The worst features of the Space Shuttle were put there for possible military missions
That's the urban legend version of the story... In reality, NASA was already studying most of those features (notably the double delta wing and it's enhanced crossrange capability) and seriously considering incorporating them because of the enhanced safety (more abort options, more landing opportunities) and greatly increased operational flexibility (more landing opportunistic) that they provided. Contrary to popular belief, the Shuttle's development history is fairly complicated - and there is no "golden design" from which NASA deviated solely at the behest of the DoD.
but the military looked at the final product and basically said "What were we thinking?", and continued to use rockets.
Um, no. The DoD did embrace the Shuttle - when Challenger broke up, Discovery was being prepared for transfer to the DoD and the launch complex at Vandenburg was nearly complete.
Don't think of it as saving fuel, think of it as increasing launchable payload with the same class launcher and therefore reducing your $/kg to orbit.
Either way, moving your launch site is a very expensive way of saving a relatively small amount of money or gaining a fairly modest amount of performance.
For orbital satellites what it generally means is you can increase the on-orbit operational life because you can carry more reaction mass to re-boost the orbit.
Assuming the bird in question carries re-boost fuel, or is even in an orbit that requires re-boost in the first place. Neither are universally true, or even close. (Maneuvering fuel is far more common than reboost fuel anyhow.)
As one moves further north, one loses the assist from the Earth's rotation. Launch anything easterly from the Equator, and you get slightly more than a 1,000 mile per hour boost to orbit. If you want to save fuel and cost, you try to launch from as far south as you can, which is why we launch from Florida instead of Cape Cod.
Well, no. You seem to have forgotten that the Cape started as a ballistic missile test range... Why? Because back then the area was largely uninhabited with lots of empty ocean to the east into which to drop rockets or (later) expended stages. As ranges increased, there were plenty of Caribbean islands where telemetry stations (as telemetry as pretty much line-of-sight back then) could be placed. By the time we got into the business of launching into orbit, we were already in the habit of using the Cape and the infrastructure was already in place.
Anyhow, the boost from being as southerly as possible isn't as important nowadays because modern boosters have much higher performance than those of the 50's and 60's. Not to mention that saving fuel is something of a fool's errand - fuel is cheap compared to the other costs of a launch. (In 2000, it only cost something on the order of a million dollars to filll the Shuttle's external tank.)
And the new roof you put on your house will use greatly improved construction methods and materials compared to a roof put up in the 70's. Doesn't mean your new roof doesn't share the same basic hazards as the old one: heat, cold, and precipitation.
No shit Sherlock. Of course the new roof faces the same hazards - that's why I put the new roof on in the first place. What an idiot you are -pretty much all of your "criticisms" amount to the same thing, ignorant hand waving, bible thumping, and name calling.
Binaries killed Usenet. Because of these binaries, many providers stopped, because it was taking up too much space and bandwidth. Because they stopped, many people stopped using the real discussion groups.
So instead of having one place where I can get to ask questions in one place in an easy way, I have to go to multiple websites that all have a lousy way of interfacing with other people.
This.
The loss of NZBmatrix and it's bastard ilk are no loss for actual Usenet users - only for those (mis)using it to share and download files. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Here's a free clue for you: Put a bucket of diesel in your room and sniff - guess what you're smelling? That's right - diesel fumes. And they *will* burn in sufficient concentration.
Glow plugs are for warming and starting a cold engine.
You do know that diesel pretty much doesn't burn, right? You actually have to try pretty hard to set a puddle of diesel on fire.
Back in my mid-teens (mumble years ago) we lived way the hell out in the country and burned most of our garbage. The procedure I followed was this: 1) pack barrel full of garbage, 2) pour two gallons of diesel fuel over the garbage, 3) light a match and drop it on the diesel soaked garbage, 4) jump back before I got singed.
Diesel fuel vaporizes just fine at room temperature, ignites easily, and doesn't need to be atomized to ignite and burn. It's certainly not nearly as dangerous as gasoline because it doesn't vaporize quite as easily or flash quite as violently - but if mishandled (I.E. carted around in open five gallon buckets), it'll do the job just fine.
Rather than point fingers, I instead chose to demonstrate that Obama couldn't possibly have been the one who was driving the car that hit the dog, because the dog was hit before Obama got in a car for the first time.
