Since I work in Mojave, I must say I was befuddled with the codename Microsoft chose for their image rehabilitation. Mojave sucks, outside of the cool things going on at the Spaceport.
I can assure you that neither Vista nor "Mojave" had anything to do with this first flight.
Mike has had his share of scary moments in experimental planes, but this famous episode ranks way down the list, and was certainly not a near-death experience. It was not an uncontrolled nor uncommanded spin, and he regained roll stability well before entering the atmosphere by using the RCS system, which was implemented on the vehicle for just such occasions.
This flight was a test flight. It lead to changes in the flight profile that eliminated the aggravated roll condition. All of the following flights were successful at avoiding the excessive roll. Lessons were learned and applied.
Both Mike and Brian Binnie experienced what would best be described as massive sensory overload from the whole launch experience. No amount of simulator flying could have prepared them, and the test program was far too short to give them enough familiarity to overcome the overload. In this condition, it was hard enough for them to remember their own names while the rocket was firing, let alone keep the flight controls doing what they were supposed to do.
My sarcastic comments about Mike being in one piece were aimed at the hyperbole statement about him being "almost killed" on the first flight. While it made a stunning piece of video with the earth spinning around the windows, he was not in any danger at the time. He told me that since he was basically in microgravity at the time, he could close his eyes and not tell that he was spinning at all. He focused on doing his job and using the RCS system to arrest the roll.
A roll and a spin are two different things. In the case of a plane spinning in thick atmosphere, many times this is an unrecoverable condition. At the very least, it takes non-intuitive action to break out of the spin. Also the chance of structural failure caused by aerodynamic forces tends to make spins very deadly, hence the sense of danger for commonly understood spins. When you take the atmosphere away and configure the vehicle to counter exo-atmospheric orientation problems with the feather and an RCS system, the problem is greatly minimized. So while stunning and hair-raising for all of the arm-chair pilots to watch, the situation on that SS1 flight was not serious beyond the fact that such flights and conditions had not been experienced before.
... and not had any unfortunate incidents like the one that so nearly killed the pilot on the first SS1 launch.
Huh. I never would have guessed that this might have happened on the first SS1 launch, as I just had a nice chat with Mike Melvill last night and he was remarkably in one piece. As far as I know, he wasn't nearly killed by anything in the SS1. He made many flights during that test program, and survived all without a scratch.
Seriously, SS1 was a research program, a one-off prototype. Nothing like it had flown before, and nothing like it since. The devil is in the details, and when you are in a flight envelope which does not overlap much with publicly available information, you occasionally will find the devil. Much was learned from SS1, and luckily, everyone who flew it made it home unharmed, thanks to brilliant people who deciphered the problems and made appropriate corrective actions.
I hate to pull this card out of my deck, but I work at Scaled Composites. All of your assertions about "Tools, crap, dust, old parts, probably even iron filings and plain old mud all over the place" are completely false. Cleanliness is absolutely essential when you need to bond composite materials, and we have rigorous procedures and quality checking to ensure that every bond is done correctly. There are daily inspections for foreign objects and debris.
We do not spend a zillion dollars on our facilities, because it makes no difference, as long as the airframe can be constructed as designed. Too many people have been poisoned by Hollywood's perfect assembly factories. No doubt, you may have been expecting the order and fully uniformed employees of a James Bond villain's organization. This is reality. This is quickly building a prototype on a small budget, rather than the incessant preparation and logistics required for a multi-year, government funded production run. For us, empty space is wasted space, which we cannot afford.
In time, when the design is finalized with flight testing driven changes included, the real production planes will probably be constructed in a more presentable looking factory. The build quality would only be different in that production planes would not bear the scars of required fixes and adjustments that are necessary during the prototype phase. Production work is not what Scaled Composites does.
It implies that Safari still has major problems, while the summary clearly states that this issue (that was discovered in Safari), is now found to affect FireFox 2/3. Further, it implies a situation completely opposite of what is stated lower in the summary, that Apple did a good first pass at squashing the attack, and that it is now better understood.
I think a more accurate headline would have stated that FireFox was found to be not immune to a security problem found in IE and Safari. Unfortunately, this would imply that there is a problem with an OSS piece of software (which will quickly be fixed).
You miss the point of what the jets will cost in actual weight and complexity. Think of the total system that has to be hauled up to space. Each engine will weigh ~800 lbs. or so, and the controls, tubing, fuel tanks, etc. that goes along with them. This basically adds at least a ton to the weight that has to be hefted into space. All of that additional weight requires a lot of additional energy from the rocket. Add more weight there. The cost to lift a pound of weight to even suborbital space is quite high, and these systems add tremendously to that energy requirement.
