As for the rest... look, it's impressive for a privately funded vehicle to launch at all.
Why? It's not like the engineering is different for government vs. privately funded. The only difference is who pays the bills (and taxpayers have footed a non trivial amount of SpaceX's bills).
Yes, getting to space is hard, but SpaceX is actually doing it
No, SpaceX is not actually 'doing it', they've done it - *once*. You can't draw a curve through a single point. The long road to space is already littered with the bones of private companies with a few achievements and a glittering record of powerpoints.
if you compare their record to the record of the "traditional" space contractors they're doing it very well.
Huh? No currently flying booster has a success rate as abysmal as the Falcon I. The only thing SpaceX is doing as well as the "traditional" contractors is putting a bright face on an ongoing series of delays and failures. And you, like most of the rest of the space fanboi community, have swallowed the spin, hook, line, and sinker.
So chill out with the relentless negativity.
It's not negativity - it's facts. That you can't handle facts isn't my problem.
Just to clarify, if you RTFA you will find that SpaceX has completed all the milestones so far on time
Actually, if you study the history of their programs, they are years behind where they originally planned to be.
Space fans in general have *very* selective memories. Jam yesterday, and jam tommorow - but the lack of jam today goes unnoticed.
I have to say that, as a confirmed space nut, SpaceX really impresses me.
No offense, but after decades of watching the space 'nut' community, many are impressed with SpaceX because it doesn't really take all that much to impress them. Witness the outpouring of wonderment anytime the Russians ship yet another PowerPoint of their brave and glorious future - without taking a moment to wonder what happened to the last 27 such plans.
If they manage to deliver on a third of what they're talking about, they'll completely change the game--and they've done enough truly innovative stuff already that I think they might actually deliver on most of it in the long run.
Which is kinda my point - they haven't actually *done* anything innovative yet. They haven't even delivered on their simplest of vehicles. Their flight record is abysmal and both the Falcon 1 and 9 are years behind schedule. The Dragon is nothing but a mockup. It's easy to innovate on paper, but let's wait for actual accomplishments before showering them with praise.
Imagine a fully reusable launch vehicle, and a mostly reusable orbiter, making access to LEO or GTO cost in the hundreds of dollars per lb., instead of thousands...
Such things are easy to imagine - but as the X-Prize contenders discovered and now Elon Musk is discovering, real world engineering is much, *much* harder than power point engineering.
Given that parents have been trying to force their children into being whatever mold the parent desires for eons...
Slender blonds have been the epitome of beauty in Western culture since *at least* Medieval times.* How long did the Chinese bind the feet of girls? How long has the [African tribe I forget the name of] been stretching the necks of their women? Etc... Etc...
All across the world, across multiple centuries, we've been damaging our collective self esteem (and bodies) in the pursuit of physical beauty. Assuming that this latest effort will peter out in two or three generations 'tops' seems to be wishful thinking.
*Don't give me any of that Rubenesque guff either. They've been acceptable, even desirable at times - but never higher than the second rung.
And much more expensive to purchase and assemble than the Intel chipset. The Slashdot Uber Tech Society often forgets that computers are designed and priced for the end user and the mass market, not the programmer and the Uber techie.
All it will take to deliver a nuclear weapon to the US is a ship. Maybe even just a container on a ship, routed through some other port. They certainly have that delivery capability.
However, from a political/diplomatic/statecraft point of view - a container nukes accomplishes zip point shit.
You can't really deliver them in advance... Pretty much who owns nukes wants them under the tightest possible control by well trained and highly trusted security forces. Dictators then want those security forces watched by a second security force just in case the first forces loyalty wavers a little and their boss decides he wants to be the Big Boss.
You can't really deliver them when needed... It's impossible to predict the onset of a crisis weeks in advance so you can ship get the nukes to the destination.
You can't really threaten somebody with 'em... Announce a nuke is en route to practically any nation - and the navies of the world are going to stop container traffic cold. Announce you have a container nuke in port or in country, and especially in the US you are going to have every law enforcement agency looking for that container. You've got a very narrow window to use it, and you aren't ever going to get it back. (And when it detonates - you've already told the world where to retaliate.)
Container nukes are a favored weapon of the tinfoil hat crowd, but reality is they aren't a real world [nation state vs. nation state] threat. Too many ambiguities, too many potential problems, too many downsides, virtually no upside.
And I am not clear what the US response would be to an attack here.
US policy on attacks by WMD has been clearly stated and restated multiple times across the last fifty years - immediate and total response in kind.
