But what your tortured numerology obscures is that while the 'waste' is less - much less is accomplished. The Shuttle could deliver 34klbs to the ISS, while Dragon delivers only 13klbs. Nor can Dragon provide crew exchange while delivering cargo. Nor can Dragon deliver modules. Nor can Dragon deliver experiment racks... (Shuttle can do all of this in a single flight!)
The last flight had 9,403 lbs of net payload on board (wrapped in the Rafaello module that was in the payload pay).
*yawn* That's *one* flight and more tortured numerology to 'prove' that black is equal to white. You not only ignore other cargo delivered, you ignore downmass too.
And trying to deliver both people and payload at the same time is why it is so expensive in the first place - that's anything but an advantage.
It's just as expensive to deliver the people and cargo separately - and riskier to boot since you're now having multiple launches, multiple dockings, and multiple re-entries. Not to mention the advantage of having a trained assembly crew show up alongside the thing to be assembled.
(Btw. That's wildly overpriced. Launching a Soyuz spacecraft with 3 passengers costs on the order of $60mio. An American passenger basically pays for all three of them.)
BTW: you're utterly and completely wrong - a Soyuz booster *alone* (I.E. without capsule) costs $50 million.
Two Dragon launches cost on the order of $200mio - if you don't reuse the Dragon. Seven astronaut tickets for the Soyuz cost some $55mio each - $385mio all told.
So, for $200-$385 million you get six seats, and no cargo. Um... something seems to be missing from your equation. (Typical of your 'calculations'.) Compare that to $250 million (the actual cost of a Shuttle flight)... and where exactly is the advantage of not using the Shuttle?
Furthermore, if you needed the shuttle to deliver modules to a space station, you should wonder how Mir was constructed. It's easy: you put some small, cheap engines on the module and launch it with a cheap, heavy duty rocket - and not an overpriced, fragile, manned shuttle.
Sure. In a universe where small cheap engines and cheap heavy duty rockets exist... and you don't need to consume 25% or more of your boosted weight to allow the module to self deliver. But we don't live in such a universe.
Don't bother to reply further. You're not only completely ignorant of the topic you're writing on, your tortured 'logic' and 'calculations' just show that you're willingly so and unwilling to bother either to educate yourself or be educated.
So yes, the reuse quota is worse - but the amount of waste is less.
But what your tortured numerology obscures is that while the 'waste' is less - much less is accomplished. The Shuttle could deliver 34klbs to the ISS, while Dragon delivers only 13klbs. Nor can Dragon provide crew exchange while delivering cargo. Nor can Dragon deliver modules. Nor can Dragon deliver experiment racks... (Shuttle can do all of this in a single flight!)
Seriously, the doublethink here on Slashdot and elsewhere the topic is discussed is absolutely amazing. While you're busy convincing yourself that buying at Walmart is absolutely the best idea possible... you're ignoring the elephant in the room - that a crew cab pickup is being replaced with a subcompact. You get what you pay for.
But worst of all: The shuttle weighs 100t (with max payload) and carries only minuscule amounts of fuel itself. It can't reach higher orbits. In fact, the orbit that the Shuttle can reach is so low that the friction of the atmosphere necessitated regular lifting maneuvers that can now finally be reduced by 70-80% (fuel comprised a large part of the payload that the ISS has required so far) - by lifting the whole station into a 100km higher orbit (which is a trivial orbit to reach for any spacecraft, except for the Shuttle).
The Station altitude in the shuttle era varied (roughly) between 350-460km - the main limit on it's maximum altitude is in fact the Soyuz, not the Shuttle. (There's a reason why MIR was kept at around 375-400km.)
It's even worse for Hubble. It's in such a low orbit, that observations with it have been described by astronomers as akin to riding a bicycle over a cobble-stone road while trying to hold a telescope steady. And that's before you consider that it regularly has to deal with a huge planet getting into its field of view during observations.
Yeah, Hubble is so bad the lineup of researchers hoping to use it is only years long. Not to mention that the number of telescopes that *don't* have to deal with a huge planet obscuring their field of view can be counted on one hand.
