Initially the mission was 3.5 years, but technical problems caused an increase in the necessary time to complete it's goals to 5 years. These problems where not directly related to the reaction wheels.
Seems that the spacecraft survived in functional condition for the 3.5 years initially required, although with a number of failures. It made it long enough for the initial mission length, but didn't survive another 1.5 years because too many of the reaction wheels failed.
So, I'm not sure what you mean about the 5 year mission....
The telecommunications satellite that blowed up was the Astrium (Airbus) Express AM4R, which was to have replaced the Express AM4, which was lost (injected into the wrong orbit) in August 2011.
So they've done nearly the same thing before? Wow.
So are we *sure* the Russians are really launching these things and not just hiding them away for their use later?
Like everything bad that happens in Russia is due to the Americans... Um, I hate to say it but they have enough home grown issues to account for this. In fact the cold war loss was more about internal issues than anything else...
They "DO WORK" when it comes to space. WTF are WE doing? Sitting around, remembering the good-old-days while NASA fine-tunes its diversity statement.
Meanwhile the USA is building up quite a portfolio of images from the surface of Mars and shit. Russia's got a gig driving a space limousine.
Not a limousine, I'd call it more of a small truck, like a Ford ranger king cab with a manual transmission and a 4 cylinder engine. Crude way to travel, but if it's the only ride that stops when your thumb is out, you are just happy not to be walking or riding in the cargo bay.
Seriously, Texas, home of cowboy hats, Tex-Mex and Rick Perry... Why? Three major reasons..
1. LOW (as in Zero) income tax and low corporate tax rates.
2. RIGHT to WORK state.
3. Generally a state and local government that stays out of your way as much as possible.
So why NOT Texas?
1. You don't like Tex-Mex, cowboy boots, Rick Perry, or something else about Texas for purely subjective reasons OR you've never been here and have arbitrarily decided you don't like Tex-Mex, Cowboy hats, Rick Perry or something else for no real reason.
Thanks for the information. I knew there was some extra space needed, but I didn't realize that it was that much.
My experience was with a pickup truck where we put the tank in the bed, so size/weight was not an issue. In most cars, there is significant space available, it's just not well located or easily adapted to holding high pressure storage tanks. I don't thin that is a serious problem because some reconfiguration of the standard vehicle layout could be done by manufacturers. Where retrofitting might be less than ideal (you are almost certainly going to loose the trunk and/or the existing gas tank), purpose built cars for CNG would not suffer so much.
So, I would put it this way. Retrofitted CNG is not going to be a serious contender, but purpose built CNG designs would be. The problem right now is that it's only been about a decade since CNG became a usable motor fuel, and only the last few years where it has become very cost competitive. Auto manufacturers are only now starting to deliver CNG cars in viable numbers. Designs will improve as sales volumes improve.
Not really, but if you are falling for the renewable energy is viable farce, I can see why you would conclude that. Problem is, solar and wind are just not anywhere near a viable way to power the electric grid and won't be for the foreseeable future. You can supplement the grid with these renewables if you want, but you will still need fossil fueled plants to take up the slack when the weather is uncooperative or the load exceeds the available capacity (which will be most of the time).
CNG is the only viable fuel source if you are looking beyond gasoline and diesel fuels. Now if you where arguing for E85 fuel, I have less of an argument, but it is the height of stupidity to take food and turn it into a motor fuel, both economically and environmentally.
...you don't get to call yourself a "software engineer" or talk about others' software engineering practices.
Excellent book, but the software engineer who is just writing code doesn't need it, in fact they might not want to if they don't have good managers. Now if you MANAGE a project or other software engineers, THEN you should read this book every few years.
When you consider Hydrogen comes from natural gas as does an increasing amount of our electrical power, I think you are barking up the wrong trees. So are you saying we shouldn't develop our natural gas resources and burn something else like coal, nuclear, or something else? I don't think that is a great idea myself, we need to stick with natural gas.
I think natural gas is the lessor of many evils, and benefits from being the best of the fossil fuel options in terms of how clean it burns. And I believe that this outweighs the environmental damage that may happen with fracking.
Cars will be fueled next on Compressed Natural Gas. Why? Because there is a cheaper option that doesn't weigh a lot or take up lots of space.
