There are also certain mission trajectory issues. One whacked out Apollo emergency return trajectory had the capsule entering pretty steep at damn near escape velocity which is an immensely higher thermal load than merely controlled descent from low earth orbit. You could baby the trajectory of a deep space capsule and just declare some "survivable with a massive shield" abort orbits to be unsurvivable. But generally a deep space heat shield is going to be much heavier and higher speed rated than a NEO heat shield.
One thing you don't have to worry about is the heat shield.
It's made of PICA-X, a highly-advanced abrative heat shield material developed by SpaceX based on PICA, a heat shield material developed by NASA in the '90s for the Stardust return capsule, "the fastest man-made object ever to reenter Earth's atmosphere (12.4 km/s or 28,000 mph at 135 km altitude)."
According to Elon Musk:
"It's actually the most powerful stuff known to man. Dragon is capable of re-entering from a lunar velocity, or even a Mars velocity with the heat shield that it has."
LockMart and Boeing and the ULA make their money selling launches to private and government clients too. (McDonnell Douglas was bought out by Boeing nearly fifteen years ago.) So they also have every incentive to make their boosters as reliable as possible. SpaceX is no different than those companies.
Seriously?
LockMart and Boeing are huge, huge, bureaucratic companies with dozens of divisions and thousands of products and tens of thousands of customers.
SpaceX is a small, highly-focused and driven start-up company with two products; the Falcon booster and the Dragon capsule. Where the CEO, Elon Musk, probably knows all the engineers by their first names and probably walks the floor on a regular basis.
The CEOs of LockMart and Boeing are probably lucky to know the names of all their division managers without a cheatsheet.
And you see no difference between them.
Again, SpaceX is no different from the others - their boosters don't need to be any more reliable than their contract requirements require either.
Except the Falcon booster was designed from the beginning to be reusable, which means it was designed to be extra reliable. Unlike a disposable booster like the Atlas.
(I.E. you can damn well bet their launch contracts do not accept full responsibility for anything but "attempting" a launch. They'd be fools otherwise.)
SpaceX has an "Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity" (IDIQ) contract with NASA. My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that that calls for deliveries, not attempts, not launches per se. Of course each delivery is a launch so the difference is partly semantic.
They're all pretty much ignorant of how little experience we actually have designing boosters and how much it costs to add each decimal place of reliability.
That's the NASA mentality, just build it "good enough" and then inspect, inspect, inspect for reliability.
SpaceX is approaching the problem from the design perspective, like the airlines. Design for reliability, like an airliner, and then perform regular, scheduled maintenance.
I understand the concept is foreign to traditionalists.
That, and failure rate for civil aviation is several orders of magnitude lower.
Now, yes.
But what about, for example, SpaceX Falcon boosters which are designed from the beginning for reliability and reuse? Instead of boosters which are designed merely "good enough" because they're only used once.
SpaceX has a much different mindset than Lockheed Martin or McDonnell Douglas. They plan on making money selling launches to private and government clients. They have a strong incentive to make their boosters as reliable as possible, and from everything I've heard, that's exactly what they're doing. Elon Musk's reputation is on the line with every launch.
Unlike Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, et al who only need to design and build their boosters "good enough" to meet their contract requirements. Who's personal reputation is on the line if an Atlas booster fails?
I don't see any reason why, with proper design, boosters shouldn't be as reliable, or almost as reliable, as airliners.
Clearly the airlines fly many, many more flights over much more populated areas than commercial space companies plan to over the next decade or longer and they are still in operation. So what is their insurance coverage strategy?
I'm guessing that the biggest difference is that the actuary statistics are well established for the airline industry, while they're limited for the commercial space industry.
Perhaps in that case it would be reasonable for the government to continue to indemify the commercial space industry until there is sufficient data for commercial insurance companies to feel comfortable selling coverage.
Quite a while ago I read the answer to a simliar question about finding work in Europe.
Most Europian countries have strict laws about hiring non-citizens for most jobs. He got around that by finding contract work through an American contracting agency.
The benefits are that since contract work is inherently temporary there were no problems with non-citizen status. The contract agency would bill the company directly and deposit his paycheck in an American bank so he usually didn't even have to pay local taxes. And the IRS has (had?) generous tax deductions for Americans who spend over some large number of days out of the country.
The downside is that he moved around quite a bit, whether by choice or job requirements I couldn't say.
I also don't know if there are any agencies in Canada or America that contract with companies in China.
The article says that one reason the ultimate goal of a 1MW laser is not feasible right now is because no ship can power it, and even a 100KW laser may stress the power systems on current ships.