Humans are literally two-three days away from death at any time. Rovers can live for decades and we can send 100 of them for the cost of one man (just in a single mission, if we so wanted). It was estimated recently that Apollo cost $170bn (adjusted for today) for a handful of people to walk on the moon for a day. The Mars rovers cost US$820 million originally, nearly $1bn with all the extensions. Curiosity costs about $3bn. That entire program cost less than 1-2% of the cost of putting a couple of men on the Moon for only a day.
But lets look at at a single simple comparison, rather than handwaving about costs and stay time In just four days on the Moon, the Apollo 16 rover (manned) covered 7.2 miles. In five *years* on Mars, Spirit covered just 5 miles. (The couple of times the Lunar Rover became stuck, either the crew drove it out with a few minutes work, or in one instance they picked the Rover up and turned it so that it was on better ground.) Between the two of them, in twelve *years* worth of combined operations, the Mars rovers have covered 25 miles. In total driving time of eight *hours* (and total surface time of nine *days*) the Lunar rovers covered a combined 27 miles. And when you count in the time spent on foot across all the Apollo missions...
Even Steven Squyres (you've heard of him, Chief Scientist for the Mars Rovers) admits that what the rovers accomplished in their first three years of operation could have been accomplished by a manned mission in just three days.
So yes, manned missions are much more expensive and thus come off worse in a simpleminded comparison of costs. But when you actually compare accomplishments, your comparison starts to falter.
I counted 8 systems where any problem at all would kill the mission:
Only 8? Damm, NASA is doing pretty good if they've gotten the mission killers down to 'only 8'. (In case you didn't get it, that was sarcasm.) There's dozens of things that must work without a problem (counting the booster, which is really hundreds of things, as only one) for the mission to succeed. You've only identified the flashiest and most obvious - congratulations!
In short there are far too many ways it can fail, and far too many things that have to work perfectly.
And that's pretty much par for the course for any mission. It's been that way since the beginning and it's a virtual certainty that it will never change. Even the previous two rovers had such a list.
I think there's a bad case of hubris from having 2 landers out of 2 that not only survived the trip, but exceeded expectations. Sadly, I think this thing will even up the score.
No, it's a case of wanting to do science that can't be done otherwise. The odds may not be the best, but if all you did is sit at home and wait till these is no risk, you'll never do anything of note.
At the risk of Piling On, let me point out that NASA spent nearly two billion dollars on developing plans for their Great Space Station. After years and years of practice, they had produced many viewgraphs and powerpoint presentations.
That's a pretty simpleminded view. Because they reason they produced nothing but viewgraphs for years is the same reason we're in such a mess now with Constellation, Orion, and the 'new' HLV: Congress and the Administration constantly changing the budget and the ground rules.
I shouldn't have to keep repeating this to the (supposedly) more intelligent than the norm Slashdot readers, but since the same ignorance keeps popping up... NASA only does what the Administration directs them to and what Congress funds. Period. If they don't fund something, or defund something, or change what they want NASA to do... NASA starts all over again under the new rules.
And who flew the first piece of the space station? The Russians, of course. Whose spacecraft ferry crew to and from the space station? The Russians, of course. Who launches resupply missions to the space station? The Russians, of course.
Who paid the Russians to build half of the modules they've flown to the Station? The US. Who has lifted the most mass to the Station? The US. Who has delivered half of the 'Russian' modules? The US. Who has flown resupply missions to the station? The US, the Russians, the ESA, and Japan. (In descending order of mass.) Who flew the first five mannd missions to the ISS? The US. Who has flown the most people to the Station? Well... you can see the pattern but I'll tell you any how - the US.
And as for wasting nine billion dollars, what did we get for nine billion dollars? Some nice animations about what a great thing the Constellation program ought to be.
As above, you're pointing fingers in the wrong direction.
What's "pretty simpleminded" is your view of what I posted, because that's not what I posted.
Yes, that *is* what you posted. Your later backpedaling and bullshit trying to explain what you *really* meant doesn't change that. A competent poster would have said what he meant in the first place.
And it never would have been a debate in the first place. I don't fight unarmed individuals. I merely point and laugh at them.
You have no idea how the laws of thermodynamics work. Regenerative braking isn't magic - you can never recover as much energy from braking as you put into accelerating the vehicle.
A small battery pack or something used only at launch would do wonders to overcome the losses I incur when accelerating from a stop.