Hydrogen is decidedly NOT efficient to produce. The cheapest way to make it right now is to reform natural gas (releasing CO2 in the process). Don't even think about electrolysis to get hydrogen, not even remotely cost effective or efficient Not to mention that the infrastructure needed to distribute H2 doesn't exist. It also is difficult to pack enough H2 into a tank to get enough energy inside to go very far unless you liquify it, but that requires cryogenic temperatures which are both dangerous and expensive. As nice as hydrogen sounds, it's not going to happen anytime soon.
Electric power (battery powered) is closer than hydrogen. The distribution infrastructure exists for the most part. Electricity is not hard to produce, even though we generate the bulk of it from fossil fuels. The problem with battery powered cars is that batteries are heavy, expensive, discharge quickly and take a lot of time to charge. You might get 100 miles out of a charge, maybe even 200, but eventually you are going to stop for a charge or replacement battery pack. If the temperature is high or low, your battery won't last nearly as long. The infrastructure for remote charging or battery swapping doesn't exist so distance anxiety is a real issue for electric car owners. Batteries are usually really large, compared to the equivalent tank size for gasoline. Batteries are not as inefficient as Hydrogen, but they still have serious issues.
Compressed Natural Gas suffers from fewer problems. The distribution infrastructure exists with natural gas pipelines nearly everywhere. In some areas CNG stations already exist. If you have NG in your home already, you can compress your own fuel for about half of the price at the station. Existing engines are easily converted to CNG with little loss in power and run cleaner and longer on CNG. If you convert correctly you can burn either CNG or gasoline/diesel. Tank size needs to be bigger than gasoline but most cars usually have the space available, trucks almost certainly do. Many fleet operators (taxis and such) already use CNG. But the biggest advantage of CNG is that it's cheap when compared to the other options (and gasoline/diesel for that matter). Not to mention that it is nearly 100% domestically sourced (at least in the USA).
So, the next adopted motor fuel will be CNG, not hydrogen or electric.
When I interview, I'm looking for two things technically. First, does the applicant have enough skills to be partially useful right away? Second, does the applicant have a demonstrated ability to learn, not just in school, but on their own? If you score good marks in both of these, you go high on the list of people to hire. Have great skills but are not interested in learning? I don't have time for you because if I run out of needing your exact skill set, I'm going to have to let you go. I hate letting people go...
so it will take a lot of data before you see a statistically significant change.
We go in circles then because *this* is exactly why I'm not jumping on the band wagon from the "science is settled" parade. It's going to take awhile before we see what we predict, yet we are SURE that what our models are saying is true. Actually, we are seeing less of all the significant weather events discussed above, but you tell me to wait, it will come out like they say in the end? OK, I'm taking a wait and see approach, and so far the dire consequences have not panned out to be as dire (Al Gore and all).
I understand your objection to Al Gore being used as an example, but the shoe does fit here, at least in the short term, for the rabid environmentalist lobby who want to play the sheep for fools and sell hype for votes and power. Unfortunately it is this side of the climate change crowd that is controlling the message and what the public believes.
So, with all due respect to statistics, I think this question is not settled, and your response above is a good indication of this. We need more data just to know if our current models are good over tens of years... But climate is about hundreds and thousands of years.. Are our models good enough for that? I think not, surely not with any kind of assurance.
I like your airplane analogy... Climate is something that has trends which are longer than average lifespans, so it is hugely difficult to make objective observations when our experience is subjective and short term. I too remember the cold winters of the 70's in the Midwest, but that does not make global warming truth, because the time scale involved in natural climate cycles can sometimes be much longer than one life...
Even if man made global warming isn't true (but all the science says it is), why pollute? It raises health costs too.
ALL the science does NOT say that it is, only what you hear about from the media, politicians and those who are trying to sell something.
Have you heard about the claim of more extreme weather would come from this? Guess what? Doesn't seem to be true, looking at the available government data, but you hear it as fact all the time.
But, to your point. Why pollute? I agree with the sentiment in principle. We need to be good stewards of the planet and the resources it provides. But we must remember that some choices we make are about doing the least harm. It is impossible for humans to live and not have some impact, no matter how primitive we choose to make life. For me, I first choose life over death, with the understanding that man does and will have an impact on the environment when I do. I will also choose to limit said impact when possible, but life comes first.
Ok, I'm pretty much done with you on this. You want to stand up on the soap box and yell about how your opponents are wrong, oh so wrong, yet you don't want to engage on the issue and provide evidence of anything. (Not that slashdot is known for that kind of thing...)
So, relationship change for you, just so I can remember that you are more interested in flame wars than discussing anything of substance.
