Also the USB people miss here was introduced with the iMac in which it replaced all the legacy Apple connectors. Without that USB would have never caught. Sometimes you need to drag things into the future kicking and screaming or they will never move.
It's pointless. People want legends that gel with their believes, not facts. They also will believe that Apple invented USB C to take away their beloved USB (that Apple pushed into the market with the iMac cutting off all older Apple connectors, but they don't know and don't want to know that).
The only other way than to fuel the rocket with the crew on board would be to fuel it first and then let the crew board it. The latter would mean that the astronauts as well as pad crews would be near or on a fueled rocket with no way to escape if something goes wrong during boarding the capsule.
If the astronauts board the capsule on top of the empty rocket and the rocket is fueled only when they're safe and strapped in there, there is no point at which they couldn't fire the escape system and get away when something goes wrong. Look at the fueling accident they had: The payload sat up there for several seconds after the rocket was already falling down in flaming pieces. The Dragon 2 LES is within less than 1/10 second at full thrust, pulling the capsule away.
So yes, fueling the rocket with people aboard is dangerous but boarding an already fueled rocket would be even more dangerous.
This man spends most of his days in engineering meetings and in fact is nothing less than stupid. His company supplies the ISS right now, is the only way the US can return cargo from space and nobody knows if it will be his company or Boeing (of all things) that will first launch people to space from the US since quite a while in a one or two years.
A reason to go to Mars would be to leave the idiots behind and go to somewhere where productivity isn't a curse but a blessing. You certainly don't need people there who can't even live in a comparable paradise without wrecking it for fun.
What do you expect? Some people don't even have the slightest idea of chemistry on Earth or elsewhere and still think just because they have an opinion they must be heard and individually refuted.
Until you'd start prospecting for resources in the asteroid belt from Mars of course.
Anyway, "freedom is accepting the inevitable". On Mars you'd depend on others for the very air you breath, but others would depend on your work too. It would be both total servitude and total freedom. But yes, if your flavour of freedom is "doing what you want without any consequences" you wouldn't be free there. So better stay on Earth then, they won't be taking everyone anyway.
There is a chance of slightly more than zero that something like that is going to happen and ignoring it may mean to miss it or to come too late. Of course there is a dream of tricking out the limits of growth by just growing out of Earth. Then someone else already is sitting on the juiciest resources out there.
Well, either that or we will be increasingly fighting over diminishing resources down here, sooner or later. In case you haven't noticed the world is becoming smaller and smaller.
Bezos is just spending some money on trying not to miss the ultimate growth opportunity in history. In the worst case he will just be selling engines to ULA (and he's is already developing the BE4 engine for them).
Viking 1 in 1976 landed exactly like Schiaparelli and it worked fine, at the first try. Heat shield, parachutes, landing rockets, touchdown. Worked for years, too.
Mars is hard, but it seems to be harder for some than for others.
Mercury lacks water, which is the foremost thing you need, just for oxygen and propellants. Some of the Jovian and Saturnian moons are great, but they are so far away that getting there takes years, also solar power out there is sparse and radiation thick enough to kill you within hours. They are ignored for now with good reason.
Mars has loads of water, an atmosphere of CO2 (so you have oxygen, hydrogen and carbon) and is not too far away. The atmosphere also makes landing much easier, since you can use it to brake. Dragging enough fuel with you to slow down several km/s just by propulsion makes things much harder. If you have to also take the fuel with you (and brake and land it) to launch back again as with Mercury this gets just impossible.
What for? There is hardly anything usable on the Moon (maybe some water ice dust in the regolith in a few areas in shaded craters on the poles) and landing on the Moon costs lots of fuel since there is no atmosphere to do the braking for you. And then you want to go there and launch again to somewhere else? Why?
Mars at least has an atmosphere and resources like water ice (and lots of it) and CO2. So landing there, staying and also and launching again is much easier (since you can use water ice and CO2 to produce fuel instead of bringing it all the way from Earth).
Slashdot Mirror
No fucking MacBook ever had a fucking HDMI port. All you need is a different adapter, but you always needed one.
Also the USB people miss here was introduced with the iMac in which it replaced all the legacy Apple connectors. Without that USB would have never caught. Sometimes you need to drag things into the future kicking and screaming or they will never move.
It's pointless. People want legends that gel with their believes, not facts. They also will believe that Apple invented USB C to take away their beloved USB (that Apple pushed into the market with the iMac cutting off all older Apple connectors, but they don't know and don't want to know that).
