And all that was developed for less than a year of Chinese space program (roughly $800-$1 billion spent in total) and nine years of time.
But the Chinese, unlike SpaceX, have a family of proven launch vehicles, have put men on orbit thrice, have launched multiple satellites into Earth orbit and two into Lunar orbit.
Meanwhile a small private corporation based in LA is shaming the best government space programs on the planet.
Oh? Many astronauts has said corporation on orbit? How many landers on the Martian surface? How many probes in orbit around it? How many on or around the Moon?
(Sound of crickets chirping.)
Oh. I see. They haven't actually done any of those things, though they have Brave Future Plans. (Hell, even the Brazilian's have four operational birds on orbit.)
So, let's try a different tack - let's compare them to other commercial companies then. How many satellites have the launched?
(Sound of crickets chirping.)
Oh. I see. They haven't actually launched any have they? (Though again, they have Brave Future Plans.) Well, let's try and find something they've done... is their launch success ratio better than 50% (considering the track record in the industry is around 98%)?
(Sound of crickets chirping.)
Oh. I see.
So tell me again. what exactly have they've done to 'shame' everyone else?
For eight times the money, the US manages to reach approximate parity with the Russians.
How many probes do the Russians have one the surface of Mars? How many in orbit around it? Or Mercury? How many of the station components have the Russian's delivered?
For our budget we do a hell of a lot more than Russians - whose space program consists mostly of a taxi and FedEx service to the station, the GLONASS navigation constellation, and power points outlining their brave new future.
This is the result of the badly designed Space Shuttle program which over its lifetime has cost $1.5 billion per launch.
Actually, the Shuttle only costs $250 million to launch (that is, the cost to add a Shuttle mission to the manifest.), the balance is the individual flight's portion of the fixed costs. The funny thing is when you add up the costs of the Soyuz and Proton boosters needed to replace a single Shuttle launch... you come in around $300 million dollars. (Mostly because of the horrible crew:passenger ratio of Soyuz.)
As always, analogies with physical situations will lack nuance, but if I had large plots of land that I opened to hikers, I wouldn't expect to be held responsible if someone broke the law while on that land.
You might not expect to be - but in many cases you could be.
Similarly, I see no reason to hold a person responsible for any potential crimes of others while using their shared connection, and it appears that the law agrees with me.
That law protects service providers - which you aren't.
It's the SWAT raids that most people are referring to when they say people shouldn't provide public access.
Maybe you should go back and read your own message, especially the parts about "nefarious conspiracies".
You, and the many other commenters who agree with you have it completely backwards. Your linked story is exactly why more people should open up their networks.
I don't lock down my network just because of the liability (which isn't so different from the liability imposed by my pool for example). I also lock it down because I pay for the connection and I'm no more sharing it than I do any other utility.
The fact that so many technically inclined Slashdot types are crying 'liability' and 'log everything' is almost as saddening as the fact that our government has pushed us to this
The government hasn't pushed to this - common sense and the law has.
The law makes me potentially liable for everything that happens on my property, and even without SWAT raids that gives me pause. So I lock down my router for the same reason I have a fence around my pool with a locked gate, as well as locking my garden shed and my car doors - the consequences are just not worth defending some [largely created from whole cloth by the EFF for it's own political reasons] 'principal'.
Every abuse which we allow to happen, every time we modify our behaviour because of one rather than standing our ground, it only further legitimises the abuse, validates the government in their action, and brings us one more step along the road to greater loss of freedom. For all our sakes, I can't bear to see that happen.
When you can demonstrate loss of freedom, as opposed to tin foil hat rantings, we'll talk.
But China is not held back by politicians that only want to do good for THEIR voters or the people that they get bribed from.
No, they're held back by politicians who only want to do good for their supporters and those who bribe the, or the people they support or who they bribe. Seriously, what are you smoking that makes you think politicians are any different anywhere - especially in a Communist system where hewing the party line, and personal power/patronage politics dominates?
The problem with the plan outlined in The High Frontier is that it's "bootstrap" is essentially circular logic: "We need colonies in space to build the infrastructure in space to build colonies in space". He adds in "and build solar power satellites" in order to make it appear that his logic isn't circular - but any more-than-cursory examination of the economics involved shows how ludicrous that idea is. (Short version: it would be cheaper to burn the dollar bills directly for energy.)
The grandparent has it right - there's nothing to do there and little advantage to be gained by going there.
Do pay attention - I asked: "who built a man sized glass sphere fifty years ago that could take the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench?". Trieste's sphere isn't glass.
