I really wonder what would happen - I guess I just don't see how a private company is ever going to make money on this, space tourism will make a little off of a select rich few until the day that a major accident happens and people die - then the government will crack down on it. I don't think you can legally build an aircraft past a certain size without the government (FAA) getting involved - I'll bet if I built a jet and went flying someone WOULD shoot me down as you suggest - I grew up on the space coast of Florida watching Saturn V's and space shuttles launch, I worked out at CCAFS launching expendable rockets for 10 years, I sat in Burt Rutan's Space Ship 1 BEFORE it won the X-prize. I would dearly love for space travel to be successful but it is not a trivial venture and I will maintain that if it was going to make any money that we would have seen the privatization a LONG time ago.
"Yeah, I'd rather so much to have a government running stuff that can land on your house where some government bureaucrat say "so sue me.... oh that's right, you can't!"
which is exactly why privatized space ventures are doomed, this is why aircraft systems cost so much, product liability insurance.... I will maintain that until a private company can either:
1. Make so much money that they can finance their own product liability insurance OR 2. Have complete protection from the litigation of landing a rocket booster on a school
the whole thing is destined to FAIL....
So if the argument for privatizing space is that it will cost less than the government doing it, I think you are dead wrong. I was a founder of a company back in the 80's that built some of the first "glass cockpits" for yachts - we briefly entertained making some for aircraft until we looked into the cost of that - trust me its phenomenally expensive - when a failure can result in massive property damage or loss of life any business man with half a brain thinks twice -
Seems like the root of all evil is really lawyers and insurance reform... That MUST happen before this even stands a chance of long term success...
why can't NASA spend its budget on space exploration instead of some absurd study like this - Lots of/. post about how we spend too much on defense - I agree that we need to spend more on NASA and have a REAL space program again instead of the current joke we have today. I would point out that MOST of the technology that has made space exploration possible (and lots of other things too) comes out of defense spending and technology initiatives for defense. The thing I find even more insane than this study, is that the current bunch of losers in control of our country (and I include all political affiliations) believe we should let the take the privatized health care system and put it in control of the government and take government funded space exploration and privatize it...... I keep saying this - until a private corporation can make real money on space its not going to happen, that means money that offsets the risks involved - the government can assume this risk, private companies aren't going to - the first time a space tourists dies in a horrible accident you are going to see the government clamp down like you never thought possible and it will all immediately come to an end.... Lawyers and Insurance companies are driving this boat, Maybe an alien race SHOULD facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project and take of this problem.....
My company installs so much virus scanning, monitoring, automatic software management agents, and hard-drive encryption stuff that they can turn the highest end, fastest booting machine with SSD into a retro X86 in a few seconds... Most of us either NEVER turn the computers off or you turn it on and go n a long coffee break while your computer boots....To quote a friend - Software is like a gas - it expands to fill every piece of hardware capability
10 millions dollars isn't enough to do the paperwork that is involved with working with NASA let alone doing anything useful. Especially since its is split between 7 contractors - clearly a move designed to make it look like the US Space program isn't dead.....
My wife got a gig as an engineering internship her senior year of college - we graduated on the same day and she had a guaranteed job making about $3000 more than I did when I got my first engineering job out of college 2 months later - wish I had interned !!!
Seriously this has been an issue for along time - GPS time does not include leap seconds and I am tired of having to write software that let's user adjust for the variable amount of leap seconds - nobody really cares if the earths rotation is synchronized with " UTC"
I had suspected for a long time that Windows PC's were easier to use than Macs - now we find out you actually even need a college education and a higher IQ to use one....
my experience with laptops is this - if you really take it on the road a lot I have found that it is more likely to break before it becomes obsolete
on my list of craptops that are not well made and break easily:
1. Dell - most of the affordable ones are pretty cheaply made - we got a deal on a master program I was in where all the students got them, in the end I offered mine up as parts help other keep theirs running - the final straw on mine was when the internal voltage regulator literally went up in smoke in an airport.
2. HP - they should have lemon laws for HP laptops - it seems if you get a dud its pretty much going to be that way forever
3. Panasonic - crap displays - the toughbooks are rugged but are usually pretty disappointing from a performance perspective
The VERY best laptops I have found to be the Sony Vaio's - they are the only ones I've owned that lasted so long that they became obsolete and even then they were so good I could pass them on to moms and sisters.... They are a little pricey bit well worth it !
