He said that no one in the Navy was very interested in the ship. He speculated that it was partially because the crew complement was too small; he said that in the Navy you get promoted for commanding lots of people. He used the paint locker story as an example of how Navy guys were focusing on petty details and not paying attention to the big picture: that this was a ship that could sneak up on a task force, wreak serious havoc, and slip away again unchallenged.
Which, as I said, is indicative of Ben Rich's ignorance of the Navy - a paint locker isn't a petty detail. A paint locker is a matter of life or death if a Sea Shadow was ever damaged in combat. It's fine for Ben Rich to sit in his ivory tower and paint the big picture, but the Navy guys have to worry not only about the combat capability of the ship, but it's survivability in combat.
Other accounts I've heard through the grapevine over the years tend to support my interpretation - Rich offered the design to the Navy, which built and evaluated it. The Navy found it had little combat capability and low combat survivability, and lost interest. Rich then got pissed be he saw the Navy as rejecting his wonder weapon.
His conclusion was that he was better off dealing with the Air Force, because they actually were interested in advanced stealth technology.
The Air Force is also filled with guys interested in high technology for high technologies sake. In the Navy you get promoted for commanding things, but with the high tooth-to-tail ratio of the Air Force you get promoted for being a brilliant manager - especially if you are the brilliant manager who brings home a new shiny. Heck, as long as you fight the good fight against the bureaucracy and Congress, you don't even have to actually bring it home.
Is sneaking up on a superior force and blowing the heck out of it inconsistent with a power projection Navy? I'd like that one explained, too.
The Navy already has entire service branch dedicated to exactly that task - the original stealth service. The Submarine Service.
You also have to consider that a power projection Navy needs global range - something the Sea Shadow cannot do without requiring tremendous support while being less flexible than aircraft.
The US Air Force has gotten good use out of stealth aircraft to blow up air defense systems before the non-stealth aircraft make their attacks; is there some reason this sort of thing doesn't work for the US Navy? Or do you just believe the ship doesn't work as advertised?
The USN and USAF operate in completely different environments. The USN doesn't have to take out a missile battery to get at given tactical target - they have to take out entire ships. By the time Sea Shadow came on the scene, the USN had already worked out the combined arms tactics using aircraft and submarines in concert to defeat large enemy formations. The Sea Shadow didn't really bring anything useful to the picture.
And no, it doesn't actually work as well as advertised. Something you won't find in Skunk Works and only rarely discussed in the open literature is this: Against any halfway decent ASW radar (the kind they use to spot periscopes), the Sea Shadow stands out like a sore thumb - while the ship itself is invisible, it's wake is highly visible. If the Sea Shadow slows down to avoid leaving a detectable wake, the defenders have won because a ship sitting virtually still isn't sneaking up on anyone. It's being left behind in their wake.
No, the Navy didn't want it because it was very expensive and of limited combat utility. It might have been of some use to a primarily coastal defense navy, but it's useless to a power projection navy like the USN.
The paint locker story reflects Ben Rich's ignorance of the Navy and inability (or unwillingness) to listen to people other than himself. Had he asked, he'd have found that the paint locker is an important space on a warship - because the paint locker is where volatiles and flammables are stored. It has special ventilation and fire fighting provisions, something quite important on a ship that goes in harm's way.
The only engineering challenge I can think of would be preventing the up-going side from touching, or coming too near the down-going side. Potentially solved with two pulleys each on the ground and in space, each pair a kilometer or more apart so the 'tether' goes down, across, and then back up.
You missed:
The shock loads of clamping and unclamping the 'climber' on both the cable and the climber.
The vibrations caused by #1.
Decelerating the 'climber' when it unclamps.
Seriously increasing the difficulty because now you have the support structure, the lift wires, and all the structure needs to prevent vibrations from building up in the wire.
There's probably more, but that's all I could think of in ten seconds with my head fogged from a serious cold.
Not as staggering as it was five years ago only means it is not as staggering as five years - not that it still isn't staggering. Especially when you consider a petabyte a day means 36.5 exabytes a year.
Are you actually a rocket geek - or did you just roll that name randomly? Because an actual rocket geek would know how long Alan Bond has been pushing this concept.
What about the tested stuff? That's like having a tested transistor, a tested capacitor, a working prototype of a voltmeter, a well polished stone knife, a properly prepared bearskin - and announcing that you are ready to use them to build a supercomputer. They're virtually meaningless. Anyone who works around engineering, or who has a working knowledge of engineering, knows the real test is an integrated system. Something Reaction Engines doesn't even have the data to rough out a design before, yet alone build.