In some fantasy universe of your own perhaps.
It's not like Yucca was on track and about to be put into service in 2008; nothing is further from the truth.
True, but irrelevant.
Yucca was a going concern, howsoever slow, until Obama zeroed the funding. Obama, as he promised during his campaign, killed Yucca. Period.
That's a stone cold sun-rising-in-the-east fact. And none of your bullshit analogies will change that.
Obama isn't to blame for this. The OP ignores the fact that the Yucca project has been in trouble long before Obama was on the political landscape.
And you ignore the fact that Obama was the guy who zeroed the funding. The trouble wasn't sufficient to stop the project, so as he promised during his campaign Obama stopped it.
For single-site projects, like the superconducting supercolider in the '80's, everyone was for it until a specific site was identified, at which point everyone but the representatives from that state (Texas, I think), and that concerted opposition was enough to kill it.
Of course, the facts that the project was massively behind schedule, massively over budget, and that the costs and schedule for the new tech required kept ballooning had nothing to do with it... It was all politics.
various bits of the space shuttle (most famously, the SRBs) had to be made in particular states to garner the support of the appropriate senators.
Well, no. A lot of people don't understand this, but the US is a very big country - and industry is scattered all across it. That means pretty much any project of any size is going to source from all over the country.
Yes, politics plays a role, but it's ludicrous to pretend there aren't other factors as well.
For niche markets, that is. Such as point-to-point delivery of oversized and/or very heavy loads that are simply not transportable by road.
That's what's been claimed the last three or four dozen times the airship was "poised to make a comeback" (for sure, for real this time). Despite it's breathless tone (which reads as if it were mostly cribbed from the press release and ad copy), I see nothing in the current offering that actually makes it any different.
The key problem being there isn't exactly a surplus of things too big to haul by road laying around waiting for someone to invent a method of delivering them.
And if one of these things arrives two days late because of a thunderstorm front, it is usually not that much of a problem.
I've never heard of a project of that magnitude that could be shut down for two days while awaiting delivery of a key part without a problem.
Without buying a single server slot and foregoing the purchase of Paragon Points after Freedom launched, that's $1505. The equivalent of $2/day
No shit Sherlock - that's exactly what I said. What you seemed to have missed is the difference between someone who has been around since launch day - and an average player.
While there has been endless talks between people "interested" in doing so. There's no actual evidence that anyone was ever actually going to pony up the millions required to acquire the game.
Actually. I was one of the people approached to work for financing a new studio. The amount being asked for, and the way NCSoft responded to the notion of a buyout made it quite clear that they weren't interested in selling at that point.
Again, cluelessness abounds - I never said people weren't approached. I said there was no evidence that anyone was going to pony up the required cash.
The problem wasn't the price NCSoft was asking, it was the starry eyed naivete of those organizing the buyout believing that they could do so at a fire sale price. And even if it was picked up for that, the cash outlay for purchasing the game plus the capital outlay for setting up the infrastructure would have been a figure that no intelligent businessman would pony up given the dim future prospects for the game. The playerbase was shrinking, and had been for years. Income was dropping (even after Freedom) and had been for years. There was and is no evidence that this is likely to reverse anytime soon, and was unlikely to ever happen at all.
- $15 per month for 8 years, 2 months = $1,470. Plus around $120 to $150 for the initial purchase and major expansions, and that puts you around $1,590 to $1,620 just for owning the game with one account.
No shit Sherlock. I even pointed that out.
The average launch day veteran actually probably spent a lot more than that.
That's the average launch day veteran, not the average player veteran - now you're starting to move the goal posts away from your original statement.
Count in around an additional $40 or so for collector's editions, $100 for various add-on packs, $100 to $200 for microtransactions, and it's easily upwards of $2,000. If someone has two accounts, double all of that. If someone paid airfare and hotel costs to attend a convention or Player Summit, that could easily add between $500 and $1,000 almost at a minimum. Multiple trips, multiple outlays of cash. Run a fan site? Hosting costs, domain name registration, etc. could easily run up a few hundred bucks more.
Are you for real? This is what you're calling average? You need to get an see the real world some mate, because you're seriously clueless about the difference between hardcore and average.