Only so long as the energy in that battery pack comes out of thin air - otherwise, you're paying from somewhere to charge it up. Even with regenerative braking, the bulk of this will come from the engine's alternator - taking a huge chunk out of any 'savings'. TANSTAAFL.
The problem with your "answer" is that the military lets hundreds of contracts a year - and has been letting high tech and satellite contracts for better than half a century... So the loopholes are pretty well covered. Not to mention, the people hired (Lockheed in this instance) have built plenty of quality products over the years and have quite a bit of experience in their field.
So, once again, this is a nice soundbite and has a high chance of being modded up - but it's not really connected with the facts or history.
$12.9B for yet another military satellite for a Pentagon/CIA that doesn't detect or protect us from attacks that murder Americans and destroy our security
That's a pretty simple minded view. Though I agree the bird is almost certainly overpriced, without communications the guys at the tip of the spear can't do their jobs.
That's a nice soundbite, and thus guaranteed to get you modded up - but it's wrong. Everybody bids on the same contract, and part of that contract are the monitoring/QA processes and standards.
If they only begrudgingly use Facebook for the reasons you mention, then why would the flock to G+ - which from their point of view isn't any different? So no, the existence of begrudging users of Facebook doesn't explain G+'s "growth".
Mr. Whittington's article is written with very little depth. He doesn't even answer his own question. Nixon siad it was too expensive... really? that's it?
And even that statement, while widely believed, is wrong. Yes, three missions were canceled under the Nixon Administration - but all that did was move the final flight up from '73 or '74 to '72.
Apollo was actually killed in the bruising budget battles of '66 and '67 - when the production of Apollo hardware was suspended and the Apollo Applications program (a follow on to the moon landing program) was essentially canceled. (All that was left was what eventually became Skylab.)
There's been a huge study of this in various groups of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).
And some of it has even been reasonably scientific. The vast bulk of it doesn't even approach Mythbusters levels of scientific accuracy and diligence however. Though the SCA tried very hard, and has gotten markedly better over time, a scientific or academic organization it isn't.
What if the scientists are using the wrong search queries and missing something important? Or maybe something important is just buried on page 931 of a 2,000 page data report?
Which is pretty much the same problem astronomy has had since roughly forever... Looking in the wrong place. Looking at the wrong time. Looking in the wrong wavelength. Look for the wrong search terms. Looking on the wrong page... It's all pretty much the same.
The sky and the data will be there tomorrow and they'll try again. Just like they always have.
I'm not claiming that my buddy has made a brand new car. I'm claiming that for under $500k, he has made a road worthy prototype, nothing more.
No, but you are confusing a conversion kit (which is what your buddy produced) with a brand new vehicle (which is what the company that went under was attempting). Apples and oranges.
The thing people forget is that we have 100 years of car design - why throw that out the window?
We have 100 years of designing lightweight electrically powered computer cars? Well, no we don't.
Though how much of it is a conversion and how much is a new design starts to blur when you remove half the stuff inside.
He didn't remove any of the safety equipment. He didn't modify the body. He didn't modify the suspension... Etc... etc... It's a conversion, and it's only cheap because of the stuff he didn't have to do and whose costs were already amortized across thousands of cars.
At some point, every company buys parts from another to make their product when it comes to consumer stuff. In his case, he bought a car "shell" and used that to hold everything else.
There's a difference between buying parts and assembling them, and buying something already complete and modifying it. And even if the original manufacturer did buy the parts, that doesn't change the fact that they had to pay for all the engineering - and your buddy didn't.
It's not impossible. My co-worker has produced, for far less than $500,000 a fully functional, 100% legit, electric-only vehicle.
It's easy to produce something cheaply when someone else has paid 99.99% of the costs.
And oh by the way, he drives it on public roads because it's DMV certified.
You cleverly forget to mention that someone else has done 99.99% of the work needed to get that certification.
Had your co-worker actually had to pay for engineering the body and suspension, getting the original safety certification, setting up the production line, and all the other overhead, his car wouldn't have been nearly so cheap.
If they couldn't turn $500k into a prototype, then they did not have the required skills to create the prototype in the first place.
That's an opinion, not a fact. That you can't tell the difference between a new design and conversion makes your opinion suspect.