My comments? They aren't negative - they're factual. They only seem negative and in need of fact checking because most self proclaimed rocket fanboys are like you, completely and utterly ignorant.
It's the same old chicken and egg problem - nobody is going to seriously fund SPS until GEO heavy lift exists, but nobody is going to seriously fund GEO heavy lift until guaranteed payloads exist for it.
Notably they fail to mention what is expected to be the long pole in the tent - launch costs. Even if Musk and SpaceX succeed, launch costs will still be at least an order of magnitude higher than what is estimated will be required for commercial success of space based power plants.
If there's a mistake or something in your docs are unclear, you want the guy using the docs to be able to fix it right on the spot.
Editing the docs on the spot leads to nothing but chaos... What happens when the guy on the spot edits the docs not because they contain a mistake or are unclear, but because his understanding of them is imperfect? Or because he believes that step 'x' really isn't necessary? And it isn't ninety nine times out of a hundred - but on that hundredth time it's difference between finishing the job or [letting the magic smoke out|killing someone|leaving a customers machine naked on the net|or some other potentially costly error]. Maybe the next guy will spot the error in the procedure and fix it - or maybe the one guy who actually understands the procedure quit and joined a commune last week...
If you need formal documentation, then have formal documentation. Don't create something that looks like formal documentation, but is really no better than scribbled notes on the back of an office memo.
It seems to me that those missions were faster (or at least no slower) than 11 years in planning, and there were a lot more of them.
And they were a hell of a lot simpler with much more modest science goals.
So NASA was able to design and successfully produce a common bus and chassis for 10+ years' worth of Mariner probes, back in 1962, but they can't do it now in 2009, almost 50 years later? Something about that doesn't seem right to me.
Mostly because you wrongly assume the 10+ years of Mariner probes used a common bus and chassis. They didn't. There were some similarities in the structure, but that's about it, don't read too much into that one sentence from Wikipedia.
Whenever building something like this, the first one is always the most expensive, and after that the incremental cost is much cheaper.
Not as much as you might think. While development does run up a hefty bill, assembly does too because of the enormous amount of testing, verification, and QA involved in actually building the components and then assembling them into a spacecraft. Actually operating the probes runs up a hefty bill too - and one with near zero economies of scale.
instead of just launching one mission at a time, these space agencies need to make 5-10 copies at a time, and launch them all around the same time (or within a few years)
Why? For most science goals, you'll get the same amount of science from 10 probes as you would from one - you'll just get it earlier and pay a hell of a lot more to do so. You won't actually get more science.
The basics don't change. You need a vehicle to deliver a probe. That means, fuel, engines, guidance system, computers, communications. These can be standardised. Landers need to be custom, but an orbiter needn't be.
Sure, the basic of a Jupiter orbiter don't change. Nor do the basics of a Mars orbiter. But a Mars orbiter isn't a Jupiter orbiter - the orbital environments are wildly different, as the grandparent said... it's like designing a deep sea submarine that can also climb Mt. Everest.
Oh, my bad. Since there exists a company that got a loan, apparently the financial sector is rolling along smoothly. Silly me.
Where there exists one, there exists more.
Of course, simple lending statistics could have told you as much. One of my favorite stats is the near complete obliteration of the Baltic Dry Index. Companies have been leaving goods rotting on the docks because they haven't been able to get the loans to ship them.
If the index had any thing to do with the conclusion, you'd have a point.
It's not just business financing that's in a miserable state; a good chunk of the collapse of the car market, just to pick a random example is due to how much harder it is to get financing these days.
Of course the number of people without jobs couldn't possibly explain it. (Again, the business my wife works for has no problem securing financing for their customers.)
Just to make the scale of the car market collapse, here's just part of England's share. Start panning.
Given the picture is undated, your point is what exactly? (The copyright date is unreliable, as imagery of my house is 'dated' 2009, despite the car I sold three years ago plainly visible in the driveway.)
"I can't overstate (blank)" is such a cliche, but in the case of the severity of our current economic crisis, it really is a challenge to do so.
Except you not only have demonstrably overstated, you reject evidence that you have done so.
You're relatives may be smart and important, but you've fallen far from the tree.
Hint #1 - The Egyptians created images as well as describing them in text. Hint #2 - We have archeological evidence of Egyptian sanitary practices, and their sexual practices should be obvious.
In other words, you're willing to make wild claims without knowing shit about archeology or evaluating archeological evidence. - and now insist I teach you. Fuck off.
I.E. remains of plants in the tombs, records of their growth, examples in tomb or temple paintings, surviving examples, etc. etc.)
