To be fair, Boeing and Lockheed developed much of their tech on government contracts, and these remain a major source of their revenue
So what? They are still private companies who will happily sell launch services to anyone willing to plunk down the cash. Commercial launches have outnumbered government launches for decades.
I get the general impression (and will happily admit to being wrong, if I am) that most of the space tech Lockheed, especially, sells is basically recycled military equipment.
Again, so what? They are private companies that will happily sell launch services to anyone willing to plunk down the cash. (Not to mention the military abandoned that basic tech and equipment back in the late 1950's as it doesn't suit their needs.)
But what's important is this: for the first time ever we're seeing private companies trying to develop launch capabilities. And not just one or two, and not just so they can resell to governments (like SpaceX), but a bunch of them, with many different business models.
Huh? Where have you been for the past thirty plus years? There's been a steady stream of hopeful startups since the mid 70's at least. More than a few have gotten hardware off the ground, and one (Orbital Sciences) has flown multiple commercial flights. (And that's if you use the all too common screwball definition that doesn't consider companies like Boeing and Lockheed as private.)
You throw enough paint at the wall, some of it might stick.
So far, none has really stuck per se, though are flowing down the wall really slowly.
In 50 years, the space industry could be transformed by this sort of thing into an actual, profit-making enterprise.
The space industry is already quite profitable, for those that have survived. You're fifty years too late.
Support a better rival, like eBid. On the internet, big monopolies with huge name recognition advantage can be ousted by upstart competitors, if they're sufficiently better to use. It's just difficult. Look what happened to yahoo.
Yahoo! is number one or a strong number two in virtually every area they touch on - and where they aren't number one, Microsoft usually is.
Oh? You meant Google? - with the exception of search, they're a struggling third to Microsoft and Yahoo pretty much across the board. (And unlike Yahoo!, Google has yet to figure out how to make money from being a portal. If weren't for income from being an advertising provider, Google would have vanished with the dot bomb.)
One of my biggest peeves about the media FUD around swine flu - It has a LOWER mortality rate than your typical annual flu. Lower. Less than.
One of my pet peeves is idiots who sneer 'FUD', but clearly have no understanding of the facts. Yes, swine flu has a lower mortality rate - but it has a far higher infection rate, is spreading outside of normal flu season, and has a much higher than normal fatality rate among a demographic normally not considered at risk during the normal flu season.
All of which means that swine flu is much more hazardous than the normal flu.
As in, if you had to pick between a random flu-season strain or swine flu, you'd want to get swine flu!
No fucking way. The average/stereotypical slashdotter is usually considered 'safe' from the normal flu - but is right in the middle of the demographic most at risk of mortality from the swine flu.
Now, some fearmong^H^H^Hexperts claim that it "could" mutate into a more lethal strain
Since viruses are routinely observed to be mutating, including mutating into more lethal forms, that's a claim based on a heap of facts.
Yes, shame on people for trying new techniques and new technology. We should stick with the old ways of handling PTSD (basically, handing them alcohol and telling 'em to be a man and to buck up).
Seriously - what is it with Slashdot? Here we have something new (virtual worlds) and Linden Labs and other have spent years trying to work out how to best use it... And (as with Twitter) all the Hivemind can do is snort in disdain.
In the computer world, this seems to be the way of doing things. My NIC didn't come with a network cable, my soundcard came with a cable to hook up its external box, but didn't come with audio cables, my videocard didn't come with a DVI or VGA cable, and so on. It was left to me to purchase the cables in the length and of the type I required.
I see the same thing with most high end AV equipment too. It usually comes with power (if applicable) and nothing else. My speakers, amp, and receiver all included either no cables (in the case of speakers) or just power.
It should go without saying that individual computer components and high end AV equipment is marketed to an extremely different demographic/market segment than the Joe Sixpack demographic/segment that gaming consoles are sold to.
Utter shite. No amount of money would have kept the manufacturers in the business of maintaining the airframes. They have too much else to do.
Horseshit. If there was money to be made in it, they'd have still been in it.