Yeah. After all, there were dozens of proposals for experiments on the LHC - and only a handful made the cut. There just can't possibly be any point to building a second LHC using a different set of experiments.
Well done Russia. Finally some competition in space research area.
Here in this reality, there's never been a lack of competition - the ESA, among many others, has been launching research birds for decades. Hell, even Canada has launched a small space telescope.
Maybe this will also get NASA some badly needed funds.
NASA has plenty of funds. What NASA doesn't have is consistently competent management, accounting, or engineering. Yes, engineering. If they don't do their jobs rights, including cost and risk estimation and development planning, then the others can't do theirs either. (Yes, bean counting is part of engineering.) Exacerbating the impact of NASA's inability to consistently and reasonably project cost and schedule is Congress and the general public insisting that each and every NASA project be groundbreaking and cutting edge, be on budget and on schedule, and have a 100% success rate. (In the real world, you get to pick two as the saying goes.)
When you expect an agency to accomplish three impossible things before breakfast (and NASA is nearly unique among US government agencies in this respect) - you're setting the stage for problems. It shouldn't surprise anyone therefore when problems regularly occur.
And do you think the Instrumentation Laboratory just happened to already have all those guys sitting around doing nothing in particular?
Had you bothered to read and comprehend what I wrote, you would see I said nothing of the sort. They were actually quite busy with military projects and a variety of R&D activities. In fact, if you study the history of guidance and navigation, you'll find that Instrumentation Laboratory was/is essentially like Bell Labs or CERN - a hotspot of research and development.
No, NASA came along, asked them for a guidance computer, and gave them a lot of money to expand: gather lots more smart people, buy them lots of technology, and make it happen.
Well, not really. The management of the Apollo program was actually very, very resistant to new technology. They were on a tight timeframe and thus very motivated to use what was already in the technology pipeline to reduce overall program risk.
That's why the Apollo guidance system was based on the existing Polaris guidance system. The downside to this, was that when Gemini proved how valuable and useful a four axis system (itself a collaboration between the Instrumentation Laboratory and IBM springing from USAF missile guidance programs) was... Apollo managers rejected the 'new' guidance system in favor of the 'proven' Mercury era three axis system. (And thus suffered with gimbal lock issues throughout the program.) Yes, Mercury era - the Apollo spacecraft was designed before Gemini was. In fact, it was conceived before Glenn's flight. Another downside of Apollo being designed without Mercury flight experience is that, unlike the later designed Gemini, Apollo wasn't designed to worked on from the exterior. The confusion and chaos resulting from having multiple assembly teams trying to crowd one after the other into the cramped cabin of the Apollo CM almost certainly contributed to the Apollo 1 fire. (Another side effect, the Apollo SM's engine was oversize and the SM was overweight for the lunar mission - as it's basic design dated from the era when the whole CSM was going to land on the moon.)
In the same vein, the Saturn program was already well underway when the Kennedy proposed to go to the Moon. The F-1 engine, without which we almost certainly couldn't have succeeded, had been under development since 1956, first by the USAF and later by NASA.
Without NASA's need or its money, the Instrumentation Laboratory wouldn't have had as many smart people working together developing new and cool things.
You don't seem to understand how government contracting works, so let me enlighten you. When a government contract needs more people than a contractor has, they hire the number of new people needed. Those new people then work pretty much on nothing but what the government pays for. (And the government audits the records closely to ensure this happens.) They don't develop new things or cool things - unless that's what the government is paying for. (And they weren't in the case of Apollo.) And when the contract is over, unless another one is close on the horizon, all those new folks are now let go.
There isn't anything wrong or misleading about the statement that NASA, in tackling Apollo, brought, recruited, trained, and salaried huge numbers of smart people for a common purpose: and society benefited.
Well, other than the fact that it's unclear how much society benefited from Apollo - because of how much 'Apollo' technology was actually re-purposed from other sources. In fact, it's widely known that many Apollo engineers ended up changing careers in the wake of the aerospace crash of the late 60's and early 70's. (And I don't mean 'guidance electronics specialists' became 'consumer electronics specialists', I mean 'became insurance salesmen or fry cooks'.)
Apollo's history has largely been mythologized by generations of NASA PR - and like all myths, the reality is quite different.
If the school did something wrong, that would be a viable plan. By what they're doing is monitoring student's Twitter feeds to find when students or agents violate the rules, not just schools.