If they got hold of coca and/or tobacco as trade items ( i.e. bundled, dried leaves ), there's no reason to think they would have grown them or drawn pictures of them.
Quite the contrary - given the Egyptian's habits there is every reason to believe there would be pictures or drawings or some other account of the trade and consumption of the items. If they were used often enough for chemical traces to show up in the mummies, there's every reason to believe they would have been included in their grave goods.
Or to put it bluntly, for chemical traces to be present with no other evidence, and given the proclivity of the Egyptians to record and track their daily doings, and given the proclivity of the Egyptians to put things used in daily life into their tombs... the absence of things with regards to New World plants is very, very suspicious.
You can find evidence of ayahuasca dating back thousands of years, because it's brewed in clay pots. However, you don't find much evidence of coca dating back thousands of years, because it's just consumed as a dried leaf.
Which is important for the [New World] cultures from which those items originated - because we don't have the same level of archaeological evidence regarding those cultures as we do the ancient Egyptians. Not even a fraction.
Right now, about the only entities that *can* borrow money effectively are governments -- in particular, the US government.
The business my wife works for is stocking up for the summer, they just got a credit line for five million dollars - the same as they do every year.
$800B sounds like a lot, but we'll be lucky if it even manages to stop the slide, let alone pull us back.
Ah yes, taking money from one pocket (mine) and moving it someone else's pork barrel is a wonderful way to stop the slide. I suspect you've never heard of the Broken Window Fallacy.
Whats the big deal, are you so sure that over the thousands of years these civilizations existed, nobody ever made a boat trip across the atlantic?
No, I'm not 'so sure'. Nor am I so unintelligent as to assume that uncorroborated evidence has any value in determining whether they did or did not.
They weren't about to paint their tombs with farm records.
Which is an odd claim to make, since that is precisely what they did do. Not to mention the lack of the substances in question in their grave goods - which included everything earthly so they would have access to it in the afterlife.
I'm sure all kinds of cross pollination happened all over the planet in the thousands and thousands of years these large trading civilizations existed.
I'm sure the Egyptians, in all their many many years, could build some ships to make the journey.
All kinds of people are sure of all kinds of things - but being sure of them doesn't make them true. (And with the ships, you have the same problem as with the plants... a complete an utter lack of corroborating evidence.)
Entire Egyptian dynasties came and went in a time span dwarfing the few centuries that europe has been out of the stone age.
While the chemical traces are intriguing... a complete and utter lack of corroborating evidence (I.E. remains of plants in the tombs, records of their growth, examples in tomb or temple paintings, surviving examples, etc. etc.) renders them suspect.
Hmm... a quick google search leads me to the page you cut and pasted the above from - a page from an organization with a vested interest in finding evidence of cross pollination from the New World to the Old. I can find no other mentions of the first paper. The second paper, I can find references to - mostly defenses against debunkers, and curiously the defense consists mostly of "the chances of error are infinitesimal, and since the chances of error are so small we can assume that there are no errors".
Since then, policies and procedures have been put in place. You can no longer get in to edits wars without [[WP:3RR]] stopping you. You can no longer belittle editors who disagree with you without getting blocked for [[WP:NPA]]. You can no longer edit the article about your small open-source project without getting slapped for [[WP:COI]]
Yeah, all those things have been rolled into one meta game - WP:TAA. (Wikipedia:Toss Around Acronyms) The end result the is the same - the win goes to he who has the most time on his hands.
Did I mention that it's against Wikipedia policy to control articles on the Wiki, as per [[WP:OWNERSHIP]]
Yeah, that's part of WP:NRETISRG. (Wikipedia:Not Really Enforceable Though It Sounds Real Good.)
Even leaving out the political issues, Experts are few,and when well known, consider charging a lot for their work and would probably only devote time to getting published in a scholarly journal rather than some random website.
Not true at all - I know many experts (keep in mind that expert and academic are not synonyms) that would love to edit the Wikipedia. But each and every one has ultimately been driven from Wikipedia by various forms of asshattery.
It would be like running an open source project where the only people who are allowed to work on it are those people who hold a PHD or are certified to have 10 years experience programming with a major corporation.
And that's a problem - how? It reduces the pool available for participation, sure. But the project is still open source and thus forkable by any individual who cares to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Which, as I said, is indicative of Ben Rich's ignorance of the Navy - a paint locker isn't a petty detail. A paint locker is a matter of life or death if a Sea Shadow was ever damaged in combat. It's fine for Ben Rich to sit in his ivory tower and paint the big picture, but the Navy guys have to worry not only about the combat capability of the ship, but it's survivability in combat.