With recent advances in engine design and composite technology, a new supersonic plane would not consume so much fuel and would doubtless get longer range, given it's only a matter of initial design choice.
Weight isn't the problem for supersonic aircraft - you could cut the weight of Concorde by 80% and give the most fuel efficient engines available, and it still wouldn't get across the Pacific. Drag is the dominant problem, and nobody has solved that one yet.
When calling the Concorde (or any other aircraft) "too expensive to create, manufacture, and maintain." on needs to take into account the ticket price the market will bear.
And on that issue - the market has spoken loudly and clearly. "It ain't worth it".
Yeah, I know the Concorde made a paper 'profit' towards the end - but the proof is in the amount of money the airlines were willing to spend to keep this 'profitable' airliner in operation, which coincidentally is equal to the number of Concorde's still in service...
Zero.
I you can't make enough money to pay your own maintenance bills, then making a 'profit' is pretty much meaningless.
And here you lay out my point for me, without understanding the implications. Why do they lack the drive? Did the educational system contribute to their lack of drive? Could society benefit from a differing educational track for these individuals, whereby we all might benefit from their works, if their potential was realized?
No, my point whizzed right over your head... They did live up to their potential - their actual potential, not what they thought their potential was.
That "special snowflake" label is useless in your context, you completely mistake the point. There are, in fact, some special individuals. The "special snowflake" issue is one of too many people believing they fit into that category, and believing there is entitlement because of it.
As I demonstrated in my original post, that's an assumption - and one shown to have significant flaws. As above, I didn't mistake your point, I demolished it and that fact whizzed right past your blinders and bias.
The truth is, there *are* people who should (for society's sake) be educated differently because of their gifts.
Society is best served by allowing the cream to force itself to the top - not by creating more special snowflakes who believe they deserve special treatment because they hold the belief that they have [subjectively measured] 'gifts'.
I know many brilliant people who never lived up to their potential partly because, among other reasons, they were completely stifled in a public education system. They were never taught how to work hard to learn, how to challenge themselves.
Sure, the looked the part - but when it came time to stop talking and start doing, they fell apart. Which implies that they weren't as brilliant as you or they thought. If they lacked the drive in school to get off their butts and improve themselves - they weren't going to succeed among other (actually) brilliant people when they got out into the real world.
But from a societal standpoint, that educational system failed society at large by not nurturing the potential of those people.
Falsifiable by existence proof - the number of brilliant people who did excel after attending public school. From a societal standpoint - the educational system was a screaming success because it separated the poseurs from the real McCoy.
Yes, there's some selfishness and entitlement issues with people feeling that their school system failed their brilliance.
No, there's nothing but selfishness and entitlement issues - it's not societies fault that they weren't actually the special snowflake they thought themselves to be.
"Here's something you won't see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free"
Duh. If the idea can't make money - it's unlikely to stay around if it even happens in the first place. That's the way the world works Cory.
On top of which... Most of things we get for 'free' are actually either a) ad supported or b) free because the company providing them has revenue from elsewhere and needs to build their brand. They aren't really 'free'. The same goes for 'flat rate', the services are generally subsidized and oversubscribed because the provider is betting (usually correctly) that 99.9999% of the users won't ever use the capacity they've signed up for.
The balance of his comment is essentially a Dvorak style rant, meaningless and somewhat disconnected from reality. But, like all pundits, if he doesn't keep the hits coming he has to stop eating... So rants pull the eyeballs and pay the bills.
Spin has been used for a long time, as a stabilization mechanism.
Not very often for long on thin items like large rockets, as it causes as many problems as it solves - and it's worse for guided (ballistic) missiles.
I'll give you that a straight, 2 or 3 axis wobble would be very difficult to keep under control. However, if you use a liquid motor and don't completely damp pogo affects, combine that with spin, you're now dispersing the laser beam over a large 2-D skin area.
Wobbling with a liquid engine is going to result in sloshing your propellant - something that's going to cause significant problems in maintaining a controlled wobble. *Spinning* a liquid fueled craft? A very bad idea indeed, as it tends to move your fuel away from the easiest place to put the intake. (You can put an intake that will allow you to spin, at the cost of a huge performance hit due to decreased propellant utilization.)
