That's an excellent point and you should be modded up even as I mention Trump is headed for life in prison alongside Cohen and Manafort.
Just so you are not caught totally off guard... I have to mention that the Manafort charges are in grave trouble right now. The judge is currently questioning Muller about his authority to bring such charges. The problem for Muller is that the Manafort charges are based on a previously existing investigation that predated Muller's appointment and charges where not made. The implication was that the bringing of charges now is about forcing Manafort to "sing" and not about Muller's mandate.
IF the judge believes these charges are not within Muller's instructions, they will be dismissed.
No, just a guy who's been professionally involved in military, commercial and private aircraft design and operation for more than 40 years.. Yes, I write software, but this software engineering gig started doing software for avionics.
I am also a private pilot who grew up as an airline brat (my dad was a avionics mechanic, flight simulator tech and finally manager type at a major US airline that still flies today) so I've seen a lot of stuff come and go.
I may be wrong about judging Uber's attempt as doomed to fail, but I seriously doubt they know what they are doing. Automation can do a lot of things in an aircraft and make a pilot's life easier, but all automation fails, usually in ways you don't expect and this kind of thing kills people. The FAA is at it's core a risk adverse organization. You don't do something "new" with the FAA until you have exhaustively proven it's safe both on paper and by demonstrating it "flight testing and more". This is an expensive, time consuming process and the FAA will not be circumvented if you are planning to carry passengers for hire. I just don't see Uber having the hundreds of millions in cash laying around to develop the aircraft, much less validate the systems to the satisfaction of the FAA. Then there is the expense of setting up the part 135 operation required...
No, this is "pie in the sky" for sure. Uber doesn't have the money and I doubt they can milk their investors for what this would take..
Then there is the whole, show me how this is making money now? Where are operations like this happening now? With few exceptions, there are no commercially viable "on demand" air taxi services that make money or operate at much volume because they are very expensive and your average Joe on the street cannot afford them. No, Uber's dream is not going to happen.
I played a bit part in the development and acquisition of the V-22 Osprey by the USMC. I can tell you that beast is hugely expensive and complex aircraft. It's also an airframe full of compromises, designed to do a lot of things well enough, but not being really good at any of it's tasks. The resulting aircraft is, expensive to build, difficult to fly, easy to exceed available performance, unforgiving and prone to crashing. Pilots have to be on their game, know the aircraft's limits instinctively because the difference between flying away and crashing is literally split seconds apart.
I seriously doubt Uber is up to the challenge of even operating a V-22 fleet, much less designing anything close to this or hoping to hire pilots to fly whatever they cooked up.
There are sooo many reasons why Uber is out of their minds with this "pie in the sky" idea.
First off, as others pointed out, this isn't a car. No way it's going to take to the roads.
Second, if they thought the rules for driving where complex and exacting, the rules for flying are more so.
Third, automating a passenger carrying flying machine with sufficient fail safes to satisfy the FAA is going to be a seriously expensive project that's going to take YEARS of work just to document and get a whole bunch of laws and regulations changed to allow.
Fourth, you will need a horde of A&P certified mechanics to maintain these flying machines and do the required safety checks within the required time frames. These guys and gals don't come cheap and the local auto shop won't be good enough.
Finally, finding pilots who are qualified to fly passengers around for money in a helicopter is going to be very expensive. We have a grave pilot shortage in this country now, and given the costs and time frames required to move new pilots though the training, Uber doesn't have a snowballs chance of hiring enough pilots for even a small fleet of these things.
I conclude that Uber is dreaming. This is nothing more than pie in the sky pipe dreams by idiots who have no clue how they are going to do this. Dream on boys, let me know when you have a business plan I can laugh at.
This happened in the USA... You are looking at UK law. However, in the UK there needs to be some evidence that the driver failed to avoid the accident. It can be the driver's own statements or something else.
Justification is "I didn't see her in time to avoid hitting her." Unless there is evidence to the contrary (eye witnesses, video recordings or something physical) nobody can assume you broke the law.