Slashdot Mirror
*yawn* That's *one* flight and more tortured numerology to 'prove' that black is equal to white. You not only ignore other cargo delivered, you ignore downmass too.
It's just as expensive to deliver the people and cargo separately - and riskier to boot since you're now having multiple launches, multiple dockings, and multiple re-entries. Not to mention the advantage of having a trained assembly crew show up alongside the thing to be assembled.
BTW: you're utterly and completely wrong - a Soyuz booster *alone* (I.E. without capsule) costs $50 million.
So, for $200-$385 million you get six seats, and no cargo. Um... something seems to be missing from your equation. (Typical of your 'calculations'.) Compare that to $250 million (the actual cost of a Shuttle flight)... and where exactly is the advantage of not using the Shuttle?
Sure. In a universe where small cheap engines and cheap heavy duty rockets exist... and you don't need to consume 25% or more of your boosted weight to allow the module to self deliver. But we don't live in such a universe.
Don't bother to reply further. You're not only completely ignorant of the topic you're writing on, your tortured 'logic' and 'calculations' just show that you're willingly so and unwilling to bother either to educate yourself or be educated.
But what your tortured numerology obscures is that while the 'waste' is less - much less is accomplished. The Shuttle could deliver 34klbs to the ISS, while Dragon delivers only 13klbs. Nor can Dragon provide crew exchange while delivering cargo. Nor can Dragon deliver modules. Nor can Dragon deliver experiment racks... (Shuttle can do all of this in a single flight!)
Seriously, the doublethink here on Slashdot and elsewhere the topic is discussed is absolutely amazing. While you're busy convincing yourself that buying at Walmart is absolutely the best idea possible... you're ignoring the elephant in the room - that a crew cab pickup is being replaced with a subcompact. You get what you pay for.
The Station altitude in the shuttle era varied (roughly) between 350-460km - the main limit on it's maximum altitude is in fact the Soyuz, not the Shuttle. (There's a reason why MIR was kept at around 375-400km.)
Yeah, Hubble is so bad the lineup of researchers hoping to use it is only years long. Not to mention that the number of telescopes that *don't* have to deal with a huge planet obscuring their field of view can be counted on one hand.
But lets look at at a single simple comparison, rather than handwaving about costs and stay time In just four days on the Moon, the Apollo 16 rover (manned) covered 7.2 miles. In five *years* on Mars, Spirit covered just 5 miles. (The couple of times the Lunar Rover became stuck, either the crew drove it out with a few minutes work, or in one instance they picked the Rover up and turned it so that it was on better ground.) Between the two of them, in twelve *years* worth of combined operations, the Mars rovers have covered 25 miles. In total driving time of eight *hours* (and total surface time of nine *days*) the Lunar rovers covered a combined 27 miles. And when you count in the time spent on foot across all the Apollo missions...
Even Steven Squyres (you've heard of him, Chief Scientist for the Mars Rovers) admits that what the rovers accomplished in their first three years of operation could have been accomplished by a manned mission in just three days.
So yes, manned missions are much more expensive and thus come off worse in a simpleminded comparison of costs. But when you actually compare accomplishments, your comparison starts to falter.
Only 8? Damm, NASA is doing pretty good if they've gotten the mission killers down to 'only 8'. (In case you didn't get it, that was sarcasm.) There's dozens of things that must work without a problem (counting the booster, which is really hundreds of things, as only one) for the mission to succeed. You've only identified the flashiest and most obvious - congratulations!
And that's pretty much par for the course for any mission. It's been that way since the beginning and it's a virtual certainty that it will never change. Even the previous two rovers had such a list.
No, it's a case of wanting to do science that can't be done otherwise. The odds may not be the best, but if all you did is sit at home and wait till these is no risk, you'll never do anything of note.
That's a pretty simpleminded view. Because they reason they produced nothing but viewgraphs for years is the same reason we're in such a mess now with Constellation, Orion, and the 'new' HLV: Congress and the Administration constantly changing the budget and the ground rules.
I shouldn't have to keep repeating this to the (supposedly) more intelligent than the norm Slashdot readers, but since the same ignorance keeps popping up... NASA only does what the Administration directs them to and what Congress funds. Period. If they don't fund something, or defund something, or change what they want NASA to do... NASA starts all over again under the new rules.