As for energy absorbed by your fuel... you're pumping a ton of LOX and LH2 at -200C through the cooling system every few seconds.
That's through broad passageways - not capillaries. (Not to mention that the plumbing involved would be horridly complex, and the pressure loss will be absolutely amazing.)
You don't actually know anything about missiles you didn't learn on the Discovery Channel or from Tom Clancy do you?
How is this a violation of free speech? This is the way free speech ought to work! The speaker is free to speak his mind, and the idiot student is free to yell about it.
If you define in free speech in some weird 1984 fashion, sure. In reality, the student was interfering with the speaker's rights because he was attempting to censor him by drowning him out.
Why on earth... or Mars would seclusion from any entertainment device be necessary?
I didn't say that seclusion from entertainment devices would be necessary, I said (or meant to imply) that seclusion from broadband services (in a simulation on Earth) would be a necessary component of really understanding what conditions would be like.
You're stating that if we tried right now, we'd fail because it's outright beyond our capabilities, that it would take decades and billions to gain the capability.
I'm stating that because it's a fact. But then I've actually studied the issues rather than handwaving.
Yet, we've already dropped quite a few craft on Mars (some of which were mobile), we've tested the in situ propellant generation on Earth, and we know how to make a terrarium.
Yes, we've landed things on Mars - but compared to the automated tow trucks your scheme requires we've only landed toy pickup trucks. There's a hell of a lot of engineering and development work from where we are to where you want us to be.
Yes, we've tested the propellant generation, in the lab. There's a hell of a lot of engineering and development between that and a unit capable of operating unattended on the Martian surface for years.
Yes, we know how to build a terrarium. No, we haven't built one capable of operating for years unattended and also capable of sustaining human life. There's a hell of a lot of research, engineering, and development between where we are and where you want us to be.
It is therefore painfully clear that we CAN drop things on Mars (within certain mass / density limits). We've built rovers, terrariums, and propellant generators.
In short, you're completely wrong as evidenced by what has already been accomplished.
In short, as I said, it's beyond our current capabilities. Not impossible mind you, but requiring a considerable amount of research and development.
Presumably, having a mind capable of critical thought.
Being capable of critical thought is meaningless if one lacks the required basic knowledge of the field in question.
The fact of the matter is that no one, inside of NASA or out, is an "authority" on extra-terrestrial life. Everything we know, or think we know, is based purely on supposition and guesswork.
See, this is exactly what I mean about having the required basic knowledge - because it's plain that you don't.
Life isn't magic. It's based on chemistry and physics - and we have a lot of experts who know a hell of a lot about both. Someone who had the basic knowledge in the field required to think critically might invoke those - instead you fall back on 'maybe', and 'likely' and 'could be', and other forms of handwaving and smokescreens.
Assuming water must be intrinsic to life everywhere because we've observed it on one tiny, insignificant planet orbiting an unremarkable star in the outskirts of an equally unremarkable galaxy
Any critically-thinking person would be inclined to do the same when confronted with such broad assumptions about something no one knows anything about, built upon such flimsy evidence.
Of course! All those decades biochemists and biophysicists have spend studying their fields are meaningless, at the end they just guessed!
Or maybe, they have actually studied and know what they are talking about.
If you're (as the missile designer and operator) are willing to put up with massive problems involved in making the missile spin. Assuming it's possible.
Next is to introduce a wobble - difficult to do, although with modern control systems not completely impossible
Not completely possible, no. But essentially so.
Lastly, if your rocket has a cryogenic fuel (i.e., LOX + LH2), you can pump your fuel through capillaries under the skin of your rocket before entering the rocket motor. That'll absorb whatever energy the laser does impart.
Mirrors reflect (typically) 60-70% of the light that hits them, turning the rest into heat. Cheap, glossy, exterior-grade white paint often reflects in excess of 90% of the light back.
In other words, mirrors would turn about 4x as much of the light into heat as the white paint will.
However, at the energies involved that 10% not reflected is still a hell of a lot of energy on a fairly small area. The white paint might gain you a few seconds at best.