You also assume that the jet engines will be helpful once the craft returns to the atmosphere. With the wing configuration that they show for this thing, it should have phenominal glide capabilities, and shouldn't need engines once it comes back into the atmosphere. It could quite literally glide from Paris to London and partway back. This is a good thing, because restarting these engines may be quite difficult after re-entry. Again though, those engines may hinder this performance as they add weight and drag (in the non-operating condition).
Straight rockets cary only what they need to get up and down. SpaceShip One and it's successor eschew air-breathing engines and use a carrier plane, becuase they won't have to lift all of the extra weight. And about those tires, SpaceShip One only had two tires onboard and used a maple wood skid for the front gear, to save weight and to better accomodate the inhabitants of the fuselage.
If this thing makes it into anything like a prototype, I predict that it will have astronomical cost and an abysmal safety and reliability record.
Disclaimer -- I work for a company that is building a space tourism vehicle.
It give's 1/3 the time of weightless, compared to Virgin. You can wait a few more years to catch a ride. Oh, it's not an American design team. It's also a much more complicated vehicle than Virgin's, increasing the opportunity of "flight delays", making frequent fliers feel much more at home.
On the serious side, if it works, this plane wouldn't need a mother ship to carry it to launch altitude. On the flip side, why cary a set of jet engines to space when they become dead weight once they flameout.
The only other thing that's special about this plane is the fact that there are stock holders and governments of several countries that have vested interest in becoming pre-eminent in this field. Other entrants are private companies. They either have the money or they don't. Governments can always appropriate, and public companies can sell more stock. Press releases like this are perfect for attracting neo-techie stockholders into the fold. This is the only game in town where you can buy into the space tourism market, without being close personal friends of Bigelow or Branson.
Not everyone can live within a mile or two of their work, because they have lives outside of work. I have yet to have a job that was within 30 miles of my wife's job, mostly because we've lived in rural areas with little opportunity of switching employers for travel convenience. Both of us are engineers of different disciplines, we have to compromise to both stay employed.
Beyond accomodating the location of different employers, when you have kids, other factors come in to play. No responsible parent wants to force their kids to go to a "bad" school system, so many people locate their homes into "good" school districts. In my case, my daughter is special needs, and I will be re-locating a further 10 miles away from my job, so that she will be in a school district that has facilities for her special needs. If I lived a mile or two from where I work now, my daughter would go to a very dangerous and bad school that IMHO no children should be sent to. My wife would probably leave me before living in that area, anyway.
Everytime it happens, I just smack myself in the forhead for not rebooting sooner. Usually I can just reboot with a better memory state than before the BSOD.
I should have clarified, as the sibling responder did. Actually, the shuttle uses the RCS the whole way down to landing for course correction. It needs fuel for this.
Yes, wings are more weight and therefore more fuel for flight, but the amount of fuel needed for a safe VTOL landing is indeterminate, based on the landing site and weather conditions. SS1 and similar space planes can use all of their fuel, and still land safely, this thing cannot. The Space Shuttle doesn't use all of it's fuel, as it needs to come in under power, but it still can use gravity and aerodynamic forces to bleed off energy, in order to govern the descent and landing. VTOL gumdrops like this thing are SOL if the wind (high or low altitude) is strong enough to push it off of a good landing track or if there is a math error on one of the landing or fuel usage computers. Even more so if there is a failure in a pump or somewhere in the cryogenic fuel systems (like on some lunar landings).
I'm not so sure about an order of magnitude in the less cool department. Human physiology doesn't do that well with weightlessness, and the intensity of ~5 minutes of space flight will be much more than most people will be able to stand. Don't underestimate the coolness of bragging rights at the local country club. Even suborbital will be way more than cool enough for the next few years.
Cooler yet, the early space tourists will bring down the cost for the rest of us.
The only other one I give any credit to who actually has built something that flew is Burt Rutan, but I don't trust him because everything looks like an airplane to him. But it's possible he might get to orbit.
You obviously don't understand Burt's system, nor the reason it "looks like an airplane". By using a carrier vehicle to take the space vehicle to very high altitudes, his solution doesn't need as much rocket fuel to accelerate the rocket from 0 through a thick atmosphere. Less fuel means less weight, which requires less fuel, lowering the cost. Also, by starting the space launch from gliding, it uses aerodynamic forces to it's advantage, where a conventional rocket only has the aerodynamic force of drag.