First of all, you'd have to be pretty dense to have so many people claiming first-hand and second-hand knowledge of these negotiations and yet still believe that they didn't happen.
I never said they didn't happen - I said they almost certainly weren't significant or serious. There's a difference between people claiming to have knowledge of the negotiations and actual evidence of serious or significant intent.
Second of all, I defy you to explain why millions are required to be ponied up to acquire the game.
If millions weren't required, then why were millions the figures being bandied about by the same people your rely on "evidence" of the seriousness of the negotiations?
I'm not even going to dignify the claim that the game wasn't making money or stable with a response.
Since that wasn't a claim I made... I fail to see your point. (Or once again you fail at reading comprehension.)
Again, you either don't know what you're talking about or you're deliberately misrepresenting facts to troll.
That's really amusing coming from someone whose only reply to the facts is incoherent sputtering and vigorous hand waving.
As for the "tempest in a teapot," it's gotten national attention from several high-profile names, made virtually all gaming journalism sites of note, even hit the radar of mainstream news organizations like CNN and CNBC, and now there's a blisteringly negative article about them plastered on the front page of the Money section of one of the largest Korean news sites right in their own back yard. I'm not sure how much publicity you consider something to have needed getting before you consider it more than a "tempest in a teapot," but to most people, that's a pretty damn significant uproar, especially given the topic at hand.
The "high profile names" are big fish in tiny little ponds, meaningless in the scheme of things. And of course it made the gaming "journalism" sites - it's the story of the week, and gone next week. There's no sign of it searching either CNN or CNBC... and "blisteringly negative"? You really need to get a clue - that's a puff piece, most of based on Lackey's propaganda.
No shit Sherlock. That's why I addressed the problems with finding teams after Issue 14 and the Mission Architect.
As was pointed out, endlessly, in the forums, if you expect to stand around in Broadcast and go "Gimme Team!", yeah. Teaming is going to be tough. But nothing about finding a couple of your chosen server's active channels negates the game remaining "casual".
Yeah. Following the 'active' (read often spam filled) channels on your server equated to easily finding a team... not.
Additionally, the end-game raiding system was optional. Just the way PVP is optional.
By that logic, everything after Outbreal/Breakout/Galaxy City was "optional".
That puts you in a minority. Defenders were notoriously hard to solo, and Blasters could be almost impossible once you got to (roughly) 25/30+ and starting seeing more mobs with mez.
8 year resident here, up to the last day. Not sure how long ago that 5 years was, but COH of late had been very not-grindy in nature (YMMV, of course)
From five years ago until closing day, and while the lower level grind pretty was much cleared up after Posi and War Witch took the reins - the 30/35+ grind remained. (Remember the old saw "welcome to level 40, you're halfway there"?) And yet more grind (for Incarnate experience) came in after Issue 22.
So no, it didn't become much more casual player friendly. In fact, for the endgame, it steadily became *worse*. (And because of the WoW style play, if you didn't have the right gear/Incarnate slots - you were pretty much locked out of it.)
The funny part is how many different places people put that 'death'. Some put it at the introduction of Tram. Others at Publish 16 which reined in the tamers and bards. Others at Age of Shadows which transformed it into an item based game...
As a five year resident of the City - no, it really wasn't. There was considerable grind, and unless you wanted to play only a limited handful of the available archetypes that could solo well... you pretty much had to play on a team. And after the release of the Mission Architect and the game transforming into the City of Farmers... that could be difficult, even on Freedom. (By far the most populated server.) When the Incarnate system launched, along with the raid based WoW style endgame, life was pretty much over for the casual player.
Far FAR more development time went into PVE and MAJOR QOL improvements
True, mostly. QOL improvement lagged greatly as the dev team was wedded to an iron schedule and consistently committed to new shiny over polishing the dulled and older bits.
Yes, grandiose conspiracy theories are sad... especially when they fly in the face of facts.
The fact is, CoH was a minor portion of their revenue - and that portion and the revenue was steadily dropping as CoH's subscriber base continued it's long decline. It was a year or so, at most, from going negative, to no longer being profitable.
I take it you're one of the organizers over at COH Titan? Or at least a follower there? Because you're spouting their party/propaganda line almost word-for-word.
- The only way to have spent the amounts of money you cite are to either have played since launch, or to have multiple accounts. That's hardly "average".