Slashdot Mirror
So what? They are still private companies who will happily sell launch services to anyone willing to plunk down the cash. Commercial launches have outnumbered government launches for decades.
Again, so what? They are private companies that will happily sell launch services to anyone willing to plunk down the cash. (Not to mention the military abandoned that basic tech and equipment back in the late 1950's as it doesn't suit their needs.)
The companies that have been launching commercial payloads into orbit for years (Orbital Sciences) or decades (Boeing, Lockheed), might beg to differ.
Huh? Where have you been for the past thirty plus years? There's been a steady stream of hopeful startups since the mid 70's at least. More than a few have gotten hardware off the ground, and one (Orbital Sciences) has flown multiple commercial flights. (And that's if you use the all too common screwball definition that doesn't consider companies like Boeing and Lockheed as private.)
So far, none has really stuck per se, though are flowing down the wall really slowly.
The space industry is already quite profitable, for those that have survived. You're fifty years too late.
Yahoo! is number one or a strong number two in virtually every area they touch on - and where they aren't number one, Microsoft usually is.
Oh? You meant Google? - with the exception of search, they're a struggling third to Microsoft and Yahoo pretty much across the board. (And unlike Yahoo!, Google has yet to figure out how to make money from being a portal. If weren't for income from being an advertising provider, Google would have vanished with the dot bomb.)
One of my pet peeves is idiots who sneer 'FUD', but clearly have no understanding of the facts. Yes, swine flu has a lower mortality rate - but it has a far higher infection rate, is spreading outside of normal flu season, and has a much higher than normal fatality rate among a demographic normally not considered at risk during the normal flu season.
All of which means that swine flu is much more hazardous than the normal flu.
No fucking way. The average/stereotypical slashdotter is usually considered 'safe' from the normal flu - but is right in the middle of the demographic most at risk of mortality from the swine flu.
Since viruses are routinely observed to be mutating, including mutating into more lethal forms, that's a claim based on a heap of facts.
Yes, shame on people for trying new techniques and new technology. We should stick with the old ways of handling PTSD (basically, handing them alcohol and telling 'em to be a man and to buck up).
Seriously - what is it with Slashdot? Here we have something new (virtual worlds) and Linden Labs and other have spent years trying to work out how to best use it... And (as with Twitter) all the Hivemind can do is snort in disdain.
It should go without saying that individual computer components and high end AV equipment is marketed to an extremely different demographic/market segment than the Joe Sixpack demographic/segment that gaming consoles are sold to.
Nothing can happen to something that doesn't exist.
Horseshit. If there was money to be made in it, they'd have still been in it.
Weight isn't the problem for supersonic aircraft - you could cut the weight of Concorde by 80% and give the most fuel efficient engines available, and it still wouldn't get across the Pacific. Drag is the dominant problem, and nobody has solved that one yet.
And on that issue - the market has spoken loudly and clearly. "It ain't worth it".
Yeah, I know the Concorde made a paper 'profit' towards the end - but the proof is in the amount of money the airlines were willing to spend to keep this 'profitable' airliner in operation, which coincidentally is equal to the number of Concorde's still in service...
Zero.
I you can't make enough money to pay your own maintenance bills, then making a 'profit' is pretty much meaningless.
No, my point whizzed right over your head... They did live up to their potential - their actual potential, not what they thought their potential was.
As I demonstrated in my original post, that's an assumption - and one shown to have significant flaws. As above, I didn't mistake your point, I demolished it and that fact whizzed right past your blinders and bias.
Society is best served by allowing the cream to force itself to the top - not by creating more special snowflakes who believe they deserve special treatment because they hold the belief that they have [subjectively measured] 'gifts'.
That was covered under 'B' - building the brand. (And IIRC it's his nonfiction that made the best seller list.)
Sure, the looked the part - but when it came time to stop talking and start doing, they fell apart. Which implies that they weren't as brilliant as you or they thought. If they lacked the drive in school to get off their butts and improve themselves - they weren't going to succeed among other (actually) brilliant people when they got out into the real world.
