Only in some fantasy world where "money spent on Mars" isn't actually spent on Earth.
NASA programs are routinely porkified - the whole Orion/Ares program is hobbled because it is required to keep existing jobs in place, and existing contractors happy and cornfed.
Man on Mars timelines are so long that robots will be much better at that time.
Folks have been saying this for nearly forty years.
We can out perform human exploration NOW!
Let's put in perspective just how good robots are today: They work done (together) by Spirit and Opportunity over the last three years? Could have been done by a single human geologist in just three months (or less). Robots simply aren't as good as humans for exploratory tasks. They aren't even close.
True, but this reveals a great lack of motivation and vision among U.S. lawmakers.
No, it reveals the great frustration of US lawmakers with NASA for screwing up and mismanaging project after expensive project, year after wearying year. Between the overhyped and overpriced Shuttle program (and two very visible accidents on top of other problems), Hubble, the ongoing disaster that is ISS, and whole string of less visible projects... Congress simply doesn't trust NASA.
Historically, post-Apollo, NASA has tried to spin every project it can into being a precursor for manned Mars missions... Which Congress has historically been uninterested in funding. (This 'ban' isn't the first such, nor even the second...) Worse yet, NASA has also (historically) tried every trick in the book in the book to get around the 'bans', further engendering mistrust of them in Congress.
NASA has been hobbled practically since it's birth by the Shuttle - Station - Mars!! vision laid out by Werner Von Braun and enthusiastically endorsed by early NASA administrators. Yes Virginia - the Shuttle program has been around that long, the earliest studies are contemporary with the Mercury project. Many in NASA (at the time) felt that Max Faget and the STG represented a shortcut to beating the Russians and a way of getting early engineering experience before getting to the real task at hand - developing a shuttle and all the rest of Von Braun's vision.
Instead of getting the public fired up about space exploration, as two administrations in the 1960s succeeded in doing, year by year NASA takes another punch in the gut by funding cuts.
Except - in real life it didn't happen that way. The Apollo (Lunar) program was an accident of a) the Cold War, and b) the Kennedy assassination. Before he died, Jack Kennedy was already seeking to distance himself from, and minimize the program. When he was killed, Apollo was funded as his memorial. Even so, budget cutbacks started as soon as they could be managed - Apollo landing missions and post Apollo programs were being cancelled or cut back as early as 1966! By the time we actually reached the moon, the program was already running on vapors.
So far as public interest goes - just look at the TV numbers of the various landing missions. The great public interest, much ballyhooed by space fanboys, simply never existed.
That, and when they fixed the lens they also replaced all of the on-board electronics, because JPL and NASA had consumed too much of the component life before the satellite was even launched into space.
Except - they didn't replace all the on-board electronics when they installed the fix for the mirror. (Hubble's problem was a flawed mirror - not a flawed lens.)
Hint: if you want to lifetime test a part to make sure it's reliable, don't use that part in your satellite after burning up its usable life. Buy two parts from the same batch, test one, and use the other one.
Hint: NASA and JPL know that. You don't seem to know much of anything, since both of the 'facts' in your introductory statement are actually 'fantasies'.
Article states, "Griffin initiated a study last year into alternative ways to deliver the AMS to the station, but they proved to be prohibitively expensive." Does anyone know if this includes any of the nascent commercial carriers?
Given that there really aren't any 'nascent commercial carriers' - SpaceX is years late (and recently boosted its prices...) and Kistler is as much vaporware as ever. You'll likely have to depend on existing commercial carriers (Boeing and Lockmart).
The problem with cost however isn't launch costs - it's replacing all the support services (power, cooling, attitude control, etc...) that the ISS would have provided. (I've been telling folks for years - when launch costs drop, a lot of folks are going to be very surprised when satellite and spaceborne equipment costs don't...)
That's great - if your goal is to analyze the statistical properties of the RNG. It kinda sucks if your goal is to conduct research or marketing in the real world.
So this is what Slashdot has become - reporting not news, but a rumor. Worse yet, what seems to make the rumor worth publishing? That a popular webcomic published it.
Maybe we were launching bombs off pylons as supersonic speeds, but probably not bomb bays.
Wrong. The A-12 launched its missles from bomb bays. The B-70 dropped its bombs from bomb bays. Then there is the F-102 and -106.