- While there has been endless talks between people "interested" in doing so. There's no actual evidence that anyone was ever actually going to pony up the millions required to acquire the game. (Hence last weeks desperation move of sending an unsolicited proposal to Disney, begging them to do so.)
- Yes, the game was currently making (small amounts of) money - but the subscriber base has been declining for years (peaking, IIRC, about the time of COV's launch). Even going "free to play (but costs to get everything) didn't alter the downward curve. It wasn't going to be making money for very much longer.
Etc... etc...
As to the "negative publicity" - so far that amounts to a tempest in a teapot.
That said, it sounds like NCsoft's shutdown was premature. If a service brings in more revenue than it spends, why not keep running it?
Well, the submission was quite obviously from a fanboy - and leave out much more than it includes.
Among the key facts that it leaves out is this - the number of players has been steadily declining for years. It may currently be bringing in more than spends, but that's not a situation that's going to last indefinitely. The curves some players published shortly after the announcement show possibly as little as a year at current rates - with some very optimistic assumptions about that curve and the costs of running the game.
Doesn't so much sound harsh as ignorant. If the equipment was so bad, then why does the world keep buying it by the gross lot - especially since there are other sources?
Welcome to the real world of science - it's not a video game, and it's nothing like Star Trek or the Discovery Channel would have you believe. It's deadly fucking dull and repetitive. It barely makes for decent writing and doesn't make decent TV at all.
But, it's how we (as a species) learn things. If you can figure out a better way, your name will be celebrated through the ages.
If you insist that we have to keep trying new and shiny things just to keep you excited, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
And yes, as someone else pointed out, why not make use of economics of scale and make multiple identical rovers and send them to multiple different places on the planet?
You don't get much economy of scale until you're building them practically on an assembly line - which doesn't make much sense considering that you need to incorporate the science and engineering lessons learned into subsequent models. Those changes eat up most of any possible savings unless you're churning them out in the double digits annually. The next problem is communications - we're already straining the available bandwidth. This is fixable, but it will eat up years of any savings. The last problem is that each and every rover will require a full time mission support team - again, eating deeply into your savings. (If not wiping them out completely once you consider the capital costs of building all the infrastructure each team will require.)
As I've said before, "economy of scale" isn't a magic spell you can simply invoke and save money. As usual, the real world is rather more complicated than that.
I know a Soyuz capsule is nothing like a mars rover
Slashdot Mirror
That's the urban legend version of the story... In reality, NASA was already studying most of those features (notably the double delta wing and it's enhanced crossrange capability) and seriously considering incorporating them because of the enhanced safety (more abort options, more landing opportunities) and greatly increased operational flexibility (more landing opportunistic) that they provided. Contrary to popular belief, the Shuttle's development history is fairly complicated - and there is no "golden design" from which NASA deviated solely at the behest of the DoD.
Um, no. The DoD did embrace the Shuttle - when Challenger broke up, Discovery was being prepared for transfer to the DoD and the launch complex at Vandenburg was nearly complete.
Either way, moving your launch site is a very expensive way of saving a relatively small amount of money or gaining a fairly modest amount of performance.
Assuming the bird in question carries re-boost fuel, or is even in an orbit that requires re-boost in the first place. Neither are universally true, or even close. (Maneuvering fuel is far more common than reboost fuel anyhow.)
Well, no. You seem to have forgotten that the Cape started as a ballistic missile test range... Why? Because back then the area was largely uninhabited with lots of empty ocean to the east into which to drop rockets or (later) expended stages. As ranges increased, there were plenty of Caribbean islands where telemetry stations (as telemetry as pretty much line-of-sight back then) could be placed. By the time we got into the business of launching into orbit, we were already in the habit of using the Cape and the infrastructure was already in place.
Anyhow, the boost from being as southerly as possible isn't as important nowadays because modern boosters have much higher performance than those of the 50's and 60's. Not to mention that saving fuel is something of a fool's errand - fuel is cheap compared to the other costs of a launch. (In 2000, it only cost something on the order of a million dollars to filll the Shuttle's external tank.)
No shit Sherlock. Of course the new roof faces the same hazards - that's why I put the new roof on in the first place. What an idiot you are -pretty much all of your "criticisms" amount to the same thing, ignorant hand waving, bible thumping, and name calling.