You're wrong about Alvin though, she's still in operation. The DSV exhibited at the Navy Yard Museum is either DSV-3 Turtle or DSV 4Sea Cliff. They do both look like Alvin and were built using spare spheres originally ordered for Alvin though.
Is it only for the benefits of the students, or are you telling me that NASA waited until the very last shuttle launch to test something as important as seed germination in space?
It's not NASA studying seed germination, it's the students performing a [largely meaningless] "experiment".
NASA does love this kind of "experiment" though - because all they have to do is toss the packet of seeds in the back of a locker and ignore them. Teachers love this kind of "experiment" too because it gives the appearance of doing Serious Science without requiring too much work.
I was interested in making biodiesel at home a few years back, and I called all the restaurants in a small rural town near where I live. They were already getting paid for their waste oil.
They've been paid for their waste oils and fats for decades, it's refined and what isn't re-used for cooking is used in soaps, cosmetics, and as feedstocks for dozens of other chemical processes. That's a dirty little secret that most bio-diesel advocates either don't want to talk about, or are unaware of - the market for used oils and fats is already a healthy one and there isn't that much to spare for bio-diesel.
The industry average for corn based ethanol is about a 40% energy gain, as the OP stated it's unbelievable that they'd get anywhere near that efficiency out of chicken harvesting. Peanuts can produce about 135 gallons of oil per acre, I wonder what the statistic for chickens would be like once one included the acreage to grow feed.
The idea here isn't to raise chickens for their fats, but to raise them for food and to re-direct the by-products (fats) into fuel production. But the elephant in the room that nobody want to talk about is that using agricultural output for fuel means re-directing that output from other uses.
Is it because this fuel packs more bang for the buck than traditional one, or is it because everyone wants to "feel" being green, even when trying to fly to other planets
No, it's because the name of the agency is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Everyone concentrates on what NASA does in space, and forgets that aviation is also part of their charter.
It seems impossible that we stumbled onto the only example of this kind of upward pricing spiral.
While this is an extreme example, this kind of crap has been going on since (aided and abetted by Amazon and Alibris) the amateur commodity booksellers burst onto the web in the late 90's.
Scrapers and ratings manipulators like 'bordeebook' are one of the multiple ways that the 'net has made the professional used and rare bookman nearly extinct.
Life as a scientist is great for the small number of scientists who find stable positions directing research efforts. You have respect, independence, room for a large amount of creative thinking, and a comfortable enough salary. The problem is that it is a long road that ends in a crap shoot to get one of these positions.
That's true of pretty much every career field. The real question is why we insist on believing engineering and the sciences should somehow be different.
Society has changed. It's gotten less violent. That means there's even less reason for these Gestapo tactics.
Yeah, that's why in my town more cops have been shot at in the last year than in the last decade. That's why three cops have been shot and killed on duty in the last decade - out of the five shot and killed on duty in the century since the town was founded.
While violent *crime* is down (in part due to plea bargains erasing them from the statistics), violence overall is far from down. Twenty years ago road rage was a front page story - now it rates two lines in the police blotter section on page seventeen. (If it's mentioned at all.)
But that was back before SWAT teams were invented and many fewer people tended to get violent. But society has changed and law enforcement along with it.
How does this correspond to the fact that violent crime has been on the decline for a long time now?
Since we aren't talking about violent crime - what's your point?
At the very least, how about not parking police cars outside the window, knocking on the door first (without yelling "police, open up!"), waiting for the person to come to the door, and then telling them that you're a cop with a forced entry warrant that will be used if they don't open the door right here and now?
That works just fine in a universe where the suspect invariably opens the door nicely. We don't live in such a universe.
Remember when SWAT teams were only used on violent offenders in situations that were expected to get excessively violent?
I do. But that was back before SWAT teams were invented and many fewer people tended to get violent. But society has changed and law enforcement along with it.
Not to mention, the SWAT-style entrance in this case wasn't to forestall violence, but to forestall the destruction of evidence. A nice knock on the door leads to the suspect looking out the window, going "Jesus! the cops!" and hitting the delete key on his computer.
Nothing - the problem is with citizens like yourself who have no clue about the Constitution.
While the agents were clearly in the wrong to mentally and physically abuse him - precisely nothing in the Constitution prevents the feds from raiding a location that has been identified as a possible site of criminal activity. Nothing, nada, zip.
Walmart went big in electronics and is now reducing that department's square footage by 2000 in each store.
