Despite their 'proximity' to space, they are still deep within the atmosphere and at a pressure considerably above that typical of plasmas. Looks can be decieving.
Jordan had no personal interest in monetary fortunes. His story was alive within him, and as all things that grow in nature, this story grew above and beyond his dreams and took its own course. George R R Martin is experiencing a similar pain with his series, as did Terry Goodkind. The stories and worlds simply become so vast, that in order to move one's characters to the end of the story, it takes more volumes than one expects.
Or to put it simply - the authors you list lack the skills or the discipline to edit what they write. (And the audience is uncritical enough to be unable to tell the difference.)
If ever you wonder why Hollywood turns outs repetitive unispired crap, and endless sequels of the same, one need look no further than the shelf of endless series of books to understand why.
In addition, Virgin Galactic is considering using White Knight 2, or possible its successor White Knight 3, to put small satellites in orbit for a cost of US$3 million, less than half the current front runner in (projected) low cost orbital launches; SpaceX's Falcon at US$6.7 million.
That's a bit of a nonsensical comparison. The small satellites White Knight will able to launch will be a fraction of the size of that which could be launched by Falcon. Kinda like saying "I'm going to use a Vespa for package delivery because it is cheaper than a panel van".
I know quite well what sunk costs are. I also know that loss aversion is a fallacy - doubly so in this instance as the profit margins aren't that big on commercial aircraft. And no, sucessful aircraft builders don't 'routinely fail' to recover development costs - because if they did, they would be bankrupt. Period.
It depends upon the task at hand what tool is best.
Certainly - and when the task at hand is to do observational science, humans outstrip robots by orders of magnitude.
Robots, machines, and computers have and continue to replace humans at specific tasks.
Certainly - but geological field research isn't a specific task, it is an extraordinarily wide range of disparate tasks.
You do not have a valid comparison when you IGNORE the job being performed: which IS NOT walking on earth (thats YOUR comparison task.)
You need to re-read my original post. Do keep in mind that this is a conversation, and one is expected to both keep up and to remember what has been said before.
POINT: COST TO BENEFIT RATIO.
I invite you to examine the cost of the MER program with its extremely limited scientific ability - and then extrapolate that out to the broad range of scientific capabilities of a manned expedition. It's not clear at all that then dozens of unmanned missions it would take to replace a single manned expedition leave the cost/benefit ratio tilted in favor of the unmanned ones.
FYI: I'm allowed to insult and insinuate as much as I want, sorry if your thin skinned;
Oh, certainly you are allowed to insult and insinuate as much as you want. It's not that I'm thin skinned, but that your almost immediate recourse to it shows fundemental weaknesses in your arguments. (And that you are either aware of them, or are merely a habitual jackass who is also ignorant. The evidence now supports the latter conclusion.)
The only reason Concorde could afford to fly was the two goverments involved wrote off the development costs and presented them to the respective airlines for free. (And, not incidentally, save face for the respective goverments and enlarge the size of the virtual national penises.)
Well, it can't have been too large an expense, if the planes flew until there was an accident. As I see it, if it were a real burden, they would have found some way to kill it much earlier while saving face.
You confuse two different costs. The airlines could afford to operate the aircraft - but the could not afford to buy the aircraft, because the enormously expensive development program, when amortized across the few aircraft built, meant they would have been unaffordable. Ticket prices that included both the purchase cost and the operations costs (as ticket prices usually do) would have been in the high six figures. But the British and French goverments paid off those development costs, and presented the aircraft to the airlines for free.
Sure, the market is there for supersonic flight. We can also build a machine that can make it happen. (So long as you constrain it to essentially transatlantic ranges.) What can't do is build said machine at a price the (fairly small) market will support.
Maybe all such modes of transportation will be too expensive for the market size, but we need more than one data point.
We have a whole stack of data points - Concorde wasn't the only SST under development, just the only one that had someone willing to foot the [enourmous] bill so that it could it be completed.
You are confusing then and now. At the time aviations infancy - most travel was commercial or high end tourist. The aviation industry took on those markets head on, competing with ships and trains, and beat them hands down. The short term business and tourist trips common today came about much later as the industry matured.
Exactly the model that space flight would use if it gets anywhere. Start with small markets that can be served best by space flight and expand from there. A good part of the reason space flight is a lot like airflight.