That's the people who build a spacecraft with no launch escape system at all, right?
The only other way than to fuel the rocket with the crew on board would be to fuel it first and then let the crew board it. The latter would mean that the astronauts as well as pad crews would be near or on a fueled rocket with no way to escape if something goes wrong during boarding the capsule.
If the astronauts board the capsule on top of the empty rocket and the rocket is fueled only when they're safe and strapped in there, there is no point at which they couldn't fire the escape system and get away when something goes wrong. Look at the fueling accident they had: The payload sat up there for several seconds after the rocket was already falling down in flaming pieces. The Dragon 2 LES is within less than 1/10 second at full thrust, pulling the capsule away.
So yes, fueling the rocket with people aboard is dangerous but boarding an already fueled rocket would be even more dangerous.
They also remember that they lost those 20+ million because they believed a madman who said that he never would attack them (Hitler). And then he did.
Also how to launch stuff to space and return it.
This man spends most of his days in engineering meetings and in fact is nothing less than stupid. His company supplies the ISS right now, is the only way the US can return cargo from space and nobody knows if it will be his company or Boeing (of all things) that will first launch people to space from the US since quite a while in a one or two years.
Why? On Earth people are a dime a dozen.
News for dorks. Things that mattered three days ago elsewhere.
You forget one thing: Hell is other people.
A reason to go to Mars would be to leave the idiots behind and go to somewhere where productivity isn't a curse but a blessing. You certainly don't need people there who can't even live in a comparable paradise without wrecking it for fun.
What do you expect? Some people don't even have the slightest idea of chemistry on Earth or elsewhere and still think just because they have an opinion they must be heard and individually refuted.
Yes, a lot of people are thinking about this right now instead of posting on Slashdot. Slashdot is so 20th century anyway.
Until you'd start prospecting for resources in the asteroid belt from Mars of course.
Anyway, "freedom is accepting the inevitable". On Mars you'd depend on others for the very air you breath, but others would depend on your work too. It would be both total servitude and total freedom. But yes, if your flavour of freedom is "doing what you want without any consequences" you wouldn't be free there. So better stay on Earth then, they won't be taking everyone anyway.
The US landed first try in 1976 (Viking 1).
Just like with... the Internet?
There is a chance of slightly more than zero that something like that is going to happen and ignoring it may mean to miss it or to come too late. Of course there is a dream of tricking out the limits of growth by just growing out of Earth. Then someone else already is sitting on the juiciest resources out there.
Well, either that or we will be increasingly fighting over diminishing resources down here, sooner or later. In case you haven't noticed the world is becoming smaller and smaller.
Bezos is just spending some money on trying not to miss the ultimate growth opportunity in history. In the worst case he will just be selling engines to ULA (and he's is already developing the BE4 engine for them).
Viking 1 in 1976 landed exactly like Schiaparelli and it worked fine, at the first try. Heat shield, parachutes, landing rockets, touchdown. Worked for years, too.
Mars is hard, but it seems to be harder for some than for others.
There were 12 seconds of signal after the engines shut off. Looks more as if the lander was in free fall and then impacted after these 12 seconds.
Space isn't about going up. Space is about going fast and orbit is half the way to everywhere in the solar system.
The problem with Earth is that you can't get far enough from other people. And as we all know, hell is other people.
Helium-3 never was a "thing", except as a plot device.
Mercury lacks water, which is the foremost thing you need, just for oxygen and propellants. Some of the Jovian and Saturnian moons are great, but they are so far away that getting there takes years, also solar power out there is sparse and radiation thick enough to kill you within hours. They are ignored for now with good reason.
Mars has loads of water, an atmosphere of CO2 (so you have oxygen, hydrogen and carbon) and is not too far away. The atmosphere also makes landing much easier, since you can use it to brake. Dragging enough fuel with you to slow down several km/s just by propulsion makes things much harder. If you have to also take the fuel with you (and brake and land it) to launch back again as with Mercury this gets just impossible.
What for? There is hardly anything usable on the Moon (maybe some water ice dust in the regolith in a few areas in shaded craters on the poles) and landing on the Moon costs lots of fuel since there is no atmosphere to do the braking for you. And then you want to go there and launch again to somewhere else? Why?
Mars at least has an atmosphere and resources like water ice (and lots of it) and CO2. So landing there, staying and also and launching again is much easier (since you can use water ice and CO2 to produce fuel instead of bringing it all the way from Earth).