So for you Osi99, it's FULL STOP on all topics,. Wish you the best but I don't have time to deal with such foolishness.
So are you? The FUD with this issue is great and it attracts politicians who are angling for power and votes. That much should raise questions. The claims are wildly out of step with reality, at least the claims that make the news and get talked about are. At least IMHO. Of course there *are* facts to back up this opinion and Al Gore is just an illustration of the kinds of hyper dire, trumped up "facts" that make it into the main stream. I have other facts that are fairly easy to find that don't involve Al Gore directly, but as he is the most easily recognized, I use him as an example of why I'm not buying it.
So, did the climate change folks claim that there would be more extreme weather with this warming thing? More hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts etc? Why is that not happening?
I just refer to it as "Global Warming (or Name du joure)" now. They've had to change the name so often in their attempts to keep getting reactions from the sheep that I'm loosing track of what it's been called. Maybe if they start getting the dire predictions right..... Like having more droughts, floods, tornadoes or something....
Sort of like communist, liberal, progressive, democrat etc.. (Yes, I know I repeat myself.. ) (grin)
You know this whole 'back in the seventies the scientists we're all about global cooling' has been debunked so many times that it makes you really look moronic to post it yet again.
You miss my point. I'm saying that we've had a lot of dire predictions about the climate over the past few decades, most have proven to be outright wrong and the rest have ended up not as dire as originally claimed they'd be. The Global Cooling guys are just an example of this.
Global Warming (or what ever the name du joure is) has a pretty bad track record when you look at the various predictions we've heard. The Sky is falling only works so long before you have to come up with another more dire or different story. So now we are crying "wolf"?
Slashdot Mirror
Initially the mission was 3.5 years, but technical problems caused an increase in the necessary time to complete it's goals to 5 years. These problems where not directly related to the reaction wheels.
Seems that the spacecraft survived in functional condition for the 3.5 years initially required, although with a number of failures. It made it long enough for the initial mission length, but didn't survive another 1.5 years because too many of the reaction wheels failed.
So, I'm not sure what you mean about the 5 year mission....
The telecommunications satellite that blowed up was the Astrium (Airbus) Express AM4R, which was to have replaced the Express AM4, which was lost (injected into the wrong orbit) in August 2011.
So they've done nearly the same thing before? Wow.
So are we *sure* the Russians are really launching these things and not just hiding them away for their use later?
American sabotage?
LOL
Like everything bad that happens in Russia is due to the Americans... Um, I hate to say it but they have enough home grown issues to account for this. In fact the cold war loss was more about internal issues than anything else...
They "DO WORK" when it comes to space. WTF are WE doing? Sitting around, remembering the good-old-days while NASA fine-tunes its diversity statement. Meanwhile the USA is building up quite a portfolio of images from the surface of Mars and shit. Russia's got a gig driving a space limousine.
Not a limousine, I'd call it more of a small truck, like a Ford ranger king cab with a manual transmission and a 4 cylinder engine. Crude way to travel, but if it's the only ride that stops when your thumb is out, you are just happy not to be walking or riding in the cargo bay.
Seriously, Texas, home of cowboy hats, Tex-Mex and Rick Perry... Why? Three major reasons..
1. LOW (as in Zero) income tax and low corporate tax rates.
2. RIGHT to WORK state.
3. Generally a state and local government that stays out of your way as much as possible.
So why NOT Texas?
1. You don't like Tex-Mex, cowboy boots, Rick Perry, or something else about Texas for purely subjective reasons OR you've never been here and have arbitrarily decided you don't like Tex-Mex, Cowboy hats, Rick Perry or something else for no real reason.
2. It's too hot in the summer for you.
Just about anyone can be an engineer. They're nothing special.
That hurt... Seriously? Anyone?
I guess that explains some of the things I've seen...
Thanks for the information. I knew there was some extra space needed, but I didn't realize that it was that much.
My experience was with a pickup truck where we put the tank in the bed, so size/weight was not an issue. In most cars, there is significant space available, it's just not well located or easily adapted to holding high pressure storage tanks. I don't thin that is a serious problem because some reconfiguration of the standard vehicle layout could be done by manufacturers. Where retrofitting might be less than ideal (you are almost certainly going to loose the trunk and/or the existing gas tank), purpose built cars for CNG would not suffer so much.