The most dangerous time of a conventional rocket flight (or airplane flight for that matter) is in the takeoff phase, where maximum power is used while the vehicle has minimum velocity (and momentum). Gravity is a big force in this stage and can wreck havoc. Control systems can only do so much if you have a mechanical mishap, as from the ground there is very little time for a control system detect the problem and to effect a fix. The Scaled Composites (Burt's company) solution gets rid of this safety problem by launching the vehicle with an initial velocity, well away from the ground. If something happens, the rocket is killed and the ship coasts to landing.
You miss the point of the X-Prize and the result of the winner.
SpaceShip One may be a point solution, but it is the catalyst for two new enterprises, The SpaceShip Company and Virgin Galactic. These companies are taking the baby step of SpaceShip One, and turning it into a profit-generating new industry, that will fund further developments that will eventually get to LEO. A LOT of seats are already sold on SpaceShip Two, and this revenue will generate more R & D for the next step in the future.
Do you think the space tourists of the next few years will be satisfied with brief excursions into space, or will they be clamoring for spending time in LEO? You can be sure that there will be a few companies that will be working towards that next step, at a price that will keep them in business. The X-Prize provided the initial incentive, market economies will take over from here.
I think we are missing the meaning of each other's words, and I may have mistaken your signature and tone to be anti-Mormon and anti-fundamentalist. I am neither Mormon or a fundamentalist.
The articles you linked are informative, and unfortunately for you prove my point. The first paper is a long request for more funding research and just shows that they can grow human tissue in rats, with stem cells. The second article states "moderate" success in grafting embryonic human stem cells to living rat's brains (summary of first paper), does some hand waving and that from this you could cure Parkinson's?! That's a leap. The doctors who wrote the third article hedge right up front in the synopsis and state that they don't think this will help much at all for severe autoimmune diseases. Ironically the condition that is one of the subjects of the third article (autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura) is what caused my daughter's stroke, and why my wife and I cannot have any more children. At least they're honest.
The older I get, and the more time I spend in academia, the less I trust studies that perfectly achieve the result that they intended to get at the outset.
I thought of it once, but feel now that we are out of the woods, that it would make boring television. We had no advance signs of the stroke, except that Mary (my daughter) was breech and would not invert. We had ultrasounds from 8 weeks until the delivery, and never caught this.
To tell you the truth, my wife and I were devastated and numb for a period of about three or four months. We would try to be optimistic, but we were both in a huge depression. For the life of me, I cannot tell you what happened at all in the summer and early fall of 2004. It is almost a complete lost memory, except for the events surrounding my daughter.
Through this whole experience, I'd like to think that we've become better medical consumers than we were before. I now never take any doctor's word for anything, and get second and third opinions as a routine. I've had to help in minor surgical procedures because of lack of (competent) staff and other issues (I am not a doctor or nurse). I've seen laws and policies at work to hinder emergency and special medical care. You don't know how to react when you have to tell doctors and nurses in the emergency room what to do, because they have never had to deal with a situation like yours. Likewise, most early conversations with doctors tend to be feelers from them to determine if we are apt to sue for malpractice (we are not). Likely the hospital and medical professionals involved would not want this event exposed to the greater public on the Discovery channel.
We take every day with our daughter as a new blessing, and hope that one day, nobody will be able to tell that she has any problems at all.
Giving kids with type I diabetes insulin is not performing research or giving them something that they don't need to live. My argument is that the study is poorly thought out with tremendous negative potential consequences, and the subjects have no choice. The guardians of the subjects are probably as ignorant as you are, and would rightly try to do anything to help their kids, but this is more likely to harm than help.
Certainly at the top of this range they aren't, but most children in this range still have remarkable healing ability because of their own stem cell production. What should be the larger ethical concern is that these children don't have the maturity to measure the consequences of this treatment, nor the legal authority to give permission for this treatment. This study is preying on the desires of the parents to make their children whole, without regard to any side-effects.
Six year olds are not as resilient, but they still have some of the processes at work. What is worse, having a six year old receive a brain injury, or a six year old getting brain cancer from the treatment for that injury? How about having that six year old reject the new tissue growing inside their skull because of an obscure genetic mismatch?
Normally, I don't dignify tolls, but since you were nice enough to not hide behind the AC tag and did offer concern for my family...
There is a lot of funding for stem cell research. The issue is what the source and method of harvesting the stem cells, when it should be on the demonstrated results of research that has already been performed. The fact that "incredibly damaging upsurge in fundamentalist religion" has clouded this issue concerns me, but of greater concern is the knee-jerk reaction to those fundamentalists that promote stem cells without shred of proof of their effectiveness.