Sure - but first you have to have a competitive market where spaceflight is better. There isn't any, which pretty much invalidates the entire comparison.
You need to come up with valid reasons why aerospace isn't comparable to outer space.
He came of with plenty of valid reasons. You need to come up with better criticisms than incorrect historical references, airy handwaving, and unsupported "I believe"'s
So you say. I point out two relevant details. First, it's not terribly important that airplanes had competition from other transportation sectors. In fact, that would inhibit air travel because the presence of alternate forms of travel would take some of the demand that would otherwise go to airplanes. Second, space flight can compete with all these modes of transportation via suborbital flights. So space flight inherits whatever magical property airflight gets from that.
First, it's vitally important that said competition exists, because (as in any market) demonstrating a demand makes it far easier to get capital, far easier to market, etc... etc... It also means that space travel can start small and compete in a segment of the market rather than the entire market. (So far, just like the development of aviation.) But it's on your second point that your comparision falls apart - because suborbital travel cannot compete with air travel. Air travel got it's start on short high demand routes (between NY and Chicago, or between London and Paris, for examples), and no such analogous route exists for suborbital travel. You pretty much have to leap from short routes to intercontinental routes, which is leaping from the Ford Trimotor to the 747 in a single bound. The cost of development and the cost of the infrastructure means the flight costs cannot possibly be competitive - unless you can find somebody to write off a few tens of billions of dollars.
And that's ultimately the key problem - the extraordinarily steep learning curve and incredibly high entrance costs.
The original poster's ultimate flaw was the assertion that there were "few reasons" (elsewhere "no reasons") to go into space. I point out that the real problem is that there are plenty of reasons, but space flight costs too much.
You confuse far fetched science fiction scenarios with reasons to go into space. Even if what is usually considered space flight in these discussions (LEO) is cheap, your destinations will remain expensive - because they have special requirements above and beyond orbital acess. The rest of us are discussing how to cross the English Channel - and you are discussing voyages to Australia. Your arguement is thus moot.
But my scenario means that we see considerable rise in demand because there will be reasons that were too expensive in the past to entertain, but are now affordable to pursue.
The problem is your scenarion bears no relation to reality, it much more resembles that of the underpants gnomes.
It's not a new tack at all - whenever Wikipedia gets a run of bad publicity, Jimbo trots out his "oh, we are just some website, not really an encyclopedia" humble pie. He'll soon be back to discussing the how the release version of Wikipedia will wipe out all existing encyclopedias.
No, it's not peer reviewed. Read the article on [Academic] Peer Review, and compare it to the article on Wikipedia's peer review process. Note how the latter is very clear that it is not the former, and the former makes it clear why this is so.
Every fact on Wikipedia has a link back to the primary source.
Every fact? Not by at least a couple orders of magnitude. Hell, I just chose a term at random, Film, and found almost no citations! I click on 'Film Crew'... And find no links there either. I click on "First Assistant Director" off of that, am redirected to "Assistant Director"... still no links.
You aren't allowed to cite Britannica in any real class either, you have to follow the exact same procedure, so there is no difference.
I've taken real classes - and you most certainly are allowed to cite the Britannica, though you'll be in trouble if you cite it for other than general purposes.
No, its not following the path of aviation. See, aviation competed with trains and boats, and eventually won. The space industry isn't competing with any other industry. While there are many reasons to go from London to New York, there are few reasons to go from some pacific island to the moon, other than research or publicity.
Most of the business that airlines serve didn't exist when there were only boats and trains. I'd say most of the passenger traffic is short term business or tourism trips. Go somewhere else in the world by plane, stay a few days or weeks, and return. Airlines don't compete with anything else for that business.
You are confusing then and now. At the time aviations infancy - most travel was commercial or high end tourist. The aviation industry took on those markets head on, competing with ships and trains, and beat them hands down. The short term business and tourist trips common today came about much later as the industry matured.
You need to come up with valid reasons why aerospace isn't comparable to outer space.
He came of with plenty of valid reasons. You need to come up with better criticisms than incorrect historical references, airy handwaving, and unsupported "I believe"'s,
The reason the Concorde isn't flying any more had more to do with safety concerns and the age of the airplanes that were in service, rather than a lack of demand for something which could go that fast.
The only reason Concorde could afford to fly was the two goverments involved wrote off the development costs and presented them to the respective airlines for free. (And, not incidentally, save face for the respective goverments and enlarge the size of the virtual national penises.)