I have to question that statement - because around here the electronics departments only run around 2000-2500 square feet to begin with. (And they've been that size for over a decade.)
I have to tell you, Walmart is scared. They are entering unfamiliar territory and they do not know what to do. Other than a few isolated urban pockets, there is no where left for Walmart to expand.
Not only that - but with the near demise of Kmart, they're nearly saturated demographically as well. The only place left for the them to grow is upscale, and there they'll not only face Target (a potentially very tough opponent), but also a variety of strong regional chains - while flirting with the loss of their traditional demographic base.
Hear Dr. Michiko Kaku (yes, famous physicist) speak about fukujima. and what you hear wont ease your mind.
He's a physicist, so what? Just because he's a scientist (of sorts, his field of expertise is actually string theory) doesn't mean he's an expert on nuclear power or nuclear reactors or even that he knows more than the average Joe. (Worse yet, if you're familiar with his politics, you'll find he's quite anti-nuclear.)
TV producers love him because he's always good for a sensationalist quote - regardless of the topic.
there are people STILL downplaying this, believing what industry shills are drumming like morons.
And that's different from believing non-expert, anti nuclear, attention whore shills... how?
I keep hearing the word license used more and more to copyrighted works.
No offense, but that speaks more to your inexperience or lack of knowledge than any change in how business is being or has been done. Nothing particular has changed, licenses with regards to IP have been around a long, long time.
Slashdot Mirror
But the Chinese, unlike SpaceX, have a family of proven launch vehicles, have put men on orbit thrice, have launched multiple satellites into Earth orbit and two into Lunar orbit.
Oh? Many astronauts has said corporation on orbit? How many landers on the Martian surface? How many probes in orbit around it? How many on or around the Moon?
(Sound of crickets chirping.)
Oh. I see. They haven't actually done any of those things, though they have Brave Future Plans. (Hell, even the Brazilian's have four operational birds on orbit.)
So, let's try a different tack - let's compare them to other commercial companies then. How many satellites have the launched?
(Sound of crickets chirping.)
Oh. I see. They haven't actually launched any have they? (Though again, they have Brave Future Plans.) Well, let's try and find something they've done... is their launch success ratio better than 50% (considering the track record in the industry is around 98%)?
(Sound of crickets chirping.)
Oh. I see.
So tell me again. what exactly have they've done to 'shame' everyone else?
How many probes do the Russians have one the surface of Mars? How many in orbit around it? Or Mercury? How many of the station components have the Russian's delivered?
For our budget we do a hell of a lot more than Russians - whose space program consists mostly of a taxi and FedEx service to the station, the GLONASS navigation constellation, and power points outlining their brave new future.
Actually, the Shuttle only costs $250 million to launch (that is, the cost to add a Shuttle mission to the manifest.), the balance is the individual flight's portion of the fixed costs. The funny thing is when you add up the costs of the Soyuz and Proton boosters needed to replace a single Shuttle launch... you come in around $300 million dollars. (Mostly because of the horrible crew:passenger ratio of Soyuz.)
You might not expect to be - but in many cases you could be.
That law protects service providers - which you aren't.
Maybe you should go back and read your own message, especially the parts about "nefarious conspiracies".
I don't lock down my network just because of the liability (which isn't so different from the liability imposed by my pool for example). I also lock it down because I pay for the connection and I'm no more sharing it than I do any other utility.
The government hasn't pushed to this - common sense and the law has.
The law makes me potentially liable for everything that happens on my property, and even without SWAT raids that gives me pause. So I lock down my router for the same reason I have a fence around my pool with a locked gate, as well as locking my garden shed and my car doors - the consequences are just not worth defending some [largely created from whole cloth by the EFF for it's own political reasons] 'principal'.
When you can demonstrate loss of freedom, as opposed to tin foil hat rantings, we'll talk.
No, they're held back by politicians who only want to do good for their supporters and those who bribe the, or the people they support or who they bribe. Seriously, what are you smoking that makes you think politicians are any different anywhere - especially in a Communist system where hewing the party line, and personal power/patronage politics dominates?
The problem with the plan outlined in The High Frontier is that it's "bootstrap" is essentially circular logic: "We need colonies in space to build the infrastructure in space to build colonies in space". He adds in "and build solar power satellites" in order to make it appear that his logic isn't circular - but any more-than-cursory examination of the economics involved shows how ludicrous that idea is. (Short version: it would be cheaper to burn the dollar bills directly for energy.)
The grandparent has it right - there's nothing to do there and little advantage to be gained by going there.