Heck man, back in the day (15 years old) - I built a 4 foot tall Tesla coil in my bedroom - 8" arcs flying through the air - fluorescent tubes lighting up 20 feet away - ozone levels so high I'd get headaches - jamming channel 2 for a block around my house - All my kids care about is texting on their iPhones and playing video games - I made cubic feet of hydrogen gas and mixed brake fluid and granulated chlorine, you do that stuff today and the FBI shows up at your house and accuses you of making bombs, of course those were also the days when you and you friends could grab your.22's and shotguns, head down to the quarry and shoot at TV tubes - its a different world, I think that interacting with science is what made it interesting for me, reading about it in a textbook and watching an internet video is pretty much what it has been reduced to, who the heck would find that stimulating or interesting for more than 5 minutes, let make a career out of it !!
clearly you know very little about stealth aircraft - you are right in that the the Chinese aircraft does not resemble the F117, it more closely resembles the F-22 or JSF and Size has virtually nothing to do with stealthiness, the B2 is a huge aircraft ! The F-117 was VERY stealthy and has been estimated to be around 10 square centimeters (you can find it on the internet) slightly larger than a rubics cube
great post - anyone who travels much and sees the world through their own eyes will quickly realize that most of what we are told on the "news" is highly filtered and twisted to make it palatable to the sheep !
there is a big difference between having a big ego and accomplishing great things (JFK, Neil Armstrong, MLK) and being Paris Hilton famous which is what Julian Assange is - he is a famous for being famous, he is not doing anything to better humankind or help people.
Slashdot Mirror
I really wonder what would happen - I guess I just don't see how a private company is ever going to make money on this, space tourism will make a little off of a select rich few until the day that a major accident happens and people die - then the government will crack down on it. I don't think you can legally build an aircraft past a certain size without the government (FAA) getting involved - I'll bet if I built a jet and went flying someone WOULD shoot me down as you suggest - I grew up on the space coast of Florida watching Saturn V's and space shuttles launch, I worked out at CCAFS launching expendable rockets for 10 years, I sat in Burt Rutan's Space Ship 1 BEFORE it won the X-prize. I would dearly love for space travel to be successful but it is not a trivial venture and I will maintain that if it was going to make any money that we would have seen the privatization a LONG time ago.
"Yeah, I'd rather so much to have a government running stuff that can land on your house where some government bureaucrat say "so sue me.... oh that's right, you can't!"
which is exactly why privatized space ventures are doomed, this is why aircraft systems cost so much, product liability insurance.... I will maintain that until a private company can either:
1. Make so much money that they can finance their own product liability insurance OR
2. Have complete protection from the litigation of landing a rocket booster on a school
the whole thing is destined to FAIL....
So if the argument for privatizing space is that it will cost less than the government doing it, I think you are dead wrong. I was a founder of a company back in the 80's that built some of the first "glass cockpits" for yachts - we briefly entertained making some for aircraft until we looked into the cost of that - trust me its phenomenally expensive - when a failure can result in massive property damage or loss of life any business man with half a brain thinks twice -
Seems like the root of all evil is really lawyers and insurance reform... That MUST happen before this even stands a chance of long term success...
well that's a comfort - although if our tax dollars can pay for shrimp on treadmills it wouldn't necessarily surprise me...
why can't NASA spend its budget on space exploration instead of some absurd study like this - Lots of /. post about how we spend too much on defense - I agree that we need to spend more on NASA and have a REAL space program again instead of the current joke we have today. I would point out that MOST of the technology that has made space exploration possible (and lots of other things too) comes out of defense spending and technology initiatives for defense. The thing I find even more insane than this study, is that the current bunch of losers in control of our country (and I include all political affiliations) believe we should let the take the privatized health care system and put it in control of the government and take government funded space exploration and privatize it...... I keep saying this - until a private corporation can make real money on space its not going to happen, that means money that offsets the risks involved - the government can assume this risk, private companies aren't going to - the first time a space tourists dies in a horrible accident you are going to see the government clamp down like you never thought possible and it will all immediately come to an end.... Lawyers and Insurance companies are driving this boat, Maybe an alien race SHOULD facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project and take of this problem.....