Who paid the Russians to build half of the modules they've flown to the Station? The US. Who has lifted the most mass to the Station? The US. Who has delivered half of the 'Russian' modules? The US. Who has flown resupply missions to the station? The US, the Russians, the ESA, and Japan. (In descending order of mass.) Who flew the first five mannd missions to the ISS? The US. Who has flown the most people to the Station? Well... you can see the pattern but I'll tell you any how - the US.
As above, you're pointing fingers in the wrong direction.
Yes, that *is* what you posted. Your later backpedaling and bullshit trying to explain what you *really* meant doesn't change that. A competent poster would have said what he meant in the first place.
And it never would have been a debate in the first place. I don't fight unarmed individuals. I merely point and laugh at them.
Yes, I know how regenerative braking works.
You have no idea how the laws of thermodynamics work. Regenerative braking isn't magic - you can never recover as much energy from braking as you put into accelerating the vehicle.
Only so long as the energy in that battery pack comes out of thin air - otherwise, you're paying from somewhere to charge it up. Even with regenerative braking, the bulk of this will come from the engine's alternator - taking a huge chunk out of any 'savings'. TANSTAAFL.
So what?
The problem with your "answer" is that the military lets hundreds of contracts a year - and has been letting high tech and satellite contracts for better than half a century... So the loopholes are pretty well covered. Not to mention, the people hired (Lockheed in this instance) have built plenty of quality products over the years and have quite a bit of experience in their field.
So, once again, this is a nice soundbite and has a high chance of being modded up - but it's not really connected with the facts or history.
That's a pretty simple minded view. Though I agree the bird is almost certainly overpriced, without communications the guys at the tip of the spear can't do their jobs.
That's a nice soundbite, and thus guaranteed to get you modded up - but it's wrong. Everybody bids on the same contract, and part of that contract are the monitoring/QA processes and standards.
If they only begrudgingly use Facebook for the reasons you mention, then why would the flock to G+ - which from their point of view isn't any different? So no, the existence of begrudging users of Facebook doesn't explain G+'s "growth".
This. People aren't flooding onto G+ because it's not Facebook. People aren't flooding to G+ instead of Facebook.
They're crossposting.
What the hell is wrong with somebody getting hurt?
And the reality is, neither Congress nor the general public is in the slightest bit tolerant of even the tiniest risk of failure, manned or unmanned.
And even that statement, while widely believed, is wrong. Yes, three missions were canceled under the Nixon Administration - but all that did was move the final flight up from '73 or '74 to '72.
Apollo was actually killed in the bruising budget battles of '66 and '67 - when the production of Apollo hardware was suspended and the Apollo Applications program (a follow on to the moon landing program) was essentially canceled. (All that was left was what eventually became Skylab.)
And some of it has even been reasonably scientific. The vast bulk of it doesn't even approach Mythbusters levels of scientific accuracy and diligence however. Though the SCA tried very hard, and has gotten markedly better over time, a scientific or academic organization it isn't.
(Disclaimer: Member of the SCA 25+ years now.)
Spot on sadly enough...
Which is pretty much the same problem astronomy has had since roughly forever... Looking in the wrong place. Looking at the wrong time. Looking in the wrong wavelength. Look for the wrong search terms. Looking on the wrong page... It's all pretty much the same.
The sky and the data will be there tomorrow and they'll try again. Just like they always have.
No, but you are confusing a conversion kit (which is what your buddy produced) with a brand new vehicle (which is what the company that went under was attempting). Apples and oranges.
We have 100 years of designing lightweight electrically powered computer cars? Well, no we don't.
He didn't remove any of the safety equipment. He didn't modify the body. He didn't modify the suspension... Etc... etc... It's a conversion, and it's only cheap because of the stuff he didn't have to do and whose costs were already amortized across thousands of cars.
There's a difference between buying parts and assembling them, and buying something already complete and modifying it. And even if the original manufacturer did buy the parts, that doesn't change the fact that they had to pay for all the engineering - and your buddy didn't.
It's easy to produce something cheaply when someone else has paid 99.99% of the costs.
You cleverly forget to mention that someone else has done 99.99% of the work needed to get that certification.