Before going back across the border, save any work back to your remote server and delete the SCP client, browser, Truecrypt, and the encrypted file. If you're really paranoid, reinstall the OS from the rescue partition.
Remember, deleting files or even reinstalling the OS doesn't remove the actual data from the disk. Use a utility that overwrites the unused fisk surface with at least random data or preferably to DoD data destruction standards (and run it from a thumb drive if you want to be extra safe).
Overwriting with two or three passes of random data is probably enough. Recovering overwritten data is possible but becomes increasing difficult and overwritting to DoD standards takes a long time, but reasonable people may differ.
Wouldn't storing them in Web standard formats, like XHTML/HTML, XML, etc be the way to go? As opposed to even formats like.doc,.xls and so on? Stuff defined by W3?
Because XHTML/HTML was designed as more of a presentation format, not as a word processing or spreadsheet document storage format.
But fundamentally, the data is still there in a format you can process. It's got at least some semantic information (e.g., where the paragraphs and headings are, which parts are references to other bits). It's definitely not terrible.
I'm not sure you understand what people expect of a professional-grade word processor.
People expect a professional-grade word processor to intelligently handle pagination, headers, footers, footnotes and bibliographical references. And to automatically generate table of contents and indexes.
It may also have collaboration features to coordinate multiple authors and editors like storing multiple revisions of a document with side-notes and highlighting.
If your point is that you can make nice documents in XHTML/HTML, well yes of course you can, but an HTML editor has nowhere near the features of a real word processor.
And an HTML editor isn't even a crude substitute for a spreadsheet editor.
Even the Microsoft Office proprietary formats aren't too much of a problem, as there's plenty of open source software that can open them and get the majority of the content out just fine; even if it doesn't look 100% the same, you can get the sense of things.
Again, I'm not sure you understand what people expect of a professional-grade word processor.
Maybe "you can get the sense of things" is adequate for a grocery list or letter to your mother, but business and professional users want to get out exactly what they put in.
Yes, Microsoft's proprietary formats have been mostly reverse engineered, but they're overly elaborate (that's the nice way to say they're crufty) and they change with every new release. So you're always playing catch-up with the latest releases.
And you're not Microsoft so why bother? When you can start with a clean slate and design a clean XML-based document format (without Microsoft's years of added cruft).
As an aside, I heard that Microsoft's "open", "standard" document specification is 6000 pages long. The ODF (Open Document Format) specification is 600 pages long. Which would you rather implement?
Wouldn't storing them in Web standard formats, like XHTML/HTML, XML, etc be the way to go? As opposed to even formats like.doc,.xls and so on? Stuff defined by W3?
Because XHTML/HTML was designed as more of a presentation format, not as a word processing or spreadsheet document storage format.
And ODF, which is the default file format for LibreOffice, is XML-based.
In such a case, such documents would be even more standards compliant
So say, for example, LibreOffice gets chosen over MS Office, 10 years pass and the LibreOffice project dies/forks (as has happened with so many OSS projects) and MS no longer exists (this is a fantasy, after all). Now we have a government using a possibly orphaned, obscure, 'open', word processing tool.
Of course the point is that if you use Microsoft Office and Microsoft goes bankrupt, then you're left with your documents in a closed, proprietary format (and even Microsoft's "open", "standard" format is pretty damn closed).
But if LibreOffice forks/dies, then your documents are in an open, documented, internationally recognised ISO-standard format.
Which documents would you rather attempt to recover.
The point, from Iran's point of view, is that it makes good propaganda.
The good news is that, yes, they don't have a pilot they can parade through the streets of Tehran and interrogate for information.
And if they manage to recover sensitive information from the onboard electronics, that's the fault of whoever designed the failsafe mechanism to prevent it. (It still beats putting a pilot's life at risk.)
They only move nursery pots from one place to another... that's it.
Which I admit is cool to watch and I'm sure saves a lot of repetitive back-breaking labor in greenhouses and nurseries, but they're a loooong way from "farmbots".
The Shuttle and ISS are black holes in NASA's budget sucking all the money away from almost every other project. Everything at NASA has been secondary to maintaining the Shuttle and ISS.
The best thing that could happen is that shutting down the Shuttle program will free up budget money to develop better, cheaper, faster manned and unmanned space programs.
The worst thing that could happen is that NASA decides to create another white elephant space program simply to keep the massive army of NASA employees and contractors who worked on the Shuttle program employed.
Seriously, isn't there anything (cheap/free) out there that will just let somebody edit a web site in WYSIWYG mode?