He does go so far to say that there is no examinable proof of a liquid core and that we could have been wrong all these years.
While there is no proof you can put your finger on - rejecting a hypothesis supported by other evidence without providing a replacement for that hypothesis is pretty dodgy science.
Which is an interesting question - because it's currently believed that loss of the magnetic field cause the loss of atmosphere and the subsequent loss of water on Mars.
Failing to explain Mars represents a major hole in this theory.
Failing to explain why the Earth's magnetic fields are more-or-less symmetrical, which the core is and the oceans aren't, is another major problem.
And it pisses me off. These people don't need pampering. Let them flounder. Maybe it'll force them to learn something about the world, even if it's just some tiny inconsequential thing that they need to hook up to get their fucking idiot box working again.
Translation: I'm better than them, even though I lack the skills or intelligence to express my point without profanity, rants, insults, and belittlement. Really, I'm better than them! I'll even explain why. Someday. Somehow.
Well, he's right to some extent. Funding for ongoing projects (like volcano monitoring) should be in the normal budget - the stimulus bill was supposed to be for one-time expenses and to kick start the economy, not for pork or to circumvent the normal budget process. I can't help but wonder how much 'seed' money for ongoing projects/pork is hidden in the stimulus money.
Disclaimer: Puget Sound area resident, and one aware of the difference between volcano monitoring and basic research.
What's with the trend of calling technical info "porn"?
It's only a trend if you've been living in a cardboard box somewhere in Outer Mongolia for the last decade and some... (And it's not just 'techie' stuff either. I first heard the term 'foodie porn' back in the mid 90's.)
I think this completely diminishes the "severity" of a pandemic.
Only in the minds of those mistaken about the meaning of pandemic in the first place. It means a widespread disease, not a severe disease. That non specialists and the ignorant have attached a mistaken meaning to it is not the fault of the specialists.
Tell the doctors to read up on the 1918 pandemic - which started with a 'bad cold' flu spreading unseasonably in the spring and killing not all that many and mostly outside of the usual demographics... which faded with the coming of high summer. Then reemerged in the fall to kill millions.
A disease that's spreading rapidly and widely is a significant risk even if it doesn't kill.
You must work in tech support - because your answer, while completely correct, has absolutely nothing to do with the situation at hand.
The issue isn't search, or advertising, but a dodgy attempt by Google to purchase rights from an entity whose right to sell those rights is (at best) questionable if not nonexistent. Google is trying to gain the right to scan and publish, at their choice, all books for all time - published and not yet published without being required to negotiate for those rights and without recompose to the authors.
That wasn't his point (if you quote him properly).
I did quote him correctly. He claimed gun violence would ensue if online poker were banned, using said claim as a scare tactic - and I called his bluff.
It's called an index or a bibliography. There exists a profession known as 'librarian' specifically trained in the creation of such and in the management of large numbers of documents.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a job for BOINC.
Why? It's not like the engineering is different for government vs. privately funded. The only difference is who pays the bills (and taxpayers have footed a non trivial amount of SpaceX's bills).
No, SpaceX is not actually 'doing it', they've done it - *once*. You can't draw a curve through a single point. The long road to space is already littered with the bones of private companies with a few achievements and a glittering record of powerpoints.
Huh? No currently flying booster has a success rate as abysmal as the Falcon I. The only thing SpaceX is doing as well as the "traditional" contractors is putting a bright face on an ongoing series of delays and failures. And you, like most of the rest of the space fanboi community, have swallowed the spin, hook, line, and sinker.
It's not negativity - it's facts. That you can't handle facts isn't my problem.
Actually, if you study the history of their programs, they are years behind where they originally planned to be.
Space fans in general have *very* selective memories. Jam yesterday, and jam tommorow - but the lack of jam today goes unnoticed.
No offense, but after decades of watching the space 'nut' community, many are impressed with SpaceX because it doesn't really take all that much to impress them. Witness the outpouring of wonderment anytime the Russians ship yet another PowerPoint of their brave and glorious future - without taking a moment to wonder what happened to the last 27 such plans.
Which is kinda my point - they haven't actually *done* anything innovative yet. They haven't even delivered on their simplest of vehicles. Their flight record is abysmal and both the Falcon 1 and 9 are years behind schedule. The Dragon is nothing but a mockup. It's easy to innovate on paper, but let's wait for actual accomplishments before showering them with praise.
Such things are easy to imagine - but as the X-Prize contenders discovered and now Elon Musk is discovering, real world engineering is much, *much* harder than power point engineering.