As the article indicates, supersonic airstream around the plane would have blown the bomb back into the bomb bay, with obviously disastrous results.
That's true for bombs/missiles dropped under gravity alone. That's not true for bombs/missiles ejected rather than dropped.
What this technology does is use small jets to locally slow down the airstream around the bomb bay so that the bomb can fall out of the bay without getting pushed back inside.
Back in the fifties and sixties they either used an ejector system to force the bomb/missile clear of the aircraft or a 'trapeze' to lower the bomb/missile clear of the bomb bay.
Von Braun et. al. were working on a nuclear rocket back in the day for such a mission. Just look up NERVA.
Sure, they were working on it. They were also a long, long way from making it practical. (Among many other things, there are some pretty serious questions about materials unanswered as of yet.) For all intents and purposed NERVA (and related projects) were probably about as far from a useful engine as Von Braun was from the Saturn V when he was piddling about with the Verein für Raumschiffahrt.
Fission reactors have been about for 60 years now. We know how to make them safe and efficient.
Apples and caterpillars. NERVA and Timberwind et. al. have very little in common with power reactors.
Each Saturn V cost $100 million to buy - it cost another $75-100 million to checkout and launch. (In addition to this there is also is each flights share of the annual infrastructure costs.)
Contrast that with the "reusable" space shuttle that has to be pretty much rebuilt from the ground up after every mision - $500 million dollars a flight.
Wrong on both counts.
First a Shuttle isn't anywhere near 'rebuilt' between flights. (And don't hand me that "they rebuild the engines after every flight". They don't, and haven't for nearly a decade.) Second, the marginal cost of a Shuttle flight (I.E. adding a flight to the manifest) is under $100/million a flight. Just like the Saturn V, it's low flight rate means the per flight cost is dominated by that flight's share of the fixed annual costs.
At the end of the day - the difference in cost between the two is much, much less than urban legend has it. (Especially because Shuttle flights include the costs of the manned portion, the capsule if you will, and the Saturn costs... don't.)
A modified Saturn 5 would need a lot fewer missions to assemble shit in orbit, like the ISS.
Sure, you could assemble it faster - if you were willing to pay in excess of a billion dollars a shot. Saturn V class payloads don't come around too often, so all those infrastructure costs come back and bite you in the ass when you have to amortize years of support costs across a handful of flights.
Huh? The USAF was launching bombs (and missles) out of bomb bays (and off of pylons) at supersonic speeds back in the 1950's.
This new system is probably needed because the rotary launcher used by the B-1 doesn't allow enough clearance for, or won't take the stresses associated with, the kicker systems used back then.
While this is very cool, it does bring up a pet peeve of mine: why can't devices show accurate battery life?
The individual who can figure out how to do this with cheap consumer grade components under the wide variety of load condtions even a single cell phone encounters... Is in for a life of fame and fortune. Predicting battery life, even under ideal conditions, is a crapshoot at best.
To be more specific. Conceptually, imagine a device that holds three small batteries instead of one large one, and drains them in succession one after the other. The battery life measurement on each battery would be somewhat imprecise, but when you'd exhausted the first battery you'd know that you really had 2/3 of the charge left; when you'd exhausted the second, you'd know that you really had 1/3 left.
Somebody is reading too much into the "batteries are like buckets of electricity" analogy we all got back in school. Real batteries don't work quite like that.
The problem is - if that energy was released fast enough to break bones... They wouldn't have found 'burnt and melted' remains of a cell phone. They'd have found a corpse with a hole in its chest, and fragments of cellphone scattered across a fairly wide area.
They were pretty common in the 70's, I got more than a few vaccinations using them. Oddly enough, when I was in the Navy in the 80's I rarely saw them.
Furthermore, the kite has upward lift, which helps pull the bow out of the water. This makes it feel less of the effects of waves, smoothing out the ride a bit.
Unless they put a lot of [heavy] steel stiffening in, the ship will flex at the attachment point rather than lift the bow. Ships aren't rigid.