Other accounts I've heard through the grapevine over the years tend to support my interpretation - Rich offered the design to the Navy, which built and evaluated it. The Navy found it had little combat capability and low combat survivability, and lost interest. Rich then got pissed be he saw the Navy as rejecting his wonder weapon.
The Air Force is also filled with guys interested in high technology for high technologies sake. In the Navy you get promoted for commanding things, but with the high tooth-to-tail ratio of the Air Force you get promoted for being a brilliant manager - especially if you are the brilliant manager who brings home a new shiny. Heck, as long as you fight the good fight against the bureaucracy and Congress, you don't even have to actually bring it home.
The Navy already has entire service branch dedicated to exactly that task - the original stealth service. The Submarine Service.
You also have to consider that a power projection Navy needs global range - something the Sea Shadow cannot do without requiring tremendous support while being less flexible than aircraft.
The USN and USAF operate in completely different environments. The USN doesn't have to take out a missile battery to get at given tactical target - they have to take out entire ships. By the time Sea Shadow came on the scene, the USN had already worked out the combined arms tactics using aircraft and submarines in concert to defeat large enemy formations. The Sea Shadow didn't really bring anything useful to the picture.
And no, it doesn't actually work as well as advertised. Something you won't find in Skunk Works and only rarely discussed in the open literature is this: Against any halfway decent ASW radar (the kind they use to spot periscopes), the Sea Shadow stands out like a sore thumb - while the ship itself is invisible, it's wake is highly visible. If the Sea Shadow slows down to avoid leaving a detectable wake, the defenders have won because a ship sitting virtually still isn't sneaking up on anyone. It's being left behind in their wake.
No, the Navy didn't want it because it was very expensive and of limited combat utility. It might have been of some use to a primarily coastal defense navy, but it's useless to a power projection navy like the USN.
The paint locker story reflects Ben Rich's ignorance of the Navy and inability (or unwillingness) to listen to people other than himself. Had he asked, he'd have found that the paint locker is an important space on a warship - because the paint locker is where volatiles and flammables are stored. It has special ventilation and fire fighting provisions, something quite important on a ship that goes in harm's way.
Actually, if you read the page - you'll note that rocket engines are specified, not jet engines.
You missed:
There's probably more, but that's all I could think of in ten seconds with my head fogged from a serious cold.
The summary used Company A and Company B, the editor's comment tagged the Latvian vendor.
Not as staggering as it was five years ago only means it is not as staggering as five years - not that it still isn't staggering. Especially when you consider a petabyte a day means 36.5 exabytes a year.
Are you actually a rocket geek - or did you just roll that name randomly? Because an actual rocket geek would know how long Alan Bond has been pushing this concept.
What about the tested stuff? That's like having a tested transistor, a tested capacitor, a working prototype of a voltmeter, a well polished stone knife, a properly prepared bearskin - and announcing that you are ready to use them to build a supercomputer. They're virtually meaningless. Anyone who works around engineering, or who has a working knowledge of engineering, knows the real test is an integrated system. Something Reaction Engines doesn't even have the data to rough out a design before, yet alone build.
My comments? They aren't negative - they're factual. They only seem negative and in need of fact checking because most self proclaimed rocket fanboys are like you, completely and utterly ignorant.
It's the same old chicken and egg problem - nobody is going to seriously fund SPS until GEO heavy lift exists, but nobody is going to seriously fund GEO heavy lift until guaranteed payloads exist for it.
Except this is about the tenth time they've been funded over the last twenty years, with nothing to show for it but ever spiffier computer graphics.
Notably they fail to mention what is expected to be the long pole in the tent - launch costs. Even if Musk and SpaceX succeed, launch costs will still be at least an order of magnitude higher than what is estimated will be required for commercial success of space based power plants.
Editing the docs on the spot leads to nothing but chaos... What happens when the guy on the spot edits the docs not because they contain a mistake or are unclear, but because his understanding of them is imperfect? Or because he believes that step 'x' really isn't necessary? And it isn't ninety nine times out of a hundred - but on that hundredth time it's difference between finishing the job or [letting the magic smoke out|killing someone|leaving a customers machine naked on the net|or some other potentially costly error]. Maybe the next guy will spot the error in the procedure and fix it - or maybe the one guy who actually understands the procedure quit and joined a commune last week...
If you need formal documentation, then have formal documentation. Don't create something that looks like formal documentation, but is really no better than scribbled notes on the back of an office memo.
And they were a hell of a lot simpler with much more modest science goals.