The market certainly is there... if you can build the machine to make it happen.
Sure, the market is there for supersonic flight. We can also build a machine that can make it happen. (So long as you constrain it to essentially transatlantic ranges.) What can't do is build said machine at a price the (fairly small) market will support.
Supersonic civil aviation is one of those technologies that was hyped long before the reality was known.
Hell, my wifes guppies have probably cost me nearly a grand over the last three years - between two tank upgrades, filter and pump upgrades, not to mention consumables. But they make her happy, so it's money well spent. (Not to mention I can hardly complain given what I spend on my hobbies.)
1) Yes. Humans can outdo the robots we could send today. Barring unexpected breakthroughs in multipls fields, humans could outdo robots we could send in a decade or more. Robots simply aren't as advanced as you think they are. (Hell, a single human could _walk_ the distance covered by _both_ rovers in a leisurely afternoon.)
2) Is a nonsensical argument without a point.
3) Ditto. (And wrong on the facts to boot.)
The amusing part is that after getting your facts wrong - you turn to argument by insult and insinuation. You haven't taken my argument apart, but you have shown your true colors and lack of knowledge.
If that 90% continues to willingly tolerate the 10%... Then why shouldn't they be tarred with the same brush? In theory, they could rid themselves of the pissants. But they don't.
Sure the community "appreciates" folks who are knowledgeable... (Yeah, right.)
But the people who gain power in the Wikpedia structure are the people who play the political game, who make a million tiny edits to boost their numbers, master the WP:ACRONYM system, etc... etc... It is a meritocracy, but the merit they reward isn't knowledge worthy of an article - but the knowledge of how to game the system.
To provide an alternative to Negroponte's dicates as to what OS a computer should run. Lock in is bad, not matter who turns the key.
And a completely open, Free software suite, adaptable and extensible by anyone who chooses, is called 'lock in' now?
Cost is irrelevant when it comes to determining if a lock in exists - only the extent to which the users choices are or are not limited. Preventing acess to a large portion of the software available and preventing compatibility with the largest single OS 'demographic' is lock in by any rational definition of the word. Philosophical spin doesn't change that.
To povides users of the XO with acess to a much larger proportion of the software available in the world, rather than limiting them by fiat. Freedom of choice includes the freedom to make bad choices - and freedom of choice is good.
Fiat - it all sounds so authoritarian when you use words like that.
That's because it is authoritarian. OLPC decided what OS the end users get to use - they are allowed no choice. Once again, marketdroid and philosophical spinning doesn't change that fact.
To summarize simply: It doesn't matter who the philosophical leader of the project is - Negroponte or Gates, both should be held to the same standard.
Oh, I couldn't agree more. Wake me up if Gates ever shows even a fraction of Negroponte's open-mindedness and enlightenment.
In other words, while agreeing that everyone should be held to the same standard - you issue Negroponte a free pass, thus negating the agreement. You've drunk so deeply of the kool aid, the logical inconsistency of this utterly escapes you. Pretty much as it does throughout your whole response.
Negroponte's strategy leaves to game open to anyone to pick up the ball and play. Microsoft, on the other hand, won't even play until the lines are re-drawn to favour them.
If as an administrator, I can't buy a piece of Window educational software and run it on the XO - it isn't open. I can't play in the way I want, I'm forced to play by Negroponte's rules.
OLPC's commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptops on their own terms. The children--and their teachers--have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content. There's even a button located on the keyboard that allows children to view the programming behind certain applications.
Except - the children can't use their laptops on their own terms. They can only use them within the framework dictated by fiat from OLPC. They have no choice as to which family of OS's to run. The XO comes with exactly one hardware configuration, and isn't compatible with stock PC expansions... So, no customization there either. The XO runs Linux, so software written for Windows (including educational software) is unavailable to them as well. Etc... Etc...
If it was Microsoft writing such marketdroid bilge -/. would, rightly, tear them apart. But, since it is OLPC, they get free pass.
Let's just summarise by asking one simple question: Why?
To provide an alternative to Negroponte's dicates as to what OS a computer should run. Lock in is bad, not matter who turns the key.
To povides users of the XO with acess to a much larger proportion of the software available in the world, rather than limiting them by fiat. Freedom of choice includes the freedom to make bad choices - and freedom of choice is good.
Etc... Etc...