In this case, we have the video. The problem with video though is it doesn't fully convey the situation and possible reaction times. You go into viewing that video, full knowing what it shows before you see it. You know she's going to step in front of the car and get hit. It's easy to say, "See! It's a full 5 seconds that it's obvious. This should have been avoided." Not necessarily so.
Remember the aircraft that had a double bird strike, lost total power and ended up landing in the Hudson river a few years ago? When they went to the simulator and flew the scenario they discovered that had they immediately decided to divert, they could have landed at a local airport. They concluded that Sully made a mistake However, the double engine failure takes time to diagnose and when they added just under 20 seconds of decision time, they discovered that the only option they had was the river.
Now I'm not saying the automation should be given 20 seconds to avoid a J-Walker, but I am saying that interpreting the video needs to take into account reaction times. You can argue the automation should be better, but I'm not sure it's totally fair to say it must live up to hindsight and Monday morning quarterbacking either.
So you've had this happen to you? You hit a J-Walker and got held criminally liable?
I'm not saying it's never happened, but you are not "at fault" legally if you are taking reasonable care and somebody else breaks the law causing an accident. If you are improperly equipped, driving recklessly, being inattentive, or impaired, and law enforcement can prove it, then the situation is different because both broke a law or two. However, remember that the criminal standard for convictions is "Beyond reasonable doubt" so to be convicted the prosecutor will need to prove that any reasonable person would and could have avoided the accident. Police know this, so if they don't see convincing evidence that implicates you (long skid marks, impaired driving because you blew beyond the legal limit or something) they won't cite you as being at fault.
Of course that's about criminal charges... Civil cases are a totally different level of proof. There is nothing to prevent the J-Walker from suing you. But unless you where cited for some infraction or there is some kind of evidence that establishes your liability in some way, they are unlikely to prevail.
If they don't do there own investigation, who's going to have evidence to argue they are not a fault before this hits the news? You don't think the STATE will let them skate if the PR turns on Uber?
Uber is in full CYA mode on this, of course they are doing their own investigation... If for no other reason than to be able to lie convincingly should it become necessary.
If people follow at appropriate distance for the speed, no crash will happen.
I live in Washington State with recent strict anti texting laws. Has done nothing to curb cellphone use while driving. It's amazing, Nobody cares. Facetube posts are still more important than human life.
Ah... Yes.. The conservative argument creeps up on you doesn't it...
Before we did this same law here, my argument was two fold.. 1. It's unenforceable so nobody will follow it because you simply cannot make the fines high enough to make an impact and low enough to not bankrupt most people... 2. We already have laws about accidents due to distracted driving and liability so this new one is unnecessary.
A conservative asks the questions "is this necessary and if it is, is the law the least possible, and can we actually enforce this?" Any place we see "no" as the answer, we stop and say "no" .
Personally, I think it would have been much more effective to institute a "Don't text and Drive" campaign and make it socially unacceptable to do. Making it illegal really just encourages folks to do it anyway. Don't think so? Tell me, what do you do when you see a "Wet Paint, don't touch!" sign? You know you want to touch it...
No one, because there was no vehicular manslaughter.
The woman was found to be at fault for not checking that the road was clear before stepping out of the shadows to cross illegally. Something that she could have easily done since it was dark and the vehicle's headlights were on.
A large median at the site of the crash has signs warning people not to cross mid-block and to use the crosswalk to the north at Curry Road instead.
Exactly this..
This doesn't preclude a civil case, where Uber might be found to be partially liable for this, but there is not a crime (except for the woman who broke the law) here to prosecute.
While most people are not qualified to judge rocket safety risks, there is only one entity that has actually *demonstrated* that they are incompetent at judging rocket safety risks, and for that matter they did so spectacularly and totally, and then managed to stay in a position to continue judging rocket safety anyway and then did so again! That would of course be NASA, so I laugh when they judge someone else for being "too dangerous". It's still a hell of a lot safer than the deathtrap shuttle was. Next you'll be complaining it's too expensive...
That's not fair.. Sure NASA has historically made some real boneheaded moves that cost lives, but they have also FIXED their problems. They have also failed to keep the fixes in place and fell back into the processes and procedures and made new mistakes, had to reassess and fix the problems again. As BAD as NASA is/was they have experience at doing it right and diagnosis of what causes you to do things wrong. AND they've done all this in the full view of the public.