You obviously don't quite comprehend all the issues about stem cells, and the mechanisms by which they work. Stem cells, by their nature, are the absolute wrong approach to take to battle cancer of any type. So far, the stem cell research for Parkinson's and cerebro-spinal injuries has not produced even a glimmer of hope for cure in lab animals, and in most cases, causes worse health to the subjects.
I have more compassion than you will ever understand. I just temper my compassion with facts and logic, and do not waste energy tilting at windmills. Spend resources on evolutionary research and development that shows proven good results, and not on studies that could do greater harm than good for the afflicted when prematurely moved to (very young) human subjects.
My issue is that there may be false hope given based on studies with young children. Their own stem cell production will mask the effect of the treatment, and possibly give unwarranted, overly positive results. Results that are due to their own healing abilities, and not the treatment itself.
Since my daughter was born, I have been told that she would be deaf, and then wouldn't be able to talk. I was told that she would be limp on one side. I was told that she would completely loose the use of her eyes because of optic nerve atrophy. So far, all of these diagnoses and predictions have become false. Doctors are a pessimistic lot by nature (and nurture with today's tort environment). They excel at setting low expectations so that the grieving parent will be elated if any of the predictions turn out to be false, and the doctor will be seen as a miracle worker.
As I stated, children have a very high capability of healing themselves. Adult trials would make more sense for clinical "proof" of efficacy of this treatment, as adult injuries and their consequences are more well-understood. I assert that children are used here to avoid blockage of funding. "Save the children!" You don't want to "steal" funding that will save the lives of kids, do you? Neither do any politicians when confronted with the choice.
You miss the point, and I don't have a sad story. My story is happy and full of hope. It is a miracle that my daughter is alive today, and her body has been healing itself, as all children will do. We don't view her circumstance as a major hinderance and although I wish that she never had any of these problems, I know I can't turn back the clock and fix anything better than her body has done. She has stem cells at work right now, without intervention. You don't try to fix what isn't broken.
The problem with this study is that it is based on an unrealistic hope. Where do these stem cells come from? If they come from the child itself, then what is the point? If they come from a third-party donor, then there are more hinderances to healing than help from this foreign material.
The issue here is that people have this desire to make things better, and that's a good thing. The problem is that some things can't be made better. There is a much greater chance that any stem cell therapy will lead to a life-threatening cancer, than re-growth of material that would be helpful to healing. I know of what I speak here. My daughter's stroke was caused by a genetic incompatibility between my wife and I. Third-party stem cells have a high probability of being rejected because of genetic mismatches.
Stem cells might be a neat buzzword to get funding, but as a parent of a child with serious brain damage, I can tell you that this is more likely a politically motivated stunt to grease the slippery slope of stem cell research, than something that will generate measurable results. After all, nobody wants to hurt brain damaged children.
The reason I'm so cynical is that babies are very resilient, and for the most part they are like stem cell factories on their own. As they grow, they produce new brain and nerve material, which adults cannot do. It is adult disease and injury (and greed) that fuels the stem cell craze, since our adult bodies cannot heal like young children can.
My daughter had a stroke two months before she was born. This stroke wiped out 85% of the left hemisphere of her brain, replacing it with a fluid filled cyst. When she was three months old, she had an operation to add a drainage passage to this cyst, as it was filling with cerebral spinal fluid and had expanded to fill the entire left half of her cranium cavity. This operation cut through parts of her brain, leaving her completely blind.
At nine months of age, the drainage passage had collapsed, and the cyst had enlarged to block all drainage of cerebral spinal fluid from her brain. Her head swelled with a condition know as hydrocephalus, and she almost died. That night, the CAT scans showed that 75% of the volume that should have been occupied by her brain was filled with fluid. She had an emergency operation to install an artificial drainage valve (a shunt). This event was catastrophic, and was like having her "reset" switch activated, she had to re-learn everything.
Now, the good news. She is eighteen months old now, and has recovered remarkably. Her last CAT scan showed that the original cyst had been reduced to only 25% of the left half of her brain, and the right half is completely restored. The original passage that was cut, that caused her blindness, has healed shut. Her vision is steadily improving and she shows signs that she may be functional without the use of a cane someday. Sure, she's a little behind developmentally, but she is showing lots of promise. All of her healing was without the use of any stem cell treatment, because babies are stem cell factories. Her same injuries would have killed an adult, several times over.
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Since I work in Mojave, I must say I was befuddled with the codename Microsoft chose for their image rehabilitation. Mojave sucks, outside of the cool things going on at the Spaceport.
