known universe lacking in the energy required to keep electrons perpetually orbiting their nucleus, so permanent magnetism may be the source of future "nuclear energy". There are a lot of crackpots out to try make a buck and secure all sorts of ridiculous patents from ill-thought-out contraptions, and I know about the laws of thermodynamics (I'm an engineer), but anyone who believes that the universe is limited by a bunch of laws surmised by man are idiots. Such laws are made to be broken, and will be (just not by the idiots limited by them). "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it." - George Bernard Shaw
Never underestimate the ingenuity of stupidity.
Corporations are making money in space. All governments that provide any kind of service (be it launches or academic) are wasting money in space on a grand scale and have been for years.
The problem with any government sponsored program is that taxpayers pay twice; once for the grants and subsidies, and then as consumers when the corporations turn their government-funded research and development into commodities.
On the flip-side, its difficult to justify a large R&D budget in any private company because if you come up with something truly innovative, it will be plundered by other companies to the point where its impossible to defend your rights to the IP and recover your costs.
Such is capitalism.
mil specs have been around a long time, but a lot of mil specs were developed or at least refined as a result of space programs, so you can at least thank NASA for providing impetus and raw data for some of the quality standards that go into modern aviation. just have a look at the amendment histories of FARs 23 and 25 and see how they have changed. standards for new material grades, dynamic response, electronics interference, lightning protection, etc. have been influenced by space programs of mid last century.
mil specs are more than tolerances and material data based on so many tests. its an entire quality system and a papertrail of accountability. manufacturing processes may not vary much, but the supplier of mil spec parts will be required to purchase higher quality manufacturing equipment and use more highly skilled labor than a supplier of commercial quality parts (merely to meet the tolerance requirements without a crippling amount of waste). even civilian standards and regulations are being influenced more and more by mil specs, so much so that for an equivalent application, a mil spec part would probably be accepted as complying with the requirements of any other standard around the world.
mil specs are the only reason why people feel safe flying on commercial jets
the difference between commercial & mil spec has nothing to do with the paint color; it's the guarantee you supply with your product. if your valves caused an accident and you were caught out, you're in deeper shit than if you were making valves for commercial applications. indemnity insurance won't cover you for criminal negligence.
if the mil spec valves were painted a different color to indicate a certain material used or to indicate certification for use in certain temperature range, and the commercial versions you spray painted don't meet the same standards, then both you and the inspector who passed them wanna make sure you have good lawyers if something fucks up as a result. mil specification involves a paper trail that doesn't come with commercial products, so even if the only difference was the color, just spray painting a commercial item to look like a mil spec item isn't usually enough to make it mil spec.
thank goodness i don't fly with the canadian military
there are a few notable differences between terrestrial and space tech; one being that most of the time is has one chance to work and one only. with such a low frequency and high cost of launches, there is no room for infant mortality or MTBF data or consumer grade crapware. its a good industry for QA people to refine their knowledge. as with aviation, everything is MIL spec (or equivalent) and traceable back to the billet of origin material, with dozens of inspections at various levels. its also an industry that demands the highest performance-to-weight ratio. in the good old days (before the financial black hole space programs of today) plastics and microchips were technologies that came about due to the needs of space programs, and what starts out as space-tech can find its way into everyday life such that it loses its "space-techiness". the Lexan cutlery you can get now started life in the helmets of the astronauts that walked on the moon for instance.
there are technologies in waiting for the next generation of space programs. aerospikes, aerogels, nanotubes, biosteel/silk, etc.
when the world wakes up and realizes that corporations and governments will never have the money to tinker in space with anything more than flying washing machines, and that non-profit cooperation is essential for large-scale colonization, these technologies will go to space and new ones will join them as new challenges are met and overcome. the problem with today's space programs is that they aren't really coming across technological challenges that haven't already been solved. there are a lot of studies of effects of long term microgravity environment on the human body to justify the cost of the ISS, but even much of this stuff was already studied on Mir.