So, I would put it this way. Retrofitted CNG is not going to be a serious contender, but purpose built CNG designs would be. The problem right now is that it's only been about a decade since CNG became a usable motor fuel, and only the last few years where it has become very cost competitive. Auto manufacturers are only now starting to deliver CNG cars in viable numbers. Designs will improve as sales volumes improve.
The smart choice is electric.
Not really, but if you are falling for the renewable energy is viable farce, I can see why you would conclude that. Problem is, solar and wind are just not anywhere near a viable way to power the electric grid and won't be for the foreseeable future. You can supplement the grid with these renewables if you want, but you will still need fossil fueled plants to take up the slack when the weather is uncooperative or the load exceeds the available capacity (which will be most of the time).
CNG is the only viable fuel source if you are looking beyond gasoline and diesel fuels. Now if you where arguing for E85 fuel, I have less of an argument, but it is the height of stupidity to take food and turn it into a motor fuel, both economically and environmentally.
Spoiler, everybody dies
Including the reader... Or at least you wish you where dead for wasting all that time...
You gotta disconnect from the tech every once in a while.
Yikes, How does reading about a litter of talking rabbits help you with that? Do they have a kindle version?
Dilbert.
http://www.dilbert.com/
That was my first idea too..
...you don't get to call yourself a "software engineer" or talk about others' software engineering practices.
Excellent book, but the software engineer who is just writing code doesn't need it, in fact they might not want to if they don't have good managers. Now if you MANAGE a project or other software engineers, THEN you should read this book every few years.
When you consider Hydrogen comes from natural gas as does an increasing amount of our electrical power, I think you are barking up the wrong trees. So are you saying we shouldn't develop our natural gas resources and burn something else like coal, nuclear, or something else? I don't think that is a great idea myself, we need to stick with natural gas.
I think natural gas is the lessor of many evils, and benefits from being the best of the fossil fuel options in terms of how clean it burns. And I believe that this outweighs the environmental damage that may happen with fracking.
Cars will be fueled next on Compressed Natural Gas. Why? Because there is a cheaper option that doesn't weigh a lot or take up lots of space.
Hydrogen is decidedly NOT efficient to produce. The cheapest way to make it right now is to reform natural gas (releasing CO2 in the process). Don't even think about electrolysis to get hydrogen, not even remotely cost effective or efficient Not to mention that the infrastructure needed to distribute H2 doesn't exist. It also is difficult to pack enough H2 into a tank to get enough energy inside to go very far unless you liquify it, but that requires cryogenic temperatures which are both dangerous and expensive. As nice as hydrogen sounds, it's not going to happen anytime soon.
Electric power (battery powered) is closer than hydrogen. The distribution infrastructure exists for the most part. Electricity is not hard to produce, even though we generate the bulk of it from fossil fuels. The problem with battery powered cars is that batteries are heavy, expensive, discharge quickly and take a lot of time to charge. You might get 100 miles out of a charge, maybe even 200, but eventually you are going to stop for a charge or replacement battery pack. If the temperature is high or low, your battery won't last nearly as long. The infrastructure for remote charging or battery swapping doesn't exist so distance anxiety is a real issue for electric car owners. Batteries are usually really large, compared to the equivalent tank size for gasoline. Batteries are not as inefficient as Hydrogen, but they still have serious issues.
Compressed Natural Gas suffers from fewer problems. The distribution infrastructure exists with natural gas pipelines nearly everywhere. In some areas CNG stations already exist. If you have NG in your home already, you can compress your own fuel for about half of the price at the station. Existing engines are easily converted to CNG with little loss in power and run cleaner and longer on CNG. If you convert correctly you can burn either CNG or gasoline/diesel. Tank size needs to be bigger than gasoline but most cars usually have the space available, trucks almost certainly do. Many fleet operators (taxis and such) already use CNG. But the biggest advantage of CNG is that it's cheap when compared to the other options (and gasoline/diesel for that matter). Not to mention that it is nearly 100% domestically sourced (at least in the USA).
So, the next adopted motor fuel will be CNG, not hydrogen or electric.
I guess it's your right to think so....
Obviously we don't/won't agree on this. So, I think we are done..
What's on your resume just gets you an interview.
What you know, or claim to know, gets you a job.
What you can LEARN is what keeps you in the job.
When I interview, I'm looking for two things technically. First, does the applicant have enough skills to be partially useful right away? Second, does the applicant have a demonstrated ability to learn, not just in school, but on their own? If you score good marks in both of these, you go high on the list of people to hire. Have great skills but are not interested in learning? I don't have time for you because if I run out of needing your exact skill set, I'm going to have to let you go. I hate letting people go...
so it will take a lot of data before you see a statistically significant change.