I can assure you that neither Vista nor "Mojave" had anything to do with this first flight.
-- Len
Mike has had his share of scary moments in experimental planes, but this famous episode ranks way down the list, and was certainly not a near-death experience. It was not an uncontrolled nor uncommanded spin, and he regained roll stability well before entering the atmosphere by using the RCS system, which was implemented on the vehicle for just such occasions.
This flight was a test flight. It lead to changes in the flight profile that eliminated the aggravated roll condition. All of the following flights were successful at avoiding the excessive roll. Lessons were learned and applied.
Both Mike and Brian Binnie experienced what would best be described as massive sensory overload from the whole launch experience. No amount of simulator flying could have prepared them, and the test program was far too short to give them enough familiarity to overcome the overload. In this condition, it was hard enough for them to remember their own names while the rocket was firing, let alone keep the flight controls doing what they were supposed to do.
My sarcastic comments about Mike being in one piece were aimed at the hyperbole statement about him being "almost killed" on the first flight. While it made a stunning piece of video with the earth spinning around the windows, he was not in any danger at the time. He told me that since he was basically in microgravity at the time, he could close his eyes and not tell that he was spinning at all. He focused on doing his job and using the RCS system to arrest the roll.
A roll and a spin are two different things. In the case of a plane spinning in thick atmosphere, many times this is an unrecoverable condition. At the very least, it takes non-intuitive action to break out of the spin. Also the chance of structural failure caused by aerodynamic forces tends to make spins very deadly, hence the sense of danger for commonly understood spins. When you take the atmosphere away and configure the vehicle to counter exo-atmospheric orientation problems with the feather and an RCS system, the problem is greatly minimized. So while stunning and hair-raising for all of the arm-chair pilots to watch, the situation on that SS1 flight was not serious beyond the fact that such flights and conditions had not been experienced before.
-- Len
... and not had any unfortunate incidents like the one that so nearly killed the pilot on the first SS1 launch.
Huh. I never would have guessed that this might have happened on the first SS1 launch, as I just had a nice chat with Mike Melvill last night and he was remarkably in one piece. As far as I know, he wasn't nearly killed by anything in the SS1. He made many flights during that test program, and survived all without a scratch.
Seriously, SS1 was a research program, a one-off prototype. Nothing like it had flown before, and nothing like it since. The devil is in the details, and when you are in a flight envelope which does not overlap much with publicly available information, you occasionally will find the devil. Much was learned from SS1, and luckily, everyone who flew it made it home unharmed, thanks to brilliant people who deciphered the problems and made appropriate corrective actions.
-- Len
I hate to pull this card out of my deck, but I work at Scaled Composites. All of your assertions about "Tools, crap, dust, old parts, probably even iron filings and plain old mud all over the place" are completely false. Cleanliness is absolutely essential when you need to bond composite materials, and we have rigorous procedures and quality checking to ensure that every bond is done correctly. There are daily inspections for foreign objects and debris.
We do not spend a zillion dollars on our facilities, because it makes no difference, as long as the airframe can be constructed as designed. Too many people have been poisoned by Hollywood's perfect assembly factories. No doubt, you may have been expecting the order and fully uniformed employees of a James Bond villain's organization. This is reality. This is quickly building a prototype on a small budget, rather than the incessant preparation and logistics required for a multi-year, government funded production run. For us, empty space is wasted space, which we cannot afford.
In time, when the design is finalized with flight testing driven changes included, the real production planes will probably be constructed in a more presentable looking factory. The build quality would only be different in that production planes would not bear the scars of required fixes and adjustments that are necessary during the prototype phase. Production work is not what Scaled Composites does.
-- Len
It implies that Safari still has major problems, while the summary clearly states that this issue (that was discovered in Safari), is now found to affect FireFox 2/3. Further, it implies a situation completely opposite of what is stated lower in the summary, that Apple did a good first pass at squashing the attack, and that it is now better understood.
I think a more accurate headline would have stated that FireFox was found to be not immune to a security problem found in IE and Safari. Unfortunately, this would imply that there is a problem with an OSS piece of software (which will quickly be fixed).
-- Len
You miss the point of what the jets will cost in actual weight and complexity. Think of the total system that has to be hauled up to space. Each engine will weigh ~800 lbs. or so, and the controls, tubing, fuel tanks, etc. that goes along with them. This basically adds at least a ton to the weight that has to be hefted into space. All of that additional weight requires a lot of additional energy from the rocket. Add more weight there. The cost to lift a pound of weight to even suborbital space is quite high, and these systems add tremendously to that energy requirement.