the real challenges like cheap, safe, reliable and regular access to low earth orbit (the true enabler of space colonization) is being tossed into the too hard basket (especially with the economic failure of the X-33), but when someone finds the answer, you can bet that patents, copyright and a even a healthy head start won't save them from the corporate copycats. just don't be stupid enough to buy tickets on the first 100,000 rides in a corporate-sponsored SSTO space shuttle.
putting a man on the moon was an awesome achievement, but the challenge there that will require development of new technologies will be mining and smelting ore to create structural materials that can be used in lagrange point space stations. aluminium cans and inflatables aren't going to be enough to permit large-scale colonization.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/826/1
i think there was one USSR spacecraft that may have been designed to carry weapons, but i think it failed during takeoff and i'm not sure it actually carried any weapons. unfortunately i couldn't find a website that mentions it.
one country stationing nukes in space would be a sure fire way to trigger global space race though. too bad science would take a back seat
The cost of insurance and regulatory compliance will be what kills them, along with short-term shareholder apathy.
"[investors] will finance space systems built with existing technology, but [investors] will not finance systems built with promising revolutionary technologies - not at any price"
Source: TESTIMONY OF PETER B. TEETS, President and Chief Operating Officer, Lockheed Martin Corporation, BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SPACE OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION, May 20, 1999, Page 2
If the likes of Lockheed Martin and Boeing (VentureStar) can't get it right even with significant government backing, what hopes have the little guys like SpaceX got? Their little wanking party will be over soon enough.
pushing back our knowledge of the universe to mere instants before its creation.
But you just sit there and gripe.
You must be new here.
the US merely built some big missiles based on captured German technology and found some nutcases from the USAF to ride them. they haven't gone back since because the budget was justified by the Cold War, not science & exploration.
the ISS and defunct STS have always been massive financial black holes and i'm thankful the Aussie government has been smart (or stupid) enough avoid them and to remain a "user" rather than "provider" of space services.
china will have their play and show the world how great they are, then realize how pointless it is, and put it all on the back burner. russia is probably the only country in any position to actually make some money from launch services, but they're smart enough to balance the risk
until the "moron" gene is discovered and eliminated, humanity isn't ready for space. we are still a bunch of feudal states teeming full of all the seven sins. nothing we do in space could possibly be for the good of anything but self-serving corporate shareholders, and the more we go there the more we're likely to fuck it up for future generations.
believe it or not i'm a space fanatic - i'm just a bit more pragmatic than the pathetic mars-roving wannabes
pascal does, but with delphi you can also jump freely into asm. never found an app that required a goto yet, but i've reworked plenty of really old unstructured stuff that was full of em. same with fortran, which i reckon is a dog of a language even though its used a lot by some really smart people.
...once said "the best way to predict the future is to invent it".
now where did i put my nukes...
everyone WANTS computers to be easy, but I don't think they EXPECT it. in fact, they often expect that things will go wrong at every upgrade. the IT department is always at the receiving end of a long list of expletives from all and sundry, so to man the trenches of IT you have to be hardy enough to brush off the insults and realize that it isn't really you personally that they are swearing at, but the system itself (hardware, software, procedures, etc). a lot of people hate being dependent on an IT department, particularly if they are a little savvy and reckon they could fix the problem themselves in half the time, but most people also realize that an IT department is a necessary evil. in many companies there is a mystique about the IT people; many don't even know what IT people do on a daily basis. ask some people and they would be convinced that they look at porn or play solitaire all day (especially if they haven't heard of UT or Battlefield). to a lot of people computers are to be feared, holding them at ransom, a threatening menace that will destroy them should they do something wrong, or that they will get dragged off to prison if they trigger an "illegal exception".
the only other profession that comes close to IT in its ability to baffle the common folk would be the various fields of professional engineering, with all their respective hodge-podge of numbers and symbols.