Nvu (which is based on Netscape Composer, but hasn't been updated for years), KompoZer (which is based on Nvu, but hasn't been updated in over a year) and BlueGriffon (where do they get these names) which seems to be under active development.
The last time I used KompoZer it worked, but crashed every once in a while and wasn't HTML 4 compliant. Maybe BlueGriffon is better.
It was my understanding that those PSA's (which were in many states) were funded out of the original big tobacco lawsuit settlement the states reached with the companies a decade or so ago.
You're probably right. I thought they were further back and used cigarette tax dollars, but my recollection is hazy. I never smoked, so I never really cared (except for the belief that smoking is uniformly bad for individuals and society in general).
Pity nobody does fund them out of cigarette tax dollars. I can honestly believe they were very effective.
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Not really. The Dragon capsule (and heat shield) is designed to be reusable.
It's thicker and stronger so they only have to replace the heat shield every 5, 10, 20 or whatever number of flights.
One thing you don't have to worry about is the heat shield.
It's made of PICA-X, a highly-advanced abrative heat shield material developed by SpaceX based on PICA, a heat shield material developed by NASA in the '90s for the Stardust return capsule, "the fastest man-made object ever to reenter Earth's atmosphere (12.4 km/s or 28,000 mph at 135 km altitude)."
According to Elon Musk:
Politicians don't get elected by enforcing laws, they get elected by enacting laws and then crowing about them when reelection comes around.
Seriously?
LockMart and Boeing are huge, huge, bureaucratic companies with dozens of divisions and thousands of products and tens of thousands of customers.
SpaceX is a small, highly-focused and driven start-up company with two products; the Falcon booster and the Dragon capsule. Where the CEO, Elon Musk, probably knows all the engineers by their first names and probably walks the floor on a regular basis.
The CEOs of LockMart and Boeing are probably lucky to know the names of all their division managers without a cheatsheet.
And you see no difference between them.
Except the Falcon booster was designed from the beginning to be reusable, which means it was designed to be extra reliable. Unlike a disposable booster like the Atlas.
SpaceX has an "Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity" (IDIQ) contract with NASA. My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that that calls for deliveries, not attempts, not launches per se. Of course each delivery is a launch so the difference is partly semantic.
That's the NASA mentality, just build it "good enough" and then inspect, inspect, inspect for reliability.
SpaceX is approaching the problem from the design perspective, like the airlines. Design for reliability, like an airliner, and then perform regular, scheduled maintenance.
I understand the concept is foreign to traditionalists.
Now, yes.
But what about, for example, SpaceX Falcon boosters which are designed from the beginning for reliability and reuse? Instead of boosters which are designed merely "good enough" because they're only used once.
SpaceX has a much different mindset than Lockheed Martin or McDonnell Douglas. They plan on making money selling launches to private and government clients. They have a strong incentive to make their boosters as reliable as possible, and from everything I've heard, that's exactly what they're doing. Elon Musk's reputation is on the line with every launch.
Unlike Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, et al who only need to design and build their boosters "good enough" to meet their contract requirements. Who's personal reputation is on the line if an Atlas booster fails?
I don't see any reason why, with proper design, boosters shouldn't be as reliable, or almost as reliable, as airliners.
Clearly the airlines fly many, many more flights over much more populated areas than commercial space companies plan to over the next decade or longer and they are still in operation. So what is their insurance coverage strategy?
I'm guessing that the biggest difference is that the actuary statistics are well established for the airline industry, while they're limited for the commercial space industry.
Perhaps in that case it would be reasonable for the government to continue to indemify the commercial space industry until there is sufficient data for commercial insurance companies to feel comfortable selling coverage.
Quite a while ago I read the answer to a simliar question about finding work in Europe.
Most Europian countries have strict laws about hiring non-citizens for most jobs. He got around that by finding contract work through an American contracting agency.
The benefits are that since contract work is inherently temporary there were no problems with non-citizen status. The contract agency would bill the company directly and deposit his paycheck in an American bank so he usually didn't even have to pay local taxes. And the IRS has (had?) generous tax deductions for Americans who spend over some large number of days out of the country.
The downside is that he moved around quite a bit, whether by choice or job requirements I couldn't say.
I also don't know if there are any agencies in Canada or America that contract with companies in China.
Which is why the Navy is funding Dr. Bussard's Polywell Fusion project.
Remember, deleting files or even reinstalling the OS doesn't remove the actual data from the disk. Use a utility that overwrites the unused fisk surface with at least random data or preferably to DoD data destruction standards (and run it from a thumb drive if you want to be extra safe).
