The space shuttle was ultimately a vehicle for delivering crew and cargo to orbit. This task is accomplished for less money by the falcon rockets.
In other words, you just repeat what you said the first time - without addressing the issues I raised in my original reply.
Not to mention, as I discuss in another post, it's not clear at all that the Falcon is cheaper... when you consider how many Falcon flights it takes to replace a single Shuttle flight.
But yes, the *incremental* cost of another shuttle launch is in the 500M range, which is still pretty pricey on a $/kg to orbit.
Actually, the incremental cost of a Shuttle flight (that is, the direct costs to add a flight to the manifest) was down around $100-150M depending on who you ask. The annual cost per flight did range around $500M post Challenger, but that's because annual costs were dominated by massive fixed infrastructure costs that had to be paid regardless of how many flights were on the manifest.
That said, I think cheap expendable rockets like F9 are really the way to go for the immediate future.
By how cheap are they really? Even setting aside the lack of downmass and it's inability to ship unpressurized cargo without additional expense, how many Falcon 9/Dragon flights does it take to provide the same crew, cargo, and reboost capability to the ISS as a single Shuttle flight did?
There's hidden factors that most people don't know about or think about... For example, much of the water the Shuttle delivered was a byproduct of it's fuel cells and was thus essentially free. (If they didn't deliver it to ISS, it was vented overboard.) The reboost fuel frequently came from the contingency load - RCS fuel loaded onboard the Shuttle for a launch abort situation, and again thus 'free' when used to reboost the station instead. Then you have to consider that the 'additional' crew the Shuttle carried could be (and was) used to shift cargo, which minimized the time the vehicle was docked to the station and thus minimized the time there was constraints on the station's attitude and the number of time per annum that the microgravity environment on the station had to be disturbed. (And the fact that the Shuttle could deliver cargo and personnel on the same flight works to the same end.) Etc... etc...
Cost isn't the only factor - capabilities matter. They matter a great deal.
You can do the math to figure out why this is a big deal.
By your logic, we can replace semi-trailers and concrete trucks, and ambulances, and every other form of automotive transport - with motor scooters. After all, they're cheaper and they get great gas mileage.
Seriously, as I've said here before (many, many times), it's not all about cost. You also have to consider capability, what are you getting for your money? Nobody confuses a subcompact with a panel van, or a teaspoon with a frying pan... Yet, repeatedly, people insist on doing so when it comes to space transportation.
SpaceX had to use more complex/heavier/expenise plumbing system and thrust structure.
Yeah. I'll get some references on how having more engines means more plumbing and thrust structure. After all, when I install a second faucet in my kitchen, I don't have to add plumbing... The water just magically appears. (And even if I did have to add pipe, my plumber would give me the pipe for free, and not charge me any labor for all the additional joints.)
Etc... etc...
Seriously, are you that fucking clueless to believe that driving up the complexity of a system doesn't come at a price?
I do not see anything wrong with having a higher failure rate on unmanned missions if the cost is enough thet you need to fail four times before the cost matches the rocket with a lower fail rate.
If the launcher was the only cost - that would be a useful observation. But the problem is, you have to figure in the cost of the payload, and for commercial launches, you have to include the revenue potential of the payload as well... Frequently, *one" failure of the lower cost rocket could be (and very likely is) enough to pay for the higher priced (but lower failure) rocket.
Seriously/., this is Business Economics 101 - it's not all about cost.
However, they've designed the thing intentionally to tolerate failures - they stuck 9 engines on the rocket.
That's PR posturing - or "making lemonade out of lemons" to put it more politely.
In reality, big engines are complex and expensive to develop - so SpaceX uses smaller engines that are cheaper to develop and build, which does give fault tolerance... but at the cost of a more complex, heavier, and more expensive plumbing system and thrust structure.
SpaceX would need to have solids, which they've quite deliberately eschewed.
ULA's Common Booster Core (CBC) is liquid-fueled only. Solids are indeed more storable for the long term, but if you need to vary the thrust for different orbital profiles and payloads, liquid is the only way to go.
Perhaps you've noticed in the West the utter lack of liquid fueled ICBM's - and in the rest of the world, liquids are being steadily phased out in favor of solids. There's a reason for that.
Not to mention that solids can reach different orbital profiles and handle different payloads by shaping their trajectories rather than varying their thrust. (USN SLBM's have been doing that for a some decades now.) There's more than one way to skin a cat.
SpaceX is built like an Internet startup - failure is always an option.
Unfortunately - their users (primarily NASA and other US government entities ATM, but soon other old guard customers) don't agree with that philosophy. So if their philosophy starts putting regularly birds in the drink... the contracts are going to dry up pretty rapidly. So just like a 'net startup looking to grow, they can't flaky for long.