Mostly because you wrongly assume the 10+ years of Mariner probes used a common bus and chassis. They didn't. There were some similarities in the structure, but that's about it, don't read too much into that one sentence from Wikipedia.
Not as much as you might think. While development does run up a hefty bill, assembly does too because of the enormous amount of testing, verification, and QA involved in actually building the components and then assembling them into a spacecraft. Actually operating the probes runs up a hefty bill too - and one with near zero economies of scale.
Why? For most science goals, you'll get the same amount of science from 10 probes as you would from one - you'll just get it earlier and pay a hell of a lot more to do so. You won't actually get more science.
Sure, the basic of a Jupiter orbiter don't change. Nor do the basics of a Mars orbiter. But a Mars orbiter isn't a Jupiter orbiter - the orbital environments are wildly different, as the grandparent said... it's like designing a deep sea submarine that can also climb Mt. Everest.
Given that I have 30-45 years left on my probable lifespan, it's coming out of my pocket.
Where there exists one, there exists more.
If the index had any thing to do with the conclusion, you'd have a point.
Of course the number of people without jobs couldn't possibly explain it. (Again, the business my wife works for has no problem securing financing for their customers.)
Given the picture is undated, your point is what exactly? (The copyright date is unreliable, as imagery of my house is 'dated' 2009, despite the car I sold three years ago plainly visible in the driveway.)
Except you not only have demonstrably overstated, you reject evidence that you have done so.
You're relatives may be smart and important, but you've fallen far from the tree.
Hint #1 - The Egyptians created images as well as describing them in text.
Hint #2 - We have archeological evidence of Egyptian sanitary practices, and their sexual practices should be obvious.
In other words, you're willing to make wild claims without knowing shit about archeology or evaluating archeological evidence. - and now insist I teach you. Fuck off.
Quite the contrary - given the Egyptian's habits there is every reason to believe there would be pictures or drawings or some other account of the trade and consumption of the items. If they were used often enough for chemical traces to show up in the mummies, there's every reason to believe they would have been included in their grave goods.
Or to put it bluntly, for chemical traces to be present with no other evidence, and given the proclivity of the Egyptians to record and track their daily doings, and given the proclivity of the Egyptians to put things used in daily life into their tombs... the absence of things with regards to New World plants is very, very suspicious.
Which is important for the [New World] cultures from which those items originated - because we don't have the same level of archaeological evidence regarding those cultures as we do the ancient Egyptians. Not even a fraction.
You want a pink unicorn too? It's just about as plausible.
The business my wife works for is stocking up for the summer, they just got a credit line for five million dollars - the same as they do every year.
Ah yes, taking money from one pocket (mine) and moving it someone else's pork barrel is a wonderful way to stop the slide. I suspect you've never heard of the Broken Window Fallacy.
No, I'm not 'so sure'. Nor am I so unintelligent as to assume that uncorroborated evidence has any value in determining whether they did or did not.
Which is an odd claim to make, since that is precisely what they did do. Not to mention the lack of the substances in question in their grave goods - which included everything earthly so they would have access to it in the afterlife.
All kinds of people are sure of all kinds of things - but being sure of them doesn't make them true. (And with the ships, you have the same problem as with the plants... a complete an utter lack of corroborating evidence.)
You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
While the chemical traces are intriguing... a complete and utter lack of corroborating evidence (I.E. remains of plants in the tombs, records of their growth, examples in tomb or temple paintings, surviving examples, etc. etc.) renders them suspect.
Hmm... a quick google search leads me to the page you cut and pasted the above from - a page from an organization with a vested interest in finding evidence of cross pollination from the New World to the Old. I can find no other mentions of the first paper. The second paper, I can find references to - mostly defenses against debunkers, and curiously the defense consists mostly of "the chances of error are infinitesimal, and since the chances of error are so small we can assume that there are no errors".
That makes no sense whatsoever. The grandparent is discussing the skill of the writer, but the value of the reference.
Yeah, all those things have been rolled into one meta game - WP:TAA. (Wikipedia:Toss Around Acronyms) The end result the is the same - the win goes to he who has the most time on his hands.
Yeah, that's part of WP:NRETISRG. (Wikipedia:Not Really Enforceable Though It Sounds Real Good.)
Not true at all - I know many experts (keep in mind that expert and academic are not synonyms) that would love to edit the Wikipedia. But each and every one has ultimately been driven from Wikipedia by various forms of asshattery.
And that's a problem - how? It reduces the pool available for participation, sure. But the project is still open source and thus forkable by any individual who cares to do so.