Do pay attention - I asked: "who built a man sized glass sphere fifty years ago that could take the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench?". Trieste's sphere isn't glass.
Yes, that's *exactly* what we need - another expensive and pointless race to prove who has the biggest penile substitute.
And the Trieste's sister, Trieste II ), is on display (along with a bunch of other cool stuff) at the Naval Undersea Museum at Keyport, WA.
Google Maps link.
You're wrong about Alvin though, she's still in operation. The DSV exhibited at the Navy Yard Museum is either DSV-3 Turtle or DSV 4 Sea Cliff . They do both look like Alvin and were built using spare spheres originally ordered for Alvin though.
[[Citation needed]]
Seriously, who built a man sized glass sphere fifty years ago that could take the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench?
It's not NASA studying seed germination, it's the students performing a [largely meaningless] "experiment".
NASA does love this kind of "experiment" though - because all they have to do is toss the packet of seeds in the back of a locker and ignore them. Teachers love this kind of "experiment" too because it gives the appearance of doing Serious Science without requiring too much work.
They've been paid for their waste oils and fats for decades, it's refined and what isn't re-used for cooking is used in soaps, cosmetics, and as feedstocks for dozens of other chemical processes. That's a dirty little secret that most bio-diesel advocates either don't want to talk about, or are unaware of - the market for used oils and fats is already a healthy one and there isn't that much to spare for bio-diesel.
The idea here isn't to raise chickens for their fats, but to raise them for food and to re-direct the by-products (fats) into fuel production. But the elephant in the room that nobody want to talk about is that using agricultural output for fuel means re-directing that output from other uses.
No, it's because the name of the agency is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Everyone concentrates on what NASA does in space, and forgets that aviation is also part of their charter.
From the summary:
While this is an extreme example, this kind of crap has been going on since (aided and abetted by Amazon and Alibris) the amateur commodity booksellers burst onto the web in the late 90's.
Scrapers and ratings manipulators like 'bordeebook' are one of the multiple ways that the 'net has made the professional used and rare bookman nearly extinct.
That's true of pretty much every career field. The real question is why we insist on believing engineering and the sciences should somehow be different.
Yeah, that's why in my town more cops have been shot at in the last year than in the last decade. That's why three cops have been shot and killed on duty in the last decade - out of the five shot and killed on duty in the century since the town was founded.
While violent *crime* is down (in part due to plea bargains erasing them from the statistics), violence overall is far from down. Twenty years ago road rage was a front page story - now it rates two lines in the police blotter section on page seventeen. (If it's mentioned at all.)
You live in a dream world.
Since we aren't talking about violent crime - what's your point?
That works just fine in a universe where the suspect invariably opens the door nicely. We don't live in such a universe.
Hence the statement about clueless individuals. No natural right prevents the State from from taking action against criminal activity either.
I do. But that was back before SWAT teams were invented and many fewer people tended to get violent. But society has changed and law enforcement along with it.
Not to mention, the SWAT-style entrance in this case wasn't to forestall violence, but to forestall the destruction of evidence. A nice knock on the door leads to the suspect looking out the window, going "Jesus! the cops!" and hitting the delete key on his computer.
Nothing - the problem is with citizens like yourself who have no clue about the Constitution.
While the agents were clearly in the wrong to mentally and physically abuse him - precisely nothing in the Constitution prevents the feds from raiding a location that has been identified as a possible site of criminal activity. Nothing, nada, zip.
My math may be off, but burning $100+/gal bourbon in place of $3.00-4.00/gal gasoline doesn't seem to add up.
I have to question that statement - because around here the electronics departments only run around 2000-2500 square feet to begin with. (And they've been that size for over a decade.)
Not only that - but with the near demise of Kmart, they're nearly saturated demographically as well. The only place left for the them to grow is upscale, and there they'll not only face Target (a potentially very tough opponent), but also a variety of strong regional chains - while flirting with the loss of their traditional demographic base.
He's a physicist, so what? Just because he's a scientist (of sorts, his field of expertise is actually string theory) doesn't mean he's an expert on nuclear power or nuclear reactors or even that he knows more than the average Joe. (Worse yet, if you're familiar with his politics, you'll find he's quite anti-nuclear.)
TV producers love him because he's always good for a sensationalist quote - regardless of the topic.
And that's different from believing non-expert, anti nuclear, attention whore shills... how?
No offense, but that speaks more to your inexperience or lack of knowledge than any change in how business is being or has been done. Nothing particular has changed, licenses with regards to IP have been around a long, long time.