I think NASA needs to be taken seriously here and SpaceX has the burden of proof. SpaceX may be right, but like aircraft manufacturers have to work with the FAA, SpaceX needs to work with NASA and show how their system meets the requirements to be human rated.
But I wonder why SpaceX and/or NASA decided to put this into the public in the first place? This isn't a PR exercise, it's an engineering exercise of risk assessment and mitigation.
fuck trees, they don't pay rent on my property so they can go ahead and die
To each their own.. Personally I'm growing some really nice Live Oaks in the front yard and a couple of Pecan's in the back. Over the last 10 years they've been growing quite well.
You forgot to mention that NASA (for all it's talk of neutrality) is a political organization, or at least exists only at the behest of politicians... therefore the political will of our leadership will influence culture and decision making, all the way down to the bottom. Perhaps their judgement of SpaceX is at least partially politically motivated.
I don't think the claim of political bias necessarily invalidates NASA's view of SpaceX's design. In fact, I think that's actually a pretty poor argument in favor of SpaceX's view of the world.
There are two, maybe three, organizations in the world which have currently demonstrated safe manned space flight. SpaceX is not among them, but NASA is. SpaceX is a new perspective entry into a very elite group, they need to accept that NASA is where the government has developed it's expertise in manned space flight and if SpaceX wants to do this they will need to work WITH NASA on the question, much like aircraft manufacturers have to work with the FAA's "technical experts" when seeking approval for a new aircraft.
I'm not a rocket engineer and I have no dog in this hunt, but SpaceX and it's supporters need to argue their point based on the technical merit of the engineering, and not focus on the perceived political deficiencies or past technical failures of NASA. NASA has a point, that loading fuel is a dangerous process and exposes the vehicle and those near by to dangerous conditions. SpaceX has a point as well, that last min fueling allows them to pack more fuel into the same space for efficiency. The question is one of risk assessment, mitigation and management and what's acceptable for a man rated system, and NASA is the expert while SpaceX's job is to answer their objections.
Yea, send me the 100 Million as an electronic money transfer to the brokerage account I just opened for you, keeping $2000 in cash for yourself...To make the accounting easy, I've left it with a zero balance for now. I suggest you not use Western Union, but approach the bank where your money is on deposit, I'm sure if you really have that much on deposit, they can easily direct you into the proper way to do this, just show up in person. No, I won't take a check, not even a cashiers check, only electronic money transfers.
THEN, after I pay all the income taxes required by my country which takes at least a year, you are welcome to 90% of what's left.... Just show up at my door and provide proof that it's you. My address? Why yes, it's 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, come armed and tell the guards you won't take no as an answer and you don't need an appointment, they will take care of you.
Obviously we are in uncharted territory, where we have CO2 LEADING temperature in our models.... Which, as the gemologist concludes, means our models are not necessarily wrong, but are also not provably right.
No model is provably right.
You might want to rephrase that. There ARE provable models, where we understand the math and conditions well enough to predict the future with in a known level of error. We have a lot of experimentally proven models which we can rely on for things like lift/drag for an aircraft wings using fluid dynamics, precipitation run off volumes from urban developments, short term weather forecasting, aircraft fuel consumption and more.
Perhaps you mean "No climate model that has a provable amount of error used for climate change studies"? I'll agree with that.
Sorry, you are correct.... I went and educated myself and determined my assumptions where wrong. Once ignited, you have a 2 min ride WITH the SRBs, no exceptions which are likely survivable.
Saturn 5 manned launches where equipped with a Launch Escape System, which was designed to yank the command module off the top of a malfunctioning rocket and away from danger and high enough to deploy the main parachutes. But there came a point where even this system was ineffective/unnecessary (20 seconds after stage 2 starts) so it was ejected. Also, engine throttling wasn't possible on the Saturn 5, though individually shutting them down WAS possible, and indeed planned to reduce thrust to keep acceleration in check as the vehicle burned off fuel and provide a measure of redundancy should one or more engines fail.