SpaceX deserves a lot of credit, no doubt. Among other things, they have revitalized the "space exploration is cool" meme. And with it the willingness to take risks.
Nah. They haven't revitalized anything. The only people going "oh wow, exploring space is kewl" is the same people who have always said that.
The same goes for their technologies and the risk they're perceived as taking... That seems to be mostly PR posturing. In reality, they seem to be hardcore old school and conservative as hell. They're not making a better widget, they're not making a different widget, they're making the same ol' widget and making it cheaper. And only time will tell will if their new processes have cut one too many corners. The folks launching billion dollar payloads or human beings emphatically don't have the Wal-Mart mentality the consumer in the street does - if you can't perform, they don't care how cheap you are.
Corn for ethanol is grown continuously, which means not only do they not let fields lie fallow, but they actually don't even practice crop rotation!
This is simply not possible as corn is very cold intolerant. And unlike winter wheat and some other crops, it doesn't go dormant when the air or soil temps go too low... it simply dies.
I have yet to meet anyone who has gotten a tablet for any kinds of real reason other than a toy.
Thereby demonstrating the fallacy of generalizing from your experience to the rest of the world. You can't possibly know more than an invisibly small fraction (one in millions or tens of millions) of all tablet owners well enough to know for absolute certainty they don't use them as anything but toys.
However in actual practice, nobody seems to do that. They have a laptop and a tablet, and a smartphone.
That's the grandparent's point - rather than one big desktop computer, people now own a range of computing devices the same way they own a range of screwdrivers or a range of kitchen/chef's knifes. Different tools for different uses.
I take all the footage and logs of what they've done and ask a real and licensed public defender in my state to look over my work and tell me whether it would be actionable or not.
'Actionable' != "felony" - you're moving the goalposts, so no wonder you've never paid out the $500. You're telling those that have taken your bet that they're going to be judged by one set of standards - and then actually judging them by a much less strict standard. Not to mention I seriously doubt that an actual 'real licensed' public defender would spend the time pro bono to actually go through the entire day's worth of tapes. (And worse yet, it sounds like he doesn't see the whole day's tapes - just your edited version and biased interpretation of the contents.)
So, like the grandparent, I'm not buying it. You're either cheating, or exaggerating, or both.
When I want to physically destroy my hard drives, I use bullets.
Other than enlarging your ego, why use bullets?
Without the platters in perfect physical shape, you'd risk destroying the electron microscope's fragile tip.
Yeah - nobody has ever managed to invent a system for precisely determining the position of a surface and then precisely positioning the tip of the microscope in relationship to it. Oh, wait. That's exactly how this type of microscope work in the first place!
The space program has contributed way more in commercial developments than it has cost us.
Other than satellite communications and weather forecasting... not so much.
Despite decades of NASA propaganda and uncritical fanboy echoing of the same... When you look into it NASA 'contributions' to the commercial/private sector - it frequently turns out to be someone else's idea/process/technology that NASA has co-opted or adapted for it's own needs and then turned around and taken credit for.
"VOA reports that President Obama says it does not make sense for federal authorities to seek prosecution of recreational marijuana users in states where such use is legal."
But elsewhere he said (essentially) that the Fed's resources are better targeted at dealers - which leaves medical marijuana providers at risk, as well as the licensed growers/dealers provided for under Washington and Colorado's new laws.
And while he's bound to enforce the laws written by Congress, you'd have a very hard time convincing me that he doesn't have the authority to alter the priorities of enforcing those laws. The Justice Dept is part of the Executive Branch and works for him - not Congress. What I suspect he's really waiting on before making the issue a priority and taking it to Congress is for a critical mass of states to decriminalize. Until then, he's just waffling and blaming Congress rather than taking a stand.
I think we should be comparing it to Tunguska event rather than earthquakes. Imagine Tunguska happening over one of densly populated areas.
Probably 80-95% of the Earth's surface is either very lightly populated landmass, or open ocean far enough away from a densely populated landmass that a Tunguska level event would cause little noticeable damage.
Seriously, while 30 odd megatons sounds really, really big... compared to the total surface are of the planet, it's really, really small.
Whatever flashy headline was used to attract readers to the fact that there are potentially *a lot* of undetected large objects that could wipe us out was worth it.
Well, no. We've been looking pretty closely at the skies for a while now, and the odds that there is an undetected object large enough to threaten extinction are now pretty low. It's the one's in the "oh, crap, we hope this doesn't hit a populated area" that are a problem, but they're pretty rare objects and even rarer events. Such flashy headlines mostly serve to excite the excitable and panic those easily panicked and those who really don't understand the situation at all. The popular press has significantly overstated the threat.