You also assume that the jet engines will be helpful once the craft returns to the atmosphere. With the wing configuration that they show for this thing, it should have phenominal glide capabilities, and shouldn't need engines once it comes back into the atmosphere. It could quite literally glide from Paris to London and partway back. This is a good thing, because restarting these engines may be quite difficult after re-entry. Again though, those engines may hinder this performance as they add weight and drag (in the non-operating condition).
Straight rockets cary only what they need to get up and down. SpaceShip One and it's successor eschew air-breathing engines and use a carrier plane, becuase they won't have to lift all of the extra weight. And about those tires, SpaceShip One only had two tires onboard and used a maple wood skid for the front gear, to save weight and to better accomodate the inhabitants of the fuselage.
If this thing makes it into anything like a prototype, I predict that it will have astronomical cost and an abysmal safety and reliability record.
Disclaimer -- I work for a company that is building a space tourism vehicle.
-- Len
It give's 1/3 the time of weightless, compared to Virgin. You can wait a few more years to catch a ride. Oh, it's not an American design team. It's also a much more complicated vehicle than Virgin's, increasing the opportunity of "flight delays", making frequent fliers feel much more at home.
On the serious side, if it works, this plane wouldn't need a mother ship to carry it to launch altitude. On the flip side, why cary a set of jet engines to space when they become dead weight once they flameout.
The only other thing that's special about this plane is the fact that there are stock holders and governments of several countries that have vested interest in becoming pre-eminent in this field. Other entrants are private companies. They either have the money or they don't. Governments can always appropriate, and public companies can sell more stock. Press releases like this are perfect for attracting neo-techie stockholders into the fold. This is the only game in town where you can buy into the space tourism market, without being close personal friends of Bigelow or Branson.
-- Len
Not everyone can live within a mile or two of their work, because they have lives outside of work. I have yet to have a job that was within 30 miles of my wife's job, mostly because we've lived in rural areas with little opportunity of switching employers for travel convenience. Both of us are engineers of different disciplines, we have to compromise to both stay employed.
Beyond accomodating the location of different employers, when you have kids, other factors come in to play. No responsible parent wants to force their kids to go to a "bad" school system, so many people locate their homes into "good" school districts. In my case, my daughter is special needs, and I will be re-locating a further 10 miles away from my job, so that she will be in a school district that has facilities for her special needs. If I lived a mile or two from where I work now, my daughter would go to a very dangerous and bad school that IMHO no children should be sent to. My wife would probably leave me before living in that area, anyway.
-- Len
Everytime it happens, I just smack myself in the forhead for not rebooting sooner. Usually I can just reboot with a better memory state than before the BSOD.
I should have clarified, as the sibling responder did. Actually, the shuttle uses the RCS the whole way down to landing for course correction. It needs fuel for this.
-- Len
Yes, wings are more weight and therefore more fuel for flight, but the amount of fuel needed for a safe VTOL landing is indeterminate, based on the landing site and weather conditions. SS1 and similar space planes can use all of their fuel, and still land safely, this thing cannot. The Space Shuttle doesn't use all of it's fuel, as it needs to come in under power, but it still can use gravity and aerodynamic forces to bleed off energy, in order to govern the descent and landing. VTOL gumdrops like this thing are SOL if the wind (high or low altitude) is strong enough to push it off of a good landing track or if there is a math error on one of the landing or fuel usage computers. Even more so if there is a failure in a pump or somewhere in the cryogenic fuel systems (like on some lunar landings).
-- Len
I'm not so sure about an order of magnitude in the less cool department. Human physiology doesn't do that well with weightlessness, and the intensity of ~5 minutes of space flight will be much more than most people will be able to stand. Don't underestimate the coolness of bragging rights at the local country club. Even suborbital will be way more than cool enough for the next few years.
Cooler yet, the early space tourists will bring down the cost for the rest of us.
-- Len
You obviously don't understand Burt's system, nor the reason it "looks like an airplane". By using a carrier vehicle to take the space vehicle to very high altitudes, his solution doesn't need as much rocket fuel to accelerate the rocket from 0 through a thick atmosphere. Less fuel means less weight, which requires less fuel, lowering the cost. Also, by starting the space launch from gliding, it uses aerodynamic forces to it's advantage, where a conventional rocket only has the aerodynamic force of drag.