I would like to point out that the geologists says that CO2 followed temperature in the past, it didn't lead temperature changes, but followed.
Obviously we are in uncharted territory, where we have CO2 LEADING temperature in our models.... Which, as the gemologist concludes, means our models are not necessarily wrong, but are also not provably right.
Which begs the question... If what we are projecting is based on unproven models, how much confidence can we actually have about what the projections say? I wish I knew the answer to that... What's obvious to me though is that ANYBODY who thinks they know for sure, is making claims w/o the proof necessary.
You know, the solid-fuel booster rockets on the shuttle that cannot be shut down once started
The shuttle system dealt with that by making the solid fuel boosters detachable. Yes, there where phases in flight where this would/could be a problem, but after you reached a specific altitude, abort simply involved detaching from the solid boosters.
By the way.. This isn't all that large of an issue. You may have had the ability to throttle a Saturn 5's engines, but you cannot stop and start them. Serious problems in the first stage would cause nearly the same sequence.. Stage 2 fires and you accelerate away from the problem...
Well.. Let's be fair about NASA's safety records...
NASA has demonstrated two things in their history. 1. They can be blind to obvious risks and become complacent about safety when what they are doing becomes too routine. 2. They can, and have, put excellent safety standards and practices in place and operate in very dangerous environments using very dangerous equipment in reasonably safe ways.
NASA has demonstrated both sides of the safety problem. They have made colossal mistakes, killed or nearly killed many people for stupid reasons AND they have learned from their mistakes, instituted safety practices that have allowed them to do amazing things with extremely few serious accidents and loss of life. They've made the stupid mistakes, and the hard decisions, in turn, and learned from the mistakes when they fell into complacency.
So, I think NASA is unique in it's qualifications for reviewing and determining space system's safety and their opinion carries a lot of weight. I also think that they are fallible as any other large organization, and they have a history of ignoring their risk management lessons learned in the name of expediency and efficiency.
So the question here is about SpaceX verses NASA in a discussion of risk management. I'm not sure we can dismiss either's opinions on the question. That means, we will need more information to decide. It may cost a lot of money to obtain the necessary information, it may take time and effort. I understand SpaceX is very sensitive to cost and schedule, but those pressures are what drove NASA into their various stupid mistakes. So I think NASA needs to be satisfied and SpaceX needs to prove what it needs to prove or change it's design.
I wonder what the trade offs are? Building a bridge out of concrete alone, might be possible and durable, but a cast pretentioned concrete bridge structure would take a whole lot less concrete with a little bit of steel..
Seems likely to me that adding steel would lower emissions... But I don't know this for sure.
You can build some kinds of things with concrete alone, it's well suited to applications where it's under compression alone... But if you put steel in the mix, you can build a whole world of stuff you simply cannot with either material alone..
Building a modern building more than a few stories high? You need steel... Want a durable road? You need steel along with that concrete. A bridge? It will be lighter, stronger and cheaper with steel over concrete alone.
Like I said.. It takes a lot of material to build this way and you basically are building a pyramid with internal voids. All your materials must be used where they are under compression.
Yep, you can create open spaces, but such buildings are very difficult to build, use lots of material and pretty limited in size based on their weight and the load bearing capacity of the materials being used. Open spaces weaken the structure and stress the materials and you quickly reach a practical limit based on engineering and physics.
Yea, heaven help those who live in the basement... Like I said, you can stack blocks of concrete up and build stuff, but the kinds of things you can make is going to be pretty limited because you have to use concrete in compression, but you cannot use it in tension. So no long beams of concrete holding up large expanses and creating open covered spaces.
It's the very reason cathedrals built in the middle ages had the shapes they did and the very narrow open spaces under roof. You basically build a pyramid and leave out some parts under arches for living space. It takes a LOT of material to build this way.
Steel changes this, making light weight beams which are strong and can span long distances. It allows you to use concrete in compression (where it's a great material) and steel tensioners to keep it from being under tension, where concrete is a horrible material.
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That's an excellent point and you should be modded up even as I mention Trump is headed for life in prison alongside Cohen and Manafort.