We go in circles then because *this* is exactly why I'm not jumping on the band wagon from the "science is settled" parade. It's going to take awhile before we see what we predict, yet we are SURE that what our models are saying is true. Actually, we are seeing less of all the significant weather events discussed above, but you tell me to wait, it will come out like they say in the end? OK, I'm taking a wait and see approach, and so far the dire consequences have not panned out to be as dire (Al Gore and all).
I understand your objection to Al Gore being used as an example, but the shoe does fit here, at least in the short term, for the rabid environmentalist lobby who want to play the sheep for fools and sell hype for votes and power. Unfortunately it is this side of the climate change crowd that is controlling the message and what the public believes.
So, with all due respect to statistics, I think this question is not settled, and your response above is a good indication of this. We need more data just to know if our current models are good over tens of years... But climate is about hundreds and thousands of years.. Are our models good enough for that? I think not, surely not with any kind of assurance.
I like your airplane analogy... Climate is something that has trends which are longer than average lifespans, so it is hugely difficult to make objective observations when our experience is subjective and short term. I too remember the cold winters of the 70's in the Midwest, but that does not make global warming truth, because the time scale involved in natural climate cycles can sometimes be much longer than one life...
Even if man made global warming isn't true (but all the science says it is), why pollute? It raises health costs too.
ALL the science does NOT say that it is, only what you hear about from the media, politicians and those who are trying to sell something.
Have you heard about the claim of more extreme weather would come from this? Guess what? Doesn't seem to be true, looking at the available government data, but you hear it as fact all the time.
But, to your point. Why pollute? I agree with the sentiment in principle. We need to be good stewards of the planet and the resources it provides. But we must remember that some choices we make are about doing the least harm. It is impossible for humans to live and not have some impact, no matter how primitive we choose to make life. For me, I first choose life over death, with the understanding that man does and will have an impact on the environment when I do. I will also choose to limit said impact when possible, but life comes first.
Flame on!
Ok, I'm pretty much done with you on this. You want to stand up on the soap box and yell about how your opponents are wrong, oh so wrong, yet you don't want to engage on the issue and provide evidence of anything. (Not that slashdot is known for that kind of thing...)
So, relationship change for you, just so I can remember that you are more interested in flame wars than discussing anything of substance.
So for you Osi99, it's FULL STOP on all topics,. Wish you the best but I don't have time to deal with such foolishness.
But my point is? I think you missed it....
Maybe it's that the guys making the dire claims about what's going to happen are more often wrong than right?
What do you do when the local weatherman is wrong half the time? You listen to somebody else who's right more often..
So are you? The FUD with this issue is great and it attracts politicians who are angling for power and votes. That much should raise questions. The claims are wildly out of step with reality, at least the claims that make the news and get talked about are. At least IMHO. Of course there *are* facts to back up this opinion and Al Gore is just an illustration of the kinds of hyper dire, trumped up "facts" that make it into the main stream. I have other facts that are fairly easy to find that don't involve Al Gore directly, but as he is the most easily recognized, I use him as an example of why I'm not buying it.
So, did the climate change folks claim that there would be more extreme weather with this warming thing? More hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts etc? Why is that not happening?
Ok, name calling and being crude starts... Sticks and stones....
I don't do flame wars..
FULL STOP
Er.. I mean Climate Disruption.. yeah, that's it.
I just refer to it as "Global Warming (or Name du joure)" now. They've had to change the name so often in their attempts to keep getting reactions from the sheep that I'm loosing track of what it's been called. Maybe if they start getting the dire predictions right..... Like having more droughts, floods, tornadoes or something....
Sort of like communist, liberal, progressive, democrat etc.. (Yes, I know I repeat myself.. ) (grin)
You know this whole 'back in the seventies the scientists we're all about global cooling' has been debunked so many times that it makes you really look moronic to post it yet again.
You miss my point. I'm saying that we've had a lot of dire predictions about the climate over the past few decades, most have proven to be outright wrong and the rest have ended up not as dire as originally claimed they'd be. The Global Cooling guys are just an example of this.
Global Warming (or what ever the name du joure is) has a pretty bad track record when you look at the various predictions we've heard. The Sky is falling only works so long before you have to come up with another more dire or different story. So now we are crying "wolf"?