On top of which, even if the kite were attached at the eyes - you don't want upward force. Upward force doesn't contribute as much to propulsion as lateral force.
but from my understanding of neutrons (that they go through everything), could you set one of these up on each coast and cover the whole coast? well, probably 3 each coast, to triangulate. cancel out the known, nonmoving sources (our reactors, medical equipment, etc.) and presto: you can see all moving backpack/ container nukes
No, the range of these neutrons is pretty short. If unshielded and unscattered - a few hundreds of yards in free air. Or, in practice, a few tens of feet at best. I think you are confusing neutrons (which can be shielded against, but the shielding is heavy) with neutrinos (which go through everything).
additionally (again, pardon my ignorance), are there nuclear elements that don't give off neutrons as they decay? which means you can salt a typical c4 or tnt explosive with this element, and irradiate times square or the washington mall, without any previous neutron detection?
Yes, this is true. This is not however an argument against these machines - as no defense will cover all bases.
I wish nobody cared, but this will only fuel the masses into thinking "wow... all this money spent on high-tech, super sci-fi counteterorism stuff is making me safer."
And it isn't... How?
I know I'm off-topic
This, accompanied with "clueless" and "tinfoil hat" pretty much sums up your whole reply. Increasingly when I read comments on security - as soon as I see the buzzword[s] "security theatre" tossed out, it's prima facie evidence that the writer thereof has no fucking clue what he is talking about. Your post is just further proof of that.
Slashdot Mirror
Only in some fantasy world where "money spent on Mars" isn't actually spent on Earth.
NASA programs are routinely porkified - the whole Orion/Ares program is hobbled because it is required to keep existing jobs in place, and existing contractors happy and cornfed.
Folks have been saying this for nearly forty years.
Let's put in perspective just how good robots are today: They work done (together) by Spirit and Opportunity over the last three years? Could have been done by a single human geologist in just three months (or less). Robots simply aren't as good as humans for exploratory tasks. They aren't even close.
No, it reveals the great frustration of US lawmakers with NASA for screwing up and mismanaging project after expensive project, year after wearying year. Between the overhyped and overpriced Shuttle program (and two very visible accidents on top of other problems), Hubble, the ongoing disaster that is ISS, and whole string of less visible projects... Congress simply doesn't trust NASA.
Historically, post-Apollo, NASA has tried to spin every project it can into being a precursor for manned Mars missions... Which Congress has historically been uninterested in funding. (This 'ban' isn't the first such, nor even the second...) Worse yet, NASA has also (historically) tried every trick in the book in the book to get around the 'bans', further engendering mistrust of them in Congress.
NASA has been hobbled practically since it's birth by the Shuttle - Station - Mars!! vision laid out by Werner Von Braun and enthusiastically endorsed by early NASA administrators. Yes Virginia - the Shuttle program has been around that long, the earliest studies are contemporary with the Mercury project. Many in NASA (at the time) felt that Max Faget and the STG represented a shortcut to beating the Russians and a way of getting early engineering experience before getting to the real task at hand - developing a shuttle and all the rest of Von Braun's vision.
Except - in real life it didn't happen that way. The Apollo (Lunar) program was an accident of a) the Cold War, and b) the Kennedy assassination. Before he died, Jack Kennedy was already seeking to distance himself from, and minimize the program. When he was killed, Apollo was funded as his memorial. Even so, budget cutbacks started as soon as they could be managed - Apollo landing missions and post Apollo programs were being cancelled or cut back as early as 1966! By the time we actually reached the moon, the program was already running on vapors.
So far as public interest goes - just look at the TV numbers of the various landing missions. The great public interest, much ballyhooed by space fanboys, simply never existed.
Except - they didn't replace all the on-board electronics when they installed the fix for the mirror. (Hubble's problem was a flawed mirror - not a flawed lens.)
Hint: NASA and JPL know that. You don't seem to know much of anything, since both of the 'facts' in your introductory statement are actually 'fantasies'.
Given that there really aren't any 'nascent commercial carriers' - SpaceX is years late (and recently boosted its prices...) and Kistler is as much vaporware as ever. You'll likely have to depend on existing commercial carriers (Boeing and Lockmart).
The problem with cost however isn't launch costs - it's replacing all the support services (power, cooling, attitude control, etc...) that the ISS would have provided. (I've been telling folks for years - when launch costs drop, a lot of folks are going to be very surprised when satellite and spaceborne equipment costs don't...)
That's great - if your goal is to analyze the statistical properties of the RNG. It kinda sucks if your goal is to conduct research or marketing in the real world.
Or even the n th time. A system as large and complex as the ISS will always have problems. Period.