Just so you are not caught totally off guard... I have to mention that the Manafort charges are in grave trouble right now. The judge is currently questioning Muller about his authority to bring such charges. The problem for Muller is that the Manafort charges are based on a previously existing investigation that predated Muller's appointment and charges where not made. The implication was that the bringing of charges now is about forcing Manafort to "sing" and not about Muller's mandate.
IF the judge believes these charges are not within Muller's instructions, they will be dismissed.
No, just a guy who's been professionally involved in military, commercial and private aircraft design and operation for more than 40 years.. Yes, I write software, but this software engineering gig started doing software for avionics.
I am also a private pilot who grew up as an airline brat (my dad was a avionics mechanic, flight simulator tech and finally manager type at a major US airline that still flies today) so I've seen a lot of stuff come and go.
I may be wrong about judging Uber's attempt as doomed to fail, but I seriously doubt they know what they are doing. Automation can do a lot of things in an aircraft and make a pilot's life easier, but all automation fails, usually in ways you don't expect and this kind of thing kills people. The FAA is at it's core a risk adverse organization. You don't do something "new" with the FAA until you have exhaustively proven it's safe both on paper and by demonstrating it "flight testing and more". This is an expensive, time consuming process and the FAA will not be circumvented if you are planning to carry passengers for hire. I just don't see Uber having the hundreds of millions in cash laying around to develop the aircraft, much less validate the systems to the satisfaction of the FAA. Then there is the expense of setting up the part 135 operation required...
No, this is "pie in the sky" for sure. Uber doesn't have the money and I doubt they can milk their investors for what this would take..
Then there is the whole, show me how this is making money now? Where are operations like this happening now? With few exceptions, there are no commercially viable "on demand" air taxi services that make money or operate at much volume because they are very expensive and your average Joe on the street cannot afford them. No, Uber's dream is not going to happen.
LOL...
I played a bit part in the development and acquisition of the V-22 Osprey by the USMC. I can tell you that beast is hugely expensive and complex aircraft. It's also an airframe full of compromises, designed to do a lot of things well enough, but not being really good at any of it's tasks. The resulting aircraft is, expensive to build, difficult to fly, easy to exceed available performance, unforgiving and prone to crashing. Pilots have to be on their game, know the aircraft's limits instinctively because the difference between flying away and crashing is literally split seconds apart.
I seriously doubt Uber is up to the challenge of even operating a V-22 fleet, much less designing anything close to this or hoping to hire pilots to fly whatever they cooked up.
There are sooo many reasons why Uber is out of their minds with this "pie in the sky" idea.
First off, as others pointed out, this isn't a car. No way it's going to take to the roads.
Second, if they thought the rules for driving where complex and exacting, the rules for flying are more so.
Third, automating a passenger carrying flying machine with sufficient fail safes to satisfy the FAA is going to be a seriously expensive project that's going to take YEARS of work just to document and get a whole bunch of laws and regulations changed to allow.
Fourth, you will need a horde of A&P certified mechanics to maintain these flying machines and do the required safety checks within the required time frames. These guys and gals don't come cheap and the local auto shop won't be good enough.
Finally, finding pilots who are qualified to fly passengers around for money in a helicopter is going to be very expensive. We have a grave pilot shortage in this country now, and given the costs and time frames required to move new pilots though the training, Uber doesn't have a snowballs chance of hiring enough pilots for even a small fleet of these things.
I conclude that Uber is dreaming. This is nothing more than pie in the sky pipe dreams by idiots who have no clue how they are going to do this. Dream on boys, let me know when you have a business plan I can laugh at.
This happened in the USA... You are looking at UK law. However, in the UK there needs to be some evidence that the driver failed to avoid the accident. It can be the driver's own statements or something else.
Justification is "I didn't see her in time to avoid hitting her." Unless there is evidence to the contrary (eye witnesses, video recordings or something physical) nobody can assume you broke the law.
In this case, we have the video. The problem with video though is it doesn't fully convey the situation and possible reaction times. You go into viewing that video, full knowing what it shows before you see it. You know she's going to step in front of the car and get hit. It's easy to say, "See! It's a full 5 seconds that it's obvious. This should have been avoided." Not necessarily so.