Given that parents have been trying to force their children into being whatever mold the parent desires for eons...
Slender blonds have been the epitome of beauty in Western culture since *at least* Medieval times.* How long did the Chinese bind the feet of girls? How long has the [African tribe I forget the name of] been stretching the necks of their women? Etc... Etc...
All across the world, across multiple centuries, we've been damaging our collective self esteem (and bodies) in the pursuit of physical beauty. Assuming that this latest effort will peter out in two or three generations 'tops' seems to be wishful thinking.
*Don't give me any of that Rubenesque guff either. They've been acceptable, even desirable at times - but never higher than the second rung.
And much more expensive to purchase and assemble than the Intel chipset. The Slashdot Uber Tech Society often forgets that computers are designed and priced for the end user and the mass market, not the programmer and the Uber techie.
You also have to learn how to operate the message network - a non trivial skill.
However, from a political/diplomatic/statecraft point of view - a container nukes accomplishes zip point shit.
Container nukes are a favored weapon of the tinfoil hat crowd, but reality is they aren't a real world [nation state vs. nation state] threat. Too many ambiguities, too many potential problems, too many downsides, virtually no upside.
US policy on attacks by WMD has been clearly stated and restated multiple times across the last fifty years - immediate and total response in kind.
While there is no proof you can put your finger on - rejecting a hypothesis supported by other evidence without providing a replacement for that hypothesis is pretty dodgy science.
Which is an interesting question - because it's currently believed that loss of the magnetic field cause the loss of atmosphere and the subsequent loss of water on Mars.
Failing to explain Mars represents a major hole in this theory.
Failing to explain why the Earth's magnetic fields are more-or-less symmetrical, which the core is and the oceans aren't, is another major problem.
Only somebody truly ignorant and biased could make such a translation - because I made no claim of being better, unlike the OP.
Translation: I'm better than them, even though I lack the skills or intelligence to express my point without profanity, rants, insults, and belittlement. Really, I'm better than them! I'll even explain why. Someday. Somehow.
So you're sitting indoors bitching on Slashdot... why?
Well, he's right to some extent. Funding for ongoing projects (like volcano monitoring) should be in the normal budget - the stimulus bill was supposed to be for one-time expenses and to kick start the economy, not for pork or to circumvent the normal budget process. I can't help but wonder how much 'seed' money for ongoing projects/pork is hidden in the stimulus money.
Disclaimer: Puget Sound area resident, and one aware of the difference between volcano monitoring and basic research.
That's only a small part of what they are doing. There's a bunch of spacewalks, maintenance, etc... More info here.
What, the MIB keep showing up at your house and flashing your memory away?
They don't you say?
Then nothing is keeping you from performing research on your own time in your place except yourself.
What's with the trend of calling technical info "porn"?
It's only a trend if you've been living in a cardboard box somewhere in Outer Mongolia for the last decade and some... (And it's not just 'techie' stuff either. I first heard the term 'foodie porn' back in the mid 90's.)
Oh, horseshit. If the US were to remove the tax credit for kids it would a) not be anywhere near totalitarian and b) be much more fair.
Only in the minds of those mistaken about the meaning of pandemic in the first place. It means a widespread disease, not a severe disease. That non specialists and the ignorant have attached a mistaken meaning to it is not the fault of the specialists.
Tell the doctors to read up on the 1918 pandemic - which started with a 'bad cold' flu spreading unseasonably in the spring and killing not all that many and mostly outside of the usual demographics... which faded with the coming of high summer. Then reemerged in the fall to kill millions.
A disease that's spreading rapidly and widely is a significant risk even if it doesn't kill.
You must work in tech support - because your answer, while completely correct, has absolutely nothing to do with the situation at hand.
The issue isn't search, or advertising, but a dodgy attempt by Google to purchase rights from an entity whose right to sell those rights is (at best) questionable if not nonexistent. Google is trying to gain the right to scan and publish, at their choice, all books for all time - published and not yet published without being required to negotiate for those rights and without recompose to the authors.
Correlation is not causation.
I did quote him correctly. He claimed gun violence would ensue if online poker were banned, using said claim as a scare tactic - and I called his bluff.
(Hand waving irrelevancies snipped.)
So, prior to the 'net, how many people were shot in the D.C. area per annum because they couldn't pay?
Copyright violations and all.
It's called an index or a bibliography. There exists a profession known as 'librarian' specifically trained in the creation of such and in the management of large numbers of documents.