Overwriting with two or three passes of random data is probably enough. Recovering overwritten data is possible but becomes increasing difficult and overwritting to DoD standards takes a long time, but reasonable people may differ.
Not even considering that most of the "waste" is usable fuel contaminated by a small amount of fission byproducts.
I'm not sure you understand what people expect of a professional-grade word processor.
People expect a professional-grade word processor to intelligently handle pagination, headers, footers, footnotes and bibliographical references. And to automatically generate table of contents and indexes.
It may also have collaboration features to coordinate multiple authors and editors like storing multiple revisions of a document with side-notes and highlighting.
If your point is that you can make nice documents in XHTML/HTML, well yes of course you can, but an HTML editor has nowhere near the features of a real word processor.
And an HTML editor isn't even a crude substitute for a spreadsheet editor.
Again, I'm not sure you understand what people expect of a professional-grade word processor.
Maybe "you can get the sense of things" is adequate for a grocery list or letter to your mother, but business and professional users want to get out exactly what they put in.
Yes, Microsoft's proprietary formats have been mostly reverse engineered, but they're overly elaborate (that's the nice way to say they're crufty) and they change with every new release. So you're always playing catch-up with the latest releases.
And you're not Microsoft so why bother? When you can start with a clean slate and design a clean XML-based document format (without Microsoft's years of added cruft).
As an aside, I heard that Microsoft's "open", "standard" document specification is 6000 pages long. The ODF (Open Document Format) specification is 600 pages long. Which would you rather implement?
Because XHTML/HTML was designed as more of a presentation format, not as a word processing or spreadsheet document storage format.
And ODF, which is the default file format for LibreOffice, is XML-based.
ODF is an official ISO/IEC standard. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) are the granddaddys of international standards. They don't come more standards compliant than that.
Of course the point is that if you use Microsoft Office and Microsoft goes bankrupt, then you're left with your documents in a closed, proprietary format (and even Microsoft's "open", "standard" format is pretty damn closed).
But if LibreOffice forks/dies, then your documents are in an open, documented, internationally recognised ISO-standard format.
Which documents would you rather attempt to recover.
If anyone is interested, here's a talk given by Dr. Mike McKubre from SRI on the state of Cold Fusion as of October 2011.
Why on earth would an economist say we needed higher gas taxes? If anything, higher taxes have a negative impact on the economy.
Of course an environmental policy analyst masquerading as an economist would say exactly that.
Similar to this guy, except for him it's (much) cheaper at night.
They dropped the original XBox like a hot rock.
Just sayin'.
The point, from Iran's point of view, is that it makes good propaganda.
The good news is that, yes, they don't have a pilot they can parade through the streets of Tehran and interrogate for information.
And if they manage to recover sensitive information from the onboard electronics, that's the fault of whoever designed the failsafe mechanism to prevent it. (It still beats putting a pilot's life at risk.)
They're barely nurserybots.
They only move nursery pots from one place to another... that's it.
Which I admit is cool to watch and I'm sure saves a lot of repetitive back-breaking labor in greenhouses and nurseries, but they're a loooong way from "farmbots".
Hewlett and Packard are probably spinning in their graves.
Like Microsoft Office for Mac?
It's like Microsoft wants 2012 to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
The Shuttle and ISS are black holes in NASA's budget sucking all the money away from almost every other project. Everything at NASA has been secondary to maintaining the Shuttle and ISS.
The best thing that could happen is that shutting down the Shuttle program will free up budget money to develop better, cheaper, faster manned and unmanned space programs.
The worst thing that could happen is that NASA decides to create another white elephant space program simply to keep the massive army of NASA employees and contractors who worked on the Shuttle program employed.
Seriously, isn't there anything (cheap/free) out there that will just let somebody edit a web site in WYSIWYG mode?
Nvu (which is based on Netscape Composer, but hasn't been updated for years), KompoZer (which is based on Nvu, but hasn't been updated in over a year) and BlueGriffon (where do they get these names) which seems to be under active development.
The last time I used KompoZer it worked, but crashed every once in a while and wasn't HTML 4 compliant. Maybe BlueGriffon is better.
It was my understanding that those PSA's (which were in many states) were funded out of the original big tobacco lawsuit settlement the states reached with the companies a decade or so ago.
You're probably right. I thought they were further back and used cigarette tax dollars, but my recollection is hazy. I never smoked, so I never really cared (except for the belief that smoking is uniformly bad for individuals and society in general).
Pity nobody does fund them out of cigarette tax dollars. I can honestly believe they were very effective.