Remember the aircraft that had a double bird strike, lost total power and ended up landing in the Hudson river a few years ago? When they went to the simulator and flew the scenario they discovered that had they immediately decided to divert, they could have landed at a local airport. They concluded that Sully made a mistake However, the double engine failure takes time to diagnose and when they added just under 20 seconds of decision time, they discovered that the only option they had was the river.
Now I'm not saying the automation should be given 20 seconds to avoid a J-Walker, but I am saying that interpreting the video needs to take into account reaction times. You can argue the automation should be better, but I'm not sure it's totally fair to say it must live up to hindsight and Monday morning quarterbacking either.
So you've had this happen to you? You hit a J-Walker and got held criminally liable?
I'm not saying it's never happened, but you are not "at fault" legally if you are taking reasonable care and somebody else breaks the law causing an accident. If you are improperly equipped, driving recklessly, being inattentive, or impaired, and law enforcement can prove it, then the situation is different because both broke a law or two. However, remember that the criminal standard for convictions is "Beyond reasonable doubt" so to be convicted the prosecutor will need to prove that any reasonable person would and could have avoided the accident. Police know this, so if they don't see convincing evidence that implicates you (long skid marks, impaired driving because you blew beyond the legal limit or something) they won't cite you as being at fault.
Of course that's about criminal charges... Civil cases are a totally different level of proof. There is nothing to prevent the J-Walker from suing you. But unless you where cited for some infraction or there is some kind of evidence that establishes your liability in some way, they are unlikely to prevail.
Ah come on. THINK McFly... Think..
If they don't do there own investigation, who's going to have evidence to argue they are not a fault before this hits the news? You don't think the STATE will let them skate if the PR turns on Uber?
Uber is in full CYA mode on this, of course they are doing their own investigation... If for no other reason than to be able to lie convincingly should it become necessary.
Problem here is that the only thing that broke the law was the woman who got killed. She was J-Walking.
If people follow at appropriate distance for the speed, no crash will happen.
I live in Washington State with recent strict anti texting laws. Has done nothing to curb cellphone use while driving. It's amazing, Nobody cares. Facetube posts are still more important than human life.
Ah... Yes.. The conservative argument creeps up on you doesn't it...
Before we did this same law here, my argument was two fold.. 1. It's unenforceable so nobody will follow it because you simply cannot make the fines high enough to make an impact and low enough to not bankrupt most people... 2. We already have laws about accidents due to distracted driving and liability so this new one is unnecessary.
A conservative asks the questions "is this necessary and if it is, is the law the least possible, and can we actually enforce this?" Any place we see "no" as the answer, we stop and say "no" .
Personally, I think it would have been much more effective to institute a "Don't text and Drive" campaign and make it socially unacceptable to do. Making it illegal really just encourages folks to do it anyway. Don't think so? Tell me, what do you do when you see a "Wet Paint, don't touch!" sign? You know you want to touch it...
No one, because there was no vehicular manslaughter.
The woman was found to be at fault for not checking that the road was clear before stepping out of the shadows to cross illegally. Something that she could have easily done since it was dark and the vehicle's headlights were on.
A large median at the site of the crash has signs warning people not to cross mid-block and to use the crosswalk to the north at Curry Road instead.
Exactly this..
This doesn't preclude a civil case, where Uber might be found to be partially liable for this, but there is not a crime (except for the woman who broke the law) here to prosecute.
While most people are not qualified to judge rocket safety risks, there is only one entity that has actually *demonstrated* that they are incompetent at judging rocket safety risks, and for that matter they did so spectacularly and totally, and then managed to stay in a position to continue judging rocket safety anyway and then did so again! That would of course be NASA, so I laugh when they judge someone else for being "too dangerous". It's still a hell of a lot safer than the deathtrap shuttle was. Next you'll be complaining it's too expensive...
That's not fair.. Sure NASA has historically made some real boneheaded moves that cost lives, but they have also FIXED their problems. They have also failed to keep the fixes in place and fell back into the processes and procedures and made new mistakes, had to reassess and fix the problems again. As BAD as NASA is/was they have experience at doing it right and diagnosis of what causes you to do things wrong. AND they've done all this in the full view of the public.