My company installs so much virus scanning, monitoring, automatic software management agents, and hard-drive encryption stuff that they can turn the highest end, fastest booting machine with SSD into a retro X86 in a few seconds... Most of us either NEVER turn the computers off or you turn it on and go n a long coffee break while your computer boots ....To quote a friend - Software is like a gas - it expands to fill every piece of hardware capability
10 millions dollars isn't enough to do the paperwork that is involved with working with NASA let alone doing anything useful. Especially since its is split between 7 contractors - clearly a move designed to make it look like the US Space program isn't dead.....
Apparently they had an outbreak of common sense in Texas
to top it all off the judge assessed a civil penalty of $1000 dollars against Verizon, as a deterrent for treating customers badly in the future !
My wife got a gig as an engineering internship her senior year of college - we graduated on the same day and she had a guaranteed job making about $3000 more than I did when I got my first engineering job out of college 2 months later - wish I had interned !!!
I watched for a little bit, seriously, watching paint dry is more stimulating....
Seriously this has been an issue for along time - GPS time does not include leap seconds and I am tired of having to write software that let's user adjust for the variable amount of leap seconds - nobody really cares if the earths rotation is synchronized with " UTC"
I had suspected for a long time that Windows PC's were easier to use than Macs - now we find out you actually even need a college education and a higher IQ to use one....
lol......
+1 Funny Monty Python reference
my experience with laptops is this - if you really take it on the road a lot I have found that it is more likely to break before it becomes obsolete
on my list of craptops that are not well made and break easily:
1. Dell - most of the affordable ones are pretty cheaply made - we got a deal on a master program I was in where all the students got them, in the end I offered mine up as parts help other keep theirs running - the final straw on mine was when the internal voltage regulator literally went up in smoke in an airport.
2. HP - they should have lemon laws for HP laptops - it seems if you get a dud its pretty much going to be that way forever
3. Panasonic - crap displays - the toughbooks are rugged but are usually pretty disappointing from a performance perspective
The VERY best laptops I have found to be the Sony Vaio's - they are the only ones I've owned that lasted so long that they became obsolete and even then they were so good I could pass them on to moms and sisters.... They are a little pricey bit well worth it !
the military has been looking at this for a LOT longer than Microsoft - I heard some concepts for this back in the 90's
seems weird that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy are nearly exactly the same age
I've heard of you, I heard you were dead....
$50 million is not quite enough to cover the bureaucracy necessary to manage the effort....
1978 actually
Heck man, back in the day (15 years old) - I built a 4 foot tall Tesla coil in my bedroom - 8" arcs flying through the air - fluorescent tubes lighting up 20 feet away - ozone levels so high I'd get headaches - jamming channel 2 for a block around my house - All my kids care about is texting on their iPhones and playing video games - I made cubic feet of hydrogen gas and mixed brake fluid and granulated chlorine, you do that stuff today and the FBI shows up at your house and accuses you of making bombs, of course those were also the days when you and you friends could grab your .22's and shotguns, head down to the quarry and shoot at TV tubes - its a different world, I think that interacting with science is what made it interesting for me, reading about it in a textbook and watching an internet video is pretty much what it has been reduced to, who the heck would find that stimulating or interesting for more than 5 minutes, let make a career out of it !!
clearly you know very little about stealth aircraft - you are right in that the the Chinese aircraft does not resemble the F117, it more closely resembles the F-22 or JSF and Size has virtually nothing to do with stealthiness, the B2 is a huge aircraft ! The F-117 was VERY stealthy and has been estimated to be around 10 square centimeters (you can find it on the internet) slightly larger than a rubics cube
great post - anyone who travels much and sees the world through their own eyes will quickly realize that most of what we are told on the "news" is highly filtered and twisted to make it palatable to the sheep !
Now that's a movie I would watch !
Wasn't "leaking" part of the problem with said Assange girls ?
there is a big difference between having a big ego and accomplishing great things (JFK, Neil Armstrong, MLK) and being Paris Hilton famous which is what Julian Assange is - he is a famous for being famous, he is not doing anything to better humankind or help people.