So this is what Slashdot has become - reporting not news, but a rumor. Worse yet, what seems to make the rumor worth publishing? That a popular webcomic published it.
Wrong. The A-12 launched its missles from bomb bays. The B-70 dropped its bombs from bomb bays. Then there is the F-102 and -106.
That's true for bombs/missiles dropped under gravity alone. That's not true for bombs/missiles ejected rather than dropped.
Back in the fifties and sixties they either used an ejector system to force the bomb/missile clear of the aircraft or a 'trapeze' to lower the bomb/missile clear of the bomb bay.
Sure, they were working on it. They were also a long, long way from making it practical. (Among many other things, there are some pretty serious questions about materials unanswered as of yet.) For all intents and purposed NERVA (and related projects) were probably about as far from a useful engine as Von Braun was from the Saturn V when he was piddling about with the Verein für Raumschiffahrt.
Apples and caterpillars. NERVA and Timberwind et. al. have very little in common with power reactors.
Each Saturn V cost $100 million to buy - it cost another $75-100 million to checkout and launch. (In addition to this there is also is each flights share of the annual infrastructure costs.)
Wrong on both counts.
First a Shuttle isn't anywhere near 'rebuilt' between flights. (And don't hand me that "they rebuild the engines after every flight". They don't, and haven't for nearly a decade.) Second, the marginal cost of a Shuttle flight (I.E. adding a flight to the manifest) is under $100/million a flight. Just like the Saturn V, it's low flight rate means the per flight cost is dominated by that flight's share of the fixed annual costs.
At the end of the day - the difference in cost between the two is much, much less than urban legend has it. (Especially because Shuttle flights include the costs of the manned portion, the capsule if you will, and the Saturn costs... don't.)
Sure, you could assemble it faster - if you were willing to pay in excess of a billion dollars a shot. Saturn V class payloads don't come around too often, so all those infrastructure costs come back and bite you in the ass when you have to amortize years of support costs across a handful of flights.
I don't need any fancy technology to do all that. Give me a map and a street intersection and I'm there. Or just call the store for directions.
Huh? The USAF was launching bombs (and missles) out of bomb bays (and off of pylons) at supersonic speeds back in the 1950's.
This new system is probably needed because the rotary launcher used by the B-1 doesn't allow enough clearance for, or won't take the stresses associated with, the kicker systems used back then.
The individual who can figure out how to do this with cheap consumer grade components under the wide variety of load condtions even a single cell phone encounters... Is in for a life of fame and fortune. Predicting battery life, even under ideal conditions, is a crapshoot at best.
Somebody is reading too much into the "batteries are like buckets of electricity" analogy we all got back in school. Real batteries don't work quite like that.
The problem is - if that energy was released fast enough to break bones... They wouldn't have found 'burnt and melted' remains of a cell phone. They'd have found a corpse with a hole in its chest, and fragments of cellphone scattered across a fairly wide area.
They were pretty common in the 70's, I got more than a few vaccinations using them. Oddly enough, when I was in the Navy in the 80's I rarely saw them.
Lack of reading comprehension FTL. Redefining terms to the point of meaninglessness FTL.
Do I really need to point out Groklaw != Public?
How? The public had about zero effect on the SCO/Novell case.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.
They are designed to take lateral forces - not vertical forces.
No they aren't - because they know that upward forces contribute nothing to propulsion.
-5 misses the point.
Unless they put a lot of [heavy] steel stiffening in, the ship will flex at the attachment point rather than lift the bow. Ships aren't rigid.
On top of which, even if the kite were attached at the eyes - you don't want upward force. Upward force doesn't contribute as much to propulsion as lateral force.
No, the range of these neutrons is pretty short. If unshielded and unscattered - a few hundreds of yards in free air. Or, in practice, a few tens of feet at best. I think you are confusing neutrons (which can be shielded against, but the shielding is heavy) with neutrinos (which go through everything).
Yes, this is true. This is not however an argument against these machines - as no defense will cover all bases.
And it isn't... How?
This, accompanied with "clueless" and "tinfoil hat" pretty much sums up your whole reply. Increasingly when I read comments on security - as soon as I see the buzzword[s] "security theatre" tossed out, it's prima facie evidence that the writer thereof has no fucking clue what he is talking about. Your post is just further proof of that.