I think NASA needs to be taken seriously here and SpaceX has the burden of proof. SpaceX may be right, but like aircraft manufacturers have to work with the FAA, SpaceX needs to work with NASA and show how their system meets the requirements to be human rated.
But I wonder why SpaceX and/or NASA decided to put this into the public in the first place? This isn't a PR exercise, it's an engineering exercise of risk assessment and mitigation.
On a positive note, that's an addition of 175,000 acres per year that are NOT susceptible to forest fires!
Not everybody lives in California...(ducking for cover...)
fuck trees, they don't pay rent on my property so they can go ahead and die
To each their own.. Personally I'm growing some really nice Live Oaks in the front yard and a couple of Pecan's in the back. Over the last 10 years they've been growing quite well.
You forgot to mention that NASA (for all it's talk of neutrality) is a political organization, or at least exists only at the behest of politicians... therefore the political will of our leadership will influence culture and decision making, all the way down to the bottom. Perhaps their judgement of SpaceX is at least partially politically motivated.
I don't think the claim of political bias necessarily invalidates NASA's view of SpaceX's design. In fact, I think that's actually a pretty poor argument in favor of SpaceX's view of the world.
There are two, maybe three, organizations in the world which have currently demonstrated safe manned space flight. SpaceX is not among them, but NASA is. SpaceX is a new perspective entry into a very elite group, they need to accept that NASA is where the government has developed it's expertise in manned space flight and if SpaceX wants to do this they will need to work WITH NASA on the question, much like aircraft manufacturers have to work with the FAA's "technical experts" when seeking approval for a new aircraft.
I'm not a rocket engineer and I have no dog in this hunt, but SpaceX and it's supporters need to argue their point based on the technical merit of the engineering, and not focus on the perceived political deficiencies or past technical failures of NASA. NASA has a point, that loading fuel is a dangerous process and exposes the vehicle and those near by to dangerous conditions. SpaceX has a point as well, that last min fueling allows them to pack more fuel into the same space for efficiency. The question is one of risk assessment, mitigation and management and what's acceptable for a man rated system, and NASA is the expert while SpaceX's job is to answer their objections.
Yea, send me the 100 Million as an electronic money transfer to the brokerage account I just opened for you, keeping $2000 in cash for yourself...To make the accounting easy, I've left it with a zero balance for now. I suggest you not use Western Union, but approach the bank where your money is on deposit, I'm sure if you really have that much on deposit, they can easily direct you into the proper way to do this, just show up in person. No, I won't take a check, not even a cashiers check, only electronic money transfers.
THEN, after I pay all the income taxes required by my country which takes at least a year, you are welcome to 90% of what's left.... Just show up at my door and provide proof that it's you. My address? Why yes, it's 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, come armed and tell the guards you won't take no as an answer and you don't need an appointment, they will take care of you.
No model is provably right.
You might want to rephrase that. There ARE provable models, where we understand the math and conditions well enough to predict the future with in a known level of error. We have a lot of experimentally proven models which we can rely on for things like lift/drag for an aircraft wings using fluid dynamics, precipitation run off volumes from urban developments, short term weather forecasting, aircraft fuel consumption and more.
Perhaps you mean "No climate model that has a provable amount of error used for climate change studies"? I'll agree with that.
Sorry, you are correct.... I went and educated myself and determined my assumptions where wrong. Once ignited, you have a 2 min ride WITH the SRBs, no exceptions which are likely survivable.
Saturn 5 manned launches where equipped with a Launch Escape System, which was designed to yank the command module off the top of a malfunctioning rocket and away from danger and high enough to deploy the main parachutes. But there came a point where even this system was ineffective/unnecessary (20 seconds after stage 2 starts) so it was ejected. Also, engine throttling wasn't possible on the Saturn 5, though individually shutting them down WAS possible, and indeed planned to reduce thrust to keep acceleration in check as the vehicle burned off fuel and provide a measure of redundancy should one or more engines fail.
I would like to point out that the geologists says that CO2 followed temperature in the past, it didn't lead temperature changes, but followed.