The most dangerous time of a conventional rocket flight (or airplane flight for that matter) is in the takeoff phase, where maximum power is used while the vehicle has minimum velocity (and momentum). Gravity is a big force in this stage and can wreck havoc. Control systems can only do so much if you have a mechanical mishap, as from the ground there is very little time for a control system detect the problem and to effect a fix. The Scaled Composites (Burt's company) solution gets rid of this safety problem by launching the vehicle with an initial velocity, well away from the ground. If something happens, the rocket is killed and the ship coasts to landing.
-- Len
You miss the point of the X-Prize and the result of the winner.
SpaceShip One may be a point solution, but it is the catalyst for two new enterprises, The SpaceShip Company and Virgin Galactic. These companies are taking the baby step of SpaceShip One, and turning it into a profit-generating new industry, that will fund further developments that will eventually get to LEO. A LOT of seats are already sold on SpaceShip Two, and this revenue will generate more R & D for the next step in the future.
Do you think the space tourists of the next few years will be satisfied with brief excursions into space, or will they be clamoring for spending time in LEO? You can be sure that there will be a few companies that will be working towards that next step, at a price that will keep them in business. The X-Prize provided the initial incentive, market economies will take over from here.
-- Len
I think we are missing the meaning of each other's words, and I may have mistaken your signature and tone to be anti-Mormon and anti-fundamentalist. I am neither Mormon or a fundamentalist.
The articles you linked are informative, and unfortunately for you prove my point. The first paper is a long request for more funding research and just shows that they can grow human tissue in rats, with stem cells. The second article states "moderate" success in grafting embryonic human stem cells to living rat's brains (summary of first paper), does some hand waving and that from this you could cure Parkinson's?! That's a leap. The doctors who wrote the third article hedge right up front in the synopsis and state that they don't think this will help much at all for severe autoimmune diseases. Ironically the condition that is one of the subjects of the third article (autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura) is what caused my daughter's stroke, and why my wife and I cannot have any more children. At least they're honest.
The older I get, and the more time I spend in academia, the less I trust studies that perfectly achieve the result that they intended to get at the outset.
-- Len
I thought of it once, but feel now that we are out of the woods, that it would make boring television. We had no advance signs of the stroke, except that Mary (my daughter) was breech and would not invert. We had ultrasounds from 8 weeks until the delivery, and never caught this.
To tell you the truth, my wife and I were devastated and numb for a period of about three or four months. We would try to be optimistic, but we were both in a huge depression. For the life of me, I cannot tell you what happened at all in the summer and early fall of 2004. It is almost a complete lost memory, except for the events surrounding my daughter.
Through this whole experience, I'd like to think that we've become better medical consumers than we were before. I now never take any doctor's word for anything, and get second and third opinions as a routine. I've had to help in minor surgical procedures because of lack of (competent) staff and other issues (I am not a doctor or nurse). I've seen laws and policies at work to hinder emergency and special medical care. You don't know how to react when you have to tell doctors and nurses in the emergency room what to do, because they have never had to deal with a situation like yours. Likewise, most early conversations with doctors tend to be feelers from them to determine if we are apt to sue for malpractice (we are not). Likely the hospital and medical professionals involved would not want this event exposed to the greater public on the Discovery channel.
We take every day with our daughter as a new blessing, and hope that one day, nobody will be able to tell that she has any problems at all.
-- Len
Giving kids with type I diabetes insulin is not performing research or giving them something that they don't need to live. My argument is that the study is poorly thought out with tremendous negative potential consequences, and the subjects have no choice. The guardians of the subjects are probably as ignorant as you are, and would rightly try to do anything to help their kids, but this is more likely to harm than help.
-- Len
Thank you. There is always hope that keeps our spirits up. I wasn't aware of Glenn Beck's daughter's issues, so thanks for that information.
-- Len
Certainly at the top of this range they aren't, but most children in this range still have remarkable healing ability because of their own stem cell production. What should be the larger ethical concern is that these children don't have the maturity to measure the consequences of this treatment, nor the legal authority to give permission for this treatment. This study is preying on the desires of the parents to make their children whole, without regard to any side-effects.
-- Len
Six year olds are not as resilient, but they still have some of the processes at work. What is worse, having a six year old receive a brain injury, or a six year old getting brain cancer from the treatment for that injury? How about having that six year old reject the new tissue growing inside their skull because of an obscure genetic mismatch?
-- Len
Normally, I don't dignify tolls, but since you were nice enough to not hide behind the AC tag and did offer concern for my family...
There is a lot of funding for stem cell research. The issue is what the source and method of harvesting the stem cells, when it should be on the demonstrated results of research that has already been performed. The fact that "incredibly damaging upsurge in fundamentalist religion" has clouded this issue concerns me, but of greater concern is the knee-jerk reaction to those fundamentalists that promote stem cells without shred of proof of their effectiveness.