I mean, this is serious shit, and we are NOT taking it seriously enough. We are seating ducks unless we "diversify our investments", meaning going out there and colonize other planets.
We, as a species, are taking in about as seriously as we can. We're looking for and cataloging the objects and predicting their tracks, and that's about the best we can do for the near future.
Absent a Manhattan or Apollo level project, we simply can't usefully colonize other planets. With such "waste anything but time"/"near blank check" level projects, we're a century or more away from being able to do so - there's simply too many "unknown unknowns" in creating a colony or system of colonies that can survive if the Earth is wiped out. The odds are far too low to justify to cost.
Honestly, I'd expect this crowd in Slashdot to really understand the implications.
Understanding the implications is one thing - objectively understanding the overall issues is another.
Slashdot Mirror
LDEF, Spacehab (multiple times), Spacelab (multiple times), MPLM (multiple times), the Hubble handling fixture (six times) and maintenance equipment (five times)....
In other words, you're not only stupid and ignorant - you're willing so.
Sad.
In other words, you just repeat what you said the first time - without addressing the issues I raised in my original reply.
Not to mention, as I discuss in another post, it's not clear at all that the Falcon is cheaper... when you consider how many Falcon flights it takes to replace a single Shuttle flight.
Actually, the incremental cost of a Shuttle flight (that is, the direct costs to add a flight to the manifest) was down around $100-150M depending on who you ask. The annual cost per flight did range around $500M post Challenger, but that's because annual costs were dominated by massive fixed infrastructure costs that had to be paid regardless of how many flights were on the manifest.
By how cheap are they really? Even setting aside the lack of downmass and it's inability to ship unpressurized cargo without additional expense, how many Falcon 9/Dragon flights does it take to provide the same crew, cargo, and reboost capability to the ISS as a single Shuttle flight did?
There's hidden factors that most people don't know about or think about... For example, much of the water the Shuttle delivered was a byproduct of it's fuel cells and was thus essentially free. (If they didn't deliver it to ISS, it was vented overboard.) The reboost fuel frequently came from the contingency load - RCS fuel loaded onboard the Shuttle for a launch abort situation, and again thus 'free' when used to reboost the station instead. Then you have to consider that the 'additional' crew the Shuttle carried could be (and was) used to shift cargo, which minimized the time the vehicle was docked to the station and thus minimized the time there was constraints on the station's attitude and the number of time per annum that the microgravity environment on the station had to be disturbed. (And the fact that the Shuttle could deliver cargo and personnel on the same flight works to the same end.) Etc... etc...
Cost isn't the only factor - capabilities matter. They matter a great deal.
By your logic, we can replace semi-trailers and concrete trucks, and ambulances, and every other form of automotive transport - with motor scooters. After all, they're cheaper and they get great gas mileage.
Seriously, as I've said here before (many, many times), it's not all about cost. You also have to consider capability, what are you getting for your money? Nobody confuses a subcompact with a panel van, or a teaspoon with a frying pan... Yet, repeatedly, people insist on doing so when it comes to space transportation.
Why?
Yeah. I'll get some references on how having more engines means more plumbing and thrust structure. After all, when I install a second faucet in my kitchen, I don't have to add plumbing... The water just magically appears. (And even if I did have to add pipe, my plumber would give me the pipe for free, and not charge me any labor for all the additional joints.)
Etc... etc...
Seriously, are you that fucking clueless to believe that driving up the complexity of a system doesn't come at a price?
If the launcher was the only cost - that would be a useful observation. But the problem is, you have to figure in the cost of the payload, and for commercial launches, you have to include the revenue potential of the payload as well... Frequently, *one" failure of the lower cost rocket could be (and very likely is) enough to pay for the higher priced (but lower failure) rocket.
/., this is Business Economics 101 - it's not all about cost.
Seriously
0.o You have no clue what you're talking about.
That's PR posturing - or "making lemonade out of lemons" to put it more politely.
In reality, big engines are complex and expensive to develop - so SpaceX uses smaller engines that are cheaper to develop and build, which does give fault tolerance... but at the cost of a more complex, heavier, and more expensive plumbing system and thrust structure.
Perhaps you've noticed in the West the utter lack of liquid fueled ICBM's - and in the rest of the world, liquids are being steadily phased out in favor of solids. There's a reason for that.
Not to mention that solids can reach different orbital profiles and handle different payloads by shaping their trajectories rather than varying their thrust. (USN SLBM's have been doing that for a some decades now.) There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Unfortunately - their users (primarily NASA and other US government entities ATM, but soon other old guard customers) don't agree with that philosophy. So if their philosophy starts putting regularly birds in the drink... the contracts are going to dry up pretty rapidly. So just like a 'net startup looking to grow, they can't flaky for long.