This.
The loss of NZBmatrix and it's bastard ilk are no loss for actual Usenet users - only for those (mis)using it to share and download files. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Here's a free clue for you: Put a bucket of diesel in your room and sniff - guess what you're smelling? That's right - diesel fumes. And they *will* burn in sufficient concentration.
Glow plugs are for warming and starting a cold engine.
Idiot.
Back in my mid-teens (mumble years ago) we lived way the hell out in the country and burned most of our garbage. The procedure I followed was this: 1) pack barrel full of garbage, 2) pour two gallons of diesel fuel over the garbage, 3) light a match and drop it on the diesel soaked garbage, 4) jump back before I got singed.
Diesel fuel vaporizes just fine at room temperature, ignites easily, and doesn't need to be atomized to ignite and burn. It's certainly not nearly as dangerous as gasoline because it doesn't vaporize quite as easily or flash quite as violently - but if mishandled (I.E. carted around in open five gallon buckets), it'll do the job just fine.
In some fantasy universe of your own perhaps.
True, but irrelevant.
Yucca was a going concern, howsoever slow, until Obama zeroed the funding. Obama, as he promised during his campaign, killed Yucca. Period.
That's a stone cold sun-rising-in-the-east fact. And none of your bullshit analogies will change that.
And you ignore the fact that Obama was the guy who zeroed the funding. The trouble wasn't sufficient to stop the project, so as he promised during his campaign Obama stopped it.
Of course, the facts that the project was massively behind schedule, massively over budget, and that the costs and schedule for the new tech required kept ballooning had nothing to do with it... It was all politics.
Well, no. A lot of people don't understand this, but the US is a very big country - and industry is scattered all across it. That means pretty much any project of any size is going to source from all over the country.
Yes, politics plays a role, but it's ludicrous to pretend there aren't other factors as well.
The widest span I think I've seen is a 100+ year old spokeshave being used along with a few months old block plane.
That's what's been claimed the last three or four dozen times the airship was "poised to make a comeback" (for sure, for real this time). Despite it's breathless tone (which reads as if it were mostly cribbed from the press release and ad copy), I see nothing in the current offering that actually makes it any different.
The key problem being there isn't exactly a surplus of things too big to haul by road laying around waiting for someone to invent a method of delivering them.
I've never heard of a project of that magnitude that could be shut down for two days while awaiting delivery of a key part without a problem.
No shit Sherlock - that's exactly what I said. What you seemed to have missed is the difference between someone who has been around since launch day - and an average player.
Again, cluelessness abounds - I never said people weren't approached. I said there was no evidence that anyone was going to pony up the required cash.
The problem wasn't the price NCSoft was asking, it was the starry eyed naivete of those organizing the buyout believing that they could do so at a fire sale price. And even if it was picked up for that, the cash outlay for purchasing the game plus the capital outlay for setting up the infrastructure would have been a figure that no intelligent businessman would pony up given the dim future prospects for the game. The playerbase was shrinking, and had been for years. Income was dropping (even after Freedom) and had been for years. There was and is no evidence that this is likely to reverse anytime soon, and was unlikely to ever happen at all.
No shit Sherlock. I even pointed that out.
That's the average launch day veteran, not the average player veteran - now you're starting to move the goal posts away from your original statement.
Are you for real? This is what you're calling average? You need to get an see the real world some mate, because you're seriously clueless about the difference between hardcore and average.
I never said they didn't happen - I said they almost certainly weren't significant or serious. There's a difference between people claiming to have knowledge of the negotiations and actual evidence of serious or significant intent.
If millions weren't required, then why were millions the figures being bandied about by the same people your rely on "evidence" of the seriousness of the negotiations?
Since that wasn't a claim I made... I fail to see your point. (Or once again you fail at reading comprehension.)
That's really amusing coming from someone whose only reply to the facts is incoherent sputtering and vigorous hand waving.
The "high profile names" are big fish in tiny little ponds, meaningless in the scheme of things. And of course it made the gaming "journalism" sites - it's the story of the week, and gone next week. There's no sign of it searching either CNN or CNBC... and "blisteringly negative"? You really need to get a clue - that's a puff piece, most of based on Lackey's propaganda.