You obviously don't quite comprehend all the issues about stem cells, and the mechanisms by which they work. Stem cells, by their nature, are the absolute wrong approach to take to battle cancer of any type. So far, the stem cell research for Parkinson's and cerebro-spinal injuries has not produced even a glimmer of hope for cure in lab animals, and in most cases, causes worse health to the subjects.
I have more compassion than you will ever understand. I just temper my compassion with facts and logic, and do not waste energy tilting at windmills. Spend resources on evolutionary research and development that shows proven good results, and not on studies that could do greater harm than good for the afflicted when prematurely moved to (very young) human subjects.
-- Len
My issue is that there may be false hope given based on studies with young children. Their own stem cell production will mask the effect of the treatment, and possibly give unwarranted, overly positive results. Results that are due to their own healing abilities, and not the treatment itself.
Since my daughter was born, I have been told that she would be deaf, and then wouldn't be able to talk. I was told that she would be limp on one side. I was told that she would completely loose the use of her eyes because of optic nerve atrophy. So far, all of these diagnoses and predictions have become false. Doctors are a pessimistic lot by nature (and nurture with today's tort environment). They excel at setting low expectations so that the grieving parent will be elated if any of the predictions turn out to be false, and the doctor will be seen as a miracle worker.
As I stated, children have a very high capability of healing themselves. Adult trials would make more sense for clinical "proof" of efficacy of this treatment, as adult injuries and their consequences are more well-understood. I assert that children are used here to avoid blockage of funding. "Save the children!" You don't want to "steal" funding that will save the lives of kids, do you? Neither do any politicians when confronted with the choice.
-- Len
Thank you. Cherish every day with your daughter, and never take her for granted.
-- Len
You miss the point, and I don't have a sad story. My story is happy and full of hope. It is a miracle that my daughter is alive today, and her body has been healing itself, as all children will do. We don't view her circumstance as a major hinderance and although I wish that she never had any of these problems, I know I can't turn back the clock and fix anything better than her body has done. She has stem cells at work right now, without intervention. You don't try to fix what isn't broken.
The problem with this study is that it is based on an unrealistic hope. Where do these stem cells come from? If they come from the child itself, then what is the point? If they come from a third-party donor, then there are more hinderances to healing than help from this foreign material.
The issue here is that people have this desire to make things better, and that's a good thing. The problem is that some things can't be made better. There is a much greater chance that any stem cell therapy will lead to a life-threatening cancer, than re-growth of material that would be helpful to healing. I know of what I speak here. My daughter's stroke was caused by a genetic incompatibility between my wife and I. Third-party stem cells have a high probability of being rejected because of genetic mismatches.
-- Len
Stem cells might be a neat buzzword to get funding, but as a parent of a child with serious brain damage, I can tell you that this is more likely a politically motivated stunt to grease the slippery slope of stem cell research, than something that will generate measurable results. After all, nobody wants to hurt brain damaged children.
The reason I'm so cynical is that babies are very resilient, and for the most part they are like stem cell factories on their own. As they grow, they produce new brain and nerve material, which adults cannot do. It is adult disease and injury (and greed) that fuels the stem cell craze, since our adult bodies cannot heal like young children can.
My daughter had a stroke two months before she was born. This stroke wiped out 85% of the left hemisphere of her brain, replacing it with a fluid filled cyst. When she was three months old, she had an operation to add a drainage passage to this cyst, as it was filling with cerebral spinal fluid and had expanded to fill the entire left half of her cranium cavity. This operation cut through parts of her brain, leaving her completely blind.
At nine months of age, the drainage passage had collapsed, and the cyst had enlarged to block all drainage of cerebral spinal fluid from her brain. Her head swelled with a condition know as hydrocephalus, and she almost died. That night, the CAT scans showed that 75% of the volume that should have been occupied by her brain was filled with fluid. She had an emergency operation to install an artificial drainage valve (a shunt). This event was catastrophic, and was like having her "reset" switch activated, she had to re-learn everything.
Now, the good news. She is eighteen months old now, and has recovered remarkably. Her last CAT scan showed that the original cyst had been reduced to only 25% of the left half of her brain, and the right half is completely restored. The original passage that was cut, that caused her blindness, has healed shut. Her vision is steadily improving and she shows signs that she may be functional without the use of a cane someday. Sure, she's a little behind developmentally, but she is showing lots of promise. All of her healing was without the use of any stem cell treatment, because babies are stem cell factories. Her same injuries would have killed an adult, several times over.
-- Len