To summarize simply: It doesn't matter who the philosophical leader of the project is - Negroponte or Gates, both should be held to the same standard.
Slashdot Mirror
Despite their 'proximity' to space, they are still deep within the atmosphere and at a pressure considerably above that typical of plasmas. Looks can be decieving.
Or, in other words, despite 'finishing' the series - the franchise will live on and on.
Or to put it simply - the authors you list lack the skills or the discipline to edit what they write. (And the audience is uncritical enough to be unable to tell the difference.)
If ever you wonder why Hollywood turns outs repetitive unispired crap, and endless sequels of the same, one need look no further than the shelf of endless series of books to understand why.
That's a bit of a nonsensical comparison. The small satellites White Knight will able to launch will be a fraction of the size of that which could be launched by Falcon. Kinda like saying "I'm going to use a Vespa for package delivery because it is cheaper than a panel van".
I know quite well what sunk costs are. I also know that loss aversion is a fallacy - doubly so in this instance as the profit margins aren't that big on commercial aircraft. And no, sucessful aircraft builders don't 'routinely fail' to recover development costs - because if they did, they would be bankrupt. Period.
That's your belief. That's not a fact. There is a difference.
It seems like a case of using advanced technology to solve an ongoing problem.
No, development costs are not sunk costs, if an aircraft builder does not recover development costs, they go out of business.
Certainly - and when the task at hand is to do observational science, humans outstrip robots by orders of magnitude.
Certainly - but geological field research isn't a specific task, it is an extraordinarily wide range of disparate tasks.
You need to re-read my original post. Do keep in mind that this is a conversation, and one is expected to both keep up and to remember what has been said before.
I invite you to examine the cost of the MER program with its extremely limited scientific ability - and then extrapolate that out to the broad range of scientific capabilities of a manned expedition. It's not clear at all that then dozens of unmanned missions it would take to replace a single manned expedition leave the cost/benefit ratio tilted in favor of the unmanned ones.
Oh, certainly you are allowed to insult and insinuate as much as you want. It's not that I'm thin skinned, but that your almost immediate recourse to it shows fundemental weaknesses in your arguments. (And that you are either aware of them, or are merely a habitual jackass who is also ignorant. The evidence now supports the latter conclusion.)
You confuse two different costs. The airlines could afford to operate the aircraft - but the could not afford to buy the aircraft, because the enormously expensive development program, when amortized across the few aircraft built, meant they would have been unaffordable. Ticket prices that included both the purchase cost and the operations costs (as ticket prices usually do) would have been in the high six figures. But the British and French goverments paid off those development costs, and presented the aircraft to the airlines for free.
We have a whole stack of data points - Concorde wasn't the only SST under development, just the only one that had someone willing to foot the [enourmous] bill so that it could it be completed.
Sure - but first you have to have a competitive market where spaceflight is better. There isn't any, which pretty much invalidates the entire comparison.
First, it's vitally important that said competition exists, because (as in any market) demonstrating a demand makes it far easier to get capital, far easier to market, etc... etc... It also means that space travel can start small and compete in a segment of the market rather than the entire market. (So far, just like the development of aviation.) But it's on your second point that your comparision falls apart - because suborbital travel cannot compete with air travel. Air travel got it's start on short high demand routes (between NY and Chicago, or between London and Paris, for examples), and no such analogous route exists for suborbital travel. You pretty much have to leap from short routes to intercontinental routes, which is leaping from the Ford Trimotor to the 747 in a single bound. The cost of development and the cost of the infrastructure means the flight costs cannot possibly be competitive - unless you can find somebody to write off a few tens of billions of dollars.
And that's ultimately the key problem - the extraordinarily steep learning curve and incredibly high entrance costs.
You confuse far fetched science fiction scenarios with reasons to go into space. Even if what is usually considered space flight in these discussions (LEO) is cheap, your destinations will remain expensive - because they have special requirements above and beyond orbital acess. The rest of us are discussing how to cross the English Channel - and you are discussing voyages to Australia. Your arguement is thus moot.
The problem is your scenarion bears no relation to reality, it much more resembles that of the underpants gnomes.
It's not a new tack at all - whenever Wikipedia gets a run of bad publicity, Jimbo trots out his "oh, we are just some website, not really an encyclopedia" humble pie. He'll soon be back to discussing the how the release version of Wikipedia will wipe out all existing encyclopedias.