Had your co-worker actually had to pay for engineering the body and suspension, getting the original safety certification, setting up the production line, and all the other overhead, his car wouldn't have been nearly so cheap.
That's an opinion, not a fact. That you can't tell the difference between a new design and conversion makes your opinion suspect.
Yeah. After all, there were dozens of proposals for experiments on the LHC - and only a handful made the cut. There just can't possibly be any point to building a second LHC using a different set of experiments.
Here in this reality, there's never been a lack of competition - the ESA, among many others, has been launching research birds for decades. Hell, even Canada has launched a small space telescope.
NASA has plenty of funds. What NASA doesn't have is consistently competent management, accounting, or engineering. Yes, engineering. If they don't do their jobs rights, including cost and risk estimation and development planning, then the others can't do theirs either. (Yes, bean counting is part of engineering.) Exacerbating the impact of NASA's inability to consistently and reasonably project cost and schedule is Congress and the general public insisting that each and every NASA project be groundbreaking and cutting edge, be on budget and on schedule, and have a 100% success rate. (In the real world, you get to pick two as the saying goes.)
When you expect an agency to accomplish three impossible things before breakfast (and NASA is nearly unique among US government agencies in this respect) - you're setting the stage for problems. It shouldn't surprise anyone therefore when problems regularly occur.
Had you bothered to read and comprehend what I wrote, you would see I said nothing of the sort. They were actually quite busy with military projects and a variety of R&D activities. In fact, if you study the history of guidance and navigation, you'll find that Instrumentation Laboratory was/is essentially like Bell Labs or CERN - a hotspot of research and development.
Well, not really. The management of the Apollo program was actually very, very resistant to new technology. They were on a tight timeframe and thus very motivated to use what was already in the technology pipeline to reduce overall program risk.
That's why the Apollo guidance system was based on the existing Polaris guidance system. The downside to this, was that when Gemini proved how valuable and useful a four axis system (itself a collaboration between the Instrumentation Laboratory and IBM springing from USAF missile guidance programs) was... Apollo managers rejected the 'new' guidance system in favor of the 'proven' Mercury era three axis system. (And thus suffered with gimbal lock issues throughout the program.) Yes, Mercury era - the Apollo spacecraft was designed before Gemini was. In fact, it was conceived before Glenn's flight. Another downside of Apollo being designed without Mercury flight experience is that, unlike the later designed Gemini, Apollo wasn't designed to worked on from the exterior. The confusion and chaos resulting from having multiple assembly teams trying to crowd one after the other into the cramped cabin of the Apollo CM almost certainly contributed to the Apollo 1 fire. (Another side effect, the Apollo SM's engine was oversize and the SM was overweight for the lunar mission - as it's basic design dated from the era when the whole CSM was going to land on the moon.)
In the same vein, the Saturn program was already well underway when the Kennedy proposed to go to the Moon. The F-1 engine, without which we almost certainly couldn't have succeeded, had been under development since 1956, first by the USAF and later by NASA.
You don't seem to understand how government contracting works, so let me enlighten you. When a government contract needs more people than a contractor has, they hire the number of new people needed. Those new people then work pretty much on nothing but what the government pays for. (And the government audits the records closely to ensure this happens.) They don't develop new things or cool things - unless that's what the government is paying for. (And they weren't in the case of Apollo.) And when the contract is over, unless another one is close on the horizon, all those new folks are now let go.
Well, other than the fact that it's unclear how much society benefited from Apollo - because of how much 'Apollo' technology was actually re-purposed from other sources. In fact, it's widely known that many Apollo engineers ended up changing careers in the wake of the aerospace crash of the late 60's and early 70's. (And I don't mean 'guidance electronics specialists' became 'consumer electronics specialists', I mean 'became insurance salesmen or fry cooks'.)
Apollo's history has largely been mythologized by generations of NASA PR - and like all myths, the reality is quite different.
You can think of a few innovations (incorrectly) associated with NASA, or for which NASA has claimed credit without actually having done much...
Was known to the Inca's and first developed commercially in WWII. Here's a brief timeline of the history of freeze drying to clear things up.
If the school did something wrong, that would be a viable plan. By what they're doing is monitoring student's Twitter feeds to find when students or agents violate the rules, not just schools.