No shit Sherlock. That's why I addressed the problems with finding teams after Issue 14 and the Mission Architect.
Yeah. Following the 'active' (read often spam filled) channels on your server equated to easily finding a team... not.
By that logic, everything after Outbreal/Breakout/Galaxy City was "optional".
That puts you in a minority. Defenders were notoriously hard to solo, and Blasters could be almost impossible once you got to (roughly) 25/30+ and starting seeing more mobs with mez.
From five years ago until closing day, and while the lower level grind pretty was much cleared up after Posi and War Witch took the reins - the 30/35+ grind remained. (Remember the old saw "welcome to level 40, you're halfway there"?) And yet more grind (for Incarnate experience) came in after Issue 22.
So no, it didn't become much more casual player friendly. In fact, for the endgame, it steadily became *worse*. (And because of the WoW style play, if you didn't have the right gear/Incarnate slots - you were pretty much locked out of it.)
The funny part is how many different places people put that 'death'. Some put it at the introduction of Tram. Others at Publish 16 which reined in the tamers and bards. Others at Age of Shadows which transformed it into an item based game...
As a five year resident of the City - no, it really wasn't. There was considerable grind, and unless you wanted to play only a limited handful of the available archetypes that could solo well... you pretty much had to play on a team. And after the release of the Mission Architect and the game transforming into the City of Farmers... that could be difficult, even on Freedom. (By far the most populated server.) When the Incarnate system launched, along with the raid based WoW style endgame, life was pretty much over for the casual player.
True, mostly. QOL improvement lagged greatly as the dev team was wedded to an iron schedule and consistently committed to new shiny over polishing the dulled and older bits.
Yes, grandiose conspiracy theories are sad... especially when they fly in the face of facts.
The fact is, CoH was a minor portion of their revenue - and that portion and the revenue was steadily dropping as CoH's subscriber base continued it's long decline. It was a year or so, at most, from going negative, to no longer being profitable.
I take it you're one of the organizers over at COH Titan? Or at least a follower there? Because you're spouting their party/propaganda line almost word-for-word.
- The only way to have spent the amounts of money you cite are to either have played since launch, or to have multiple accounts. That's hardly "average".
- While there has been endless talks between people "interested" in doing so. There's no actual evidence that anyone was ever actually going to pony up the millions required to acquire the game. (Hence last weeks desperation move of sending an unsolicited proposal to Disney, begging them to do so.)
- Yes, the game was currently making (small amounts of) money - but the subscriber base has been declining for years (peaking, IIRC, about the time of COV's launch). Even going "free to play (but costs to get everything) didn't alter the downward curve. It wasn't going to be making money for very much longer.
Etc... etc...
As to the "negative publicity" - so far that amounts to a tempest in a teapot.
Well, the submission was quite obviously from a fanboy - and leave out much more than it includes.
Among the key facts that it leaves out is this - the number of players has been steadily declining for years. It may currently be bringing in more than spends, but that's not a situation that's going to last indefinitely. The curves some players published shortly after the announcement show possibly as little as a year at current rates - with some very optimistic assumptions about that curve and the costs of running the game.
Doesn't so much sound harsh as ignorant. If the equipment was so bad, then why does the world keep buying it by the gross lot - especially since there are other sources?
Welcome to the real world of science - it's not a video game, and it's nothing like Star Trek or the Discovery Channel would have you believe. It's deadly fucking dull and repetitive. It barely makes for decent writing and doesn't make decent TV at all.
But, it's how we (as a species) learn things. If you can figure out a better way, your name will be celebrated through the ages.
If you insist that we have to keep trying new and shiny things just to keep you excited, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
You don't get much economy of scale until you're building them practically on an assembly line - which doesn't make much sense considering that you need to incorporate the science and engineering lessons learned into subsequent models. Those changes eat up most of any possible savings unless you're churning them out in the double digits annually. The next problem is communications - we're already straining the available bandwidth. This is fixable, but it will eat up years of any savings. The last problem is that each and every rover will require a full time mission support team - again, eating deeply into your savings. (If not wiping them out completely once you consider the capital costs of building all the infrastructure each team will require.)
As I've said before, "economy of scale" isn't a magic spell you can simply invoke and save money. As usual, the real world is rather more complicated than that.
That's your answer right there.