No, it's not peer reviewed. Read the article on [Academic] Peer Review, and compare it to the article on Wikipedia's peer review process. Note how the latter is very clear that it is not the former, and the former makes it clear why this is so.
Every fact? Not by at least a couple orders of magnitude. Hell, I just chose a term at random, Film, and found almost no citations! I click on 'Film Crew'... And find no links there either. I click on "First Assistant Director" off of that, am redirected to "Assistant Director"... still no links.
I've taken real classes - and you most certainly are allowed to cite the Britannica, though you'll be in trouble if you cite it for other than general purposes.
You are confusing then and now. At the time aviations infancy - most travel was commercial or high end tourist. The aviation industry took on those markets head on, competing with ships and trains, and beat them hands down. The short term business and tourist trips common today came about much later as the industry matured.
He came of with plenty of valid reasons. You need to come up with better criticisms than incorrect historical references, airy handwaving, and unsupported "I believe"'s,
The only reason Concorde could afford to fly was the two goverments involved wrote off the development costs and presented them to the respective airlines for free. (And, not incidentally, save face for the respective goverments and enlarge the size of the virtual national penises.)
Sure, the market is there for supersonic flight. We can also build a machine that can make it happen. (So long as you constrain it to essentially transatlantic ranges.) What can't do is build said machine at a price the (fairly small) market will support.
Supersonic civil aviation is one of those technologies that was hyped long before the reality was known.
Hell, my wifes guppies have probably cost me nearly a grand over the last three years - between two tank upgrades, filter and pump upgrades, not to mention consumables. But they make her happy, so it's money well spent. (Not to mention I can hardly complain given what I spend on my hobbies.)
1) Yes. Humans can outdo the robots we could send today. Barring unexpected breakthroughs in multipls fields, humans could outdo robots we could send in a decade or more. Robots simply aren't as advanced as you think they are. (Hell, a single human could _walk_ the distance covered by _both_ rovers in a leisurely afternoon.)
2) Is a nonsensical argument without a point.
3) Ditto. (And wrong on the facts to boot.)
The amusing part is that after getting your facts wrong - you turn to argument by insult and insinuation. You haven't taken my argument apart, but you have shown your true colors and lack of knowledge.
The persistence of dodgy administrators in the system indicates the process isn't working.
Hmm? Did you miss this article? Or this policy?
There is plenty of arbitary and secret activities going 'round on Wikipedia.
If that 90% continues to willingly tolerate the 10%... Then why shouldn't they be tarred with the same brush? In theory, they could rid themselves of the pissants. But they don't.
Sure the community "appreciates" folks who are knowledgeable... (Yeah, right.)
But the people who gain power in the Wikpedia structure are the people who play the political game, who make a million tiny edits to boost their numbers, master the WP:ACRONYM system, etc... etc... It is a meritocracy, but the merit they reward isn't knowledge worthy of an article - but the knowledge of how to game the system.
Cost is irrelevant when it comes to determining if a lock in exists - only the extent to which the users choices are or are not limited. Preventing acess to a large portion of the software available and preventing compatibility with the largest single OS 'demographic' is lock in by any rational definition of the word. Philosophical spin doesn't change that.
That's because it is authoritarian. OLPC decided what OS the end users get to use - they are allowed no choice. Once again, marketdroid and philosophical spinning doesn't change that fact.
In other words, while agreeing that everyone should be held to the same standard - you issue Negroponte a free pass, thus negating the agreement. You've drunk so deeply of the kool aid, the logical inconsistency of this utterly escapes you. Pretty much as it does throughout your whole response.
If as an administrator, I can't buy a piece of Window educational software and run it on the XO - it isn't open. I can't play in the way I want, I'm forced to play by Negroponte's rules.
As I said, double standards FTW. You've drunk too deeply of the kool-aid.
Except - the children can't use their laptops on their own terms. They can only use them within the framework dictated by fiat from OLPC. They have no choice as to which family of OS's to run. The XO comes with exactly one hardware configuration, and isn't compatible with stock PC expansions... So, no customization there either. The XO runs Linux, so software written for Windows (including educational software) is unavailable to them as well. Etc... Etc...
If it was Microsoft writing such marketdroid bilge -
Double standards FTW.
To summarize simply: It doesn't matter who the philosophical leader of the project is - Negroponte or Gates, both should be held to the same standard.