Obviously we are in uncharted territory, where we have CO2 LEADING temperature in our models.... Which, as the gemologist concludes, means our models are not necessarily wrong, but are also not provably right.
Which begs the question... If what we are projecting is based on unproven models, how much confidence can we actually have about what the projections say? I wish I knew the answer to that... What's obvious to me though is that ANYBODY who thinks they know for sure, is making claims w/o the proof necessary.
You know, the solid-fuel booster rockets on the shuttle that cannot be shut down once started
The shuttle system dealt with that by making the solid fuel boosters detachable. Yes, there where phases in flight where this would/could be a problem, but after you reached a specific altitude, abort simply involved detaching from the solid boosters.
By the way.. This isn't all that large of an issue. You may have had the ability to throttle a Saturn 5's engines, but you cannot stop and start them. Serious problems in the first stage would cause nearly the same sequence.. Stage 2 fires and you accelerate away from the problem...
Well.. Let's be fair about NASA's safety records...
NASA has demonstrated two things in their history. 1. They can be blind to obvious risks and become complacent about safety when what they are doing becomes too routine. 2. They can, and have, put excellent safety standards and practices in place and operate in very dangerous environments using very dangerous equipment in reasonably safe ways.
NASA has demonstrated both sides of the safety problem. They have made colossal mistakes, killed or nearly killed many people for stupid reasons AND they have learned from their mistakes, instituted safety practices that have allowed them to do amazing things with extremely few serious accidents and loss of life. They've made the stupid mistakes, and the hard decisions, in turn, and learned from the mistakes when they fell into complacency.
So, I think NASA is unique in it's qualifications for reviewing and determining space system's safety and their opinion carries a lot of weight. I also think that they are fallible as any other large organization, and they have a history of ignoring their risk management lessons learned in the name of expediency and efficiency.
So the question here is about SpaceX verses NASA in a discussion of risk management. I'm not sure we can dismiss either's opinions on the question. That means, we will need more information to decide. It may cost a lot of money to obtain the necessary information, it may take time and effort. I understand SpaceX is very sensitive to cost and schedule, but those pressures are what drove NASA into their various stupid mistakes. So I think NASA needs to be satisfied and SpaceX needs to prove what it needs to prove or change it's design.
Some of them, perhaps.. But steel and concrete structures are ubiquitous for a reason. They are cheap, strong, light and well understood materials.
Interesting point.
I wonder what the trade offs are? Building a bridge out of concrete alone, might be possible and durable, but a cast pretentioned concrete bridge structure would take a whole lot less concrete with a little bit of steel..
Seems likely to me that adding steel would lower emissions... But I don't know this for sure.
Nearly useless is not totally useless....
You can build some kinds of things with concrete alone, it's well suited to applications where it's under compression alone... But if you put steel in the mix, you can build a whole world of stuff you simply cannot with either material alone..
Building a modern building more than a few stories high? You need steel... Want a durable road? You need steel along with that concrete. A bridge? It will be lighter, stronger and cheaper with steel over concrete alone.
Like I said.. It takes a lot of material to build this way and you basically are building a pyramid with internal voids. All your materials must be used where they are under compression.
Yep, you can create open spaces, but such buildings are very difficult to build, use lots of material and pretty limited in size based on their weight and the load bearing capacity of the materials being used. Open spaces weaken the structure and stress the materials and you quickly reach a practical limit based on engineering and physics.
Steel and concrete is much less limited.
Yea, heaven help those who live in the basement... Like I said, you can stack blocks of concrete up and build stuff, but the kinds of things you can make is going to be pretty limited because you have to use concrete in compression, but you cannot use it in tension. So no long beams of concrete holding up large expanses and creating open covered spaces.
It's the very reason cathedrals built in the middle ages had the shapes they did and the very narrow open spaces under roof. You basically build a pyramid and leave out some parts under arches for living space. It takes a LOT of material to build this way.
Steel changes this, making light weight beams which are strong and can span long distances. It allows you to use concrete in compression (where it's a great material) and steel tensioners to keep it from being under tension, where concrete is a horrible material.