Falsifiable by existence proof - the number of brilliant people who did excel after attending public school. From a societal standpoint - the educational system was a screaming success because it separated the poseurs from the real McCoy.
No, there's nothing but selfishness and entitlement issues - it's not societies fault that they weren't actually the special snowflake they thought themselves to be.
"Here's something you won't see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free"
Duh. If the idea can't make money - it's unlikely to stay around if it even happens in the first place. That's the way the world works Cory.
On top of which... Most of things we get for 'free' are actually either a) ad supported or b) free because the company providing them has revenue from elsewhere and needs to build their brand. They aren't really 'free'. The same goes for 'flat rate', the services are generally subsidized and oversubscribed because the provider is betting (usually correctly) that 99.9999% of the users won't ever use the capacity they've signed up for.
The balance of his comment is essentially a Dvorak style rant, meaningless and somewhat disconnected from reality. But, like all pundits, if he doesn't keep the hits coming he has to stop eating... So rants pull the eyeballs and pay the bills.
Even in the clouds.
Because manufacturing stuff in the real world, especially complicated precision stuff like printers - is very expensive. It's nothing like software.
Not very often for long on thin items like large rockets, as it causes as many problems as it solves - and it's worse for guided (ballistic) missiles.
Wobbling with a liquid engine is going to result in sloshing your propellant - something that's going to cause significant problems in maintaining a controlled wobble. *Spinning* a liquid fueled craft? A very bad idea indeed, as it tends to move your fuel away from the easiest place to put the intake. (You can put an intake that will allow you to spin, at the cost of a huge performance hit due to decreased propellant utilization.)
That's through broad passageways - not capillaries. (Not to mention that the plumbing involved would be horridly complex, and the pressure loss will be absolutely amazing.)
You don't actually know anything about missiles you didn't learn on the Discovery Channel or from Tom Clancy do you?
If you define in free speech in some weird 1984 fashion, sure. In reality, the student was interfering with the speaker's rights because he was attempting to censor him by drowning him out.
Fairly thick smoke or dust, yeah.
You'd have a point if things were that uncertain. Since they aren't, you're just another clueless fucking moron.
Since the laws of physics, chemistry, etc... are invariant, regardless of location, you're just another fucking clueless moron.
I didn't say that seclusion from entertainment devices would be necessary, I said (or meant to imply) that seclusion from broadband services (in a simulation on Earth) would be a necessary component of really understanding what conditions would be like.
Maybe. Maybe not.
I'm stating that because it's a fact. But then I've actually studied the issues rather than handwaving.
Yes, we've landed things on Mars - but compared to the automated tow trucks your scheme requires we've only landed toy pickup trucks. There's a hell of a lot of engineering and development work from where we are to where you want us to be.
Yes, we've tested the propellant generation, in the lab. There's a hell of a lot of engineering and development between that and a unit capable of operating unattended on the Martian surface for years.
Yes, we know how to build a terrarium. No, we haven't built one capable of operating for years unattended and also capable of sustaining human life. There's a hell of a lot of research, engineering, and development between where we are and where you want us to be.
In short, as I said, it's beyond our current capabilities. Not impossible mind you, but requiring a considerable amount of research and development.
Being capable of critical thought is meaningless if one lacks the required basic knowledge of the field in question.
See, this is exactly what I mean about having the required basic knowledge - because it's plain that you don't.
Life isn't magic. It's based on chemistry and physics - and we have a lot of experts who know a hell of a lot about both. Someone who had the basic knowledge in the field required to think critically might invoke those - instead you fall back on 'maybe', and 'likely' and 'could be', and other forms of handwaving and smokescreens.
Of course! All those decades biochemists and biophysicists have spend studying their fields are meaningless, at the end they just guessed!
Or maybe, they have actually studied and know what they are talking about.
Because you certainly don't.
If you're (as the missile designer and operator) are willing to put up with massive problems involved in making the missile spin. Assuming it's possible.
Not completely possible, no. But essentially so.
Ummm.... No. The energy involved is too great.
However, at the energies involved that 10% not reflected is still a hell of a lot of energy on a fairly small area. The white paint might gain you a few seconds at best.