Nah. They haven't revitalized anything. The only people going "oh wow, exploring space is kewl" is the same people who have always said that.
The same goes for their technologies and the risk they're perceived as taking... That seems to be mostly PR posturing. In reality, they seem to be hardcore old school and conservative as hell. They're not making a better widget, they're not making a different widget, they're making the same ol' widget and making it cheaper. And only time will tell will if their new processes have cut one too many corners. The folks launching billion dollar payloads or human beings emphatically don't have the Wal-Mart mentality the consumer in the street does - if you can't perform, they don't care how cheap you are.
This is simply not possible as corn is very cold intolerant. And unlike winter wheat and some other crops, it doesn't go dormant when the air or soil temps go too low... it simply dies.
That depends on what kind of corn is used - there's more than one kind and not all are really edible by humans.
Thereby demonstrating the fallacy of generalizing from your experience to the rest of the world. You can't possibly know more than an invisibly small fraction (one in millions or tens of millions) of all tablet owners well enough to know for absolute certainty they don't use them as anything but toys.
That's the grandparent's point - rather than one big desktop computer, people now own a range of computing devices the same way they own a range of screwdrivers or a range of kitchen/chef's knifes. Different tools for different uses.
Because it's Facebook - always a good candidate for a Two Minute Hate.
Nit: Nautilus was built with, and Seawolf was converted to, a pressurized water reactor - a PWR, not a BWR.
'Actionable' != "felony" - you're moving the goalposts, so no wonder you've never paid out the $500. You're telling those that have taken your bet that they're going to be judged by one set of standards - and then actually judging them by a much less strict standard. Not to mention I seriously doubt that an actual 'real licensed' public defender would spend the time pro bono to actually go through the entire day's worth of tapes. (And worse yet, it sounds like he doesn't see the whole day's tapes - just your edited version and biased interpretation of the contents.)
So, like the grandparent, I'm not buying it. You're either cheating, or exaggerating, or both.
Other than enlarging your ego, why use bullets?
Yeah - nobody has ever managed to invent a system for precisely determining the position of a surface and then precisely positioning the tip of the microscope in relationship to it. Oh, wait. That's exactly how this type of microscope work in the first place!
Other than satellite communications and weather forecasting... not so much.
Despite decades of NASA propaganda and uncritical fanboy echoing of the same... When you look into it NASA 'contributions' to the commercial/private sector - it frequently turns out to be someone else's idea/process/technology that NASA has co-opted or adapted for it's own needs and then turned around and taken credit for.
"VOA reports that President Obama says it does not make sense for federal authorities to seek prosecution of recreational marijuana users in states where such use is legal."
But elsewhere he said (essentially) that the Fed's resources are better targeted at dealers - which leaves medical marijuana providers at risk, as well as the licensed growers/dealers provided for under Washington and Colorado's new laws.
And while he's bound to enforce the laws written by Congress, you'd have a very hard time convincing me that he doesn't have the authority to alter the priorities of enforcing those laws. The Justice Dept is part of the Executive Branch and works for him - not Congress. What I suspect he's really waiting on before making the issue a priority and taking it to Congress is for a critical mass of states to decriminalize. Until then, he's just waffling and blaming Congress rather than taking a stand.
There, fixed that for you.
Probably 80-95% of the Earth's surface is either very lightly populated landmass, or open ocean far enough away from a densely populated landmass that a Tunguska level event would cause little noticeable damage.
Seriously, while 30 odd megatons sounds really, really big... compared to the total surface are of the planet, it's really, really small.
Assuming that the "nerd who knows what they are doing" is in fact a core demographic... which seems to be unfounded to me.
That's an assumption on your part - not a fact. There is a difference.
Well, no. We've been looking pretty closely at the skies for a while now, and the odds that there is an undetected object large enough to threaten extinction are now pretty low. It's the one's in the "oh, crap, we hope this doesn't hit a populated area" that are a problem, but they're pretty rare objects and even rarer events. Such flashy headlines mostly serve to excite the excitable and panic those easily panicked and those who really don't understand the situation at all. The popular press has significantly overstated the threat.
We, as a species, are taking in about as seriously as we can. We're looking for and cataloging the objects and predicting their tracks, and that's about the best we can do for the near future.
Absent a Manhattan or Apollo level project, we simply can't usefully colonize other planets. With such "waste anything but time"/"near blank check" level projects, we're a century or more away from being able to do so - there's simply too many "unknown unknowns" in creating a colony or system of colonies that can survive if the Earth is wiped out. The odds are far too low to justify to cost.
Understanding the implications is one thing - objectively understanding the overall issues is another.