How little does the American public care about this launch? So little that we've got to look to British news outlets to find decent coverage!
It's linked right off the home page of CNN and it's headline news (with a big beautiful picture) on MSNBC's Science and Technology section. (As well as ABC's and CBS's news departments Science and Technology pages.) Its also the lead story on Google News's Sci/Tech section.
As a matter of fact - this list from Google news shows a pretty even balance between US and the rest of the world in coverage. Blame the Slashdot editor, not the media on this one.
As far as I can tell they ARE wrong. The RTGs are designed to withstand the destruction of the launch vehicle without dispersing the radioactive material.
They are designed to have a high chance of survival - but they are not impregnable.
But I haven't seen the tests that prove that, and unless you're on the team, neither have you.
Actually - I pretty much have. But then I've bothered to actually seek out and read the enviromental impact statements for the launch. I *support* nuclear power, but these launches scare hell out of me - because the probability of release is non-zero. Worse yet, it need not be so high, but people have come to accept the high failure rate of space launchers as 'normal' - even though the ways to fix it are fairly well known and straight forward. But Big Space is as arrogant and fixed in it's ways as any other Big Corporation.
Re:Don't suppose the No Nukes freaks will apologiz
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Luck? That's an insult to the engineers who designed those things, and you should apologise.
No, it's stone cold truth. Any other brand of engineer that designed something that failed as much as 2% of the time would be considered an utter failure. Imagine that high a failure rate in a nuclear power plant, or a nuclear submarine, or a high performance jet aircraft (like Concorde or Blackbird). You say space is hard? Well, these things are too.
They are professionals, and the reason there hasn't been an accidental release from a US spacecraft is that they were *designed* to survive these accidents.
They are designed to have a high probability of surviving - but they are not impregnable and the improbable does happen.
Something that small can be built far far stronger than the minimum requirements.
Because of the faulty way that launchers are engineered - nothing on it's payload is built above the minimum requirements. They can't afford to spend the weight.
When you do that, to think you're going to have a major nuclear release from a probe like this one is just a bit like saying a stick of dynamite will crack the Earth in half.
Try actually reading the EISs of these RTG's sometime - you'll find the probabilities of release very carefully spelled out, and they are not zero.
If you're claiming that the rules of physics are going to be broken, then it's up to you to prove it.
If I'd claimed that - you'd have a point. You are exactly the same kind of lemming as the grandparent post - you have no clue of the issues involved.
Shocked one time to find out that a new sattelite was going up with a years-old PPC processor running at something crazy like 333MHz, I asked him what all this was about. [...] All in all, you have a minimum of a 5 year technology gap for what is going up and what is current.
Which sounds shocking - until you realize these birds are not running Quake or Halo. The OS they use demands much less system resources (and wouldn't be reconizable as an OS to most computers geeks to start with) and is much more tightly optimized than what you'll find in the consumer market. Many tasks can accomplished with far less computing power than many users realize because all the cruft that a PC, regardless of OS, has simply doesn't exist in these (spaceborne) systems.
The gap also allows time for all the bugs and idiosyncrasies of the processor to be figured out and coded around.
You have to wonder why, with such a long journey, they didn't try out an ion engine. Sure, it would have cost more, but it would have been able to get there a lot faster.
Getting there faster, while trading most of your instruments for engines and fuel seems to have little point.
Sure, it is the fastest probe to escape from the earth, but why not strap on an extra stage and get that baby really cookin!
The 500 series Atlas V is about the biggest proven and commercially available launcher we have - and they have already added *two* additional stages to the baseline configuration! (The strap on boosters plus another solid between the Centaur 2nd stage and the probe.)
Re:Don't suppose the No Nukes freaks will apologiz
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Pluto Probe Launches
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I can't stand people that are ignorant enough to protest anything with the word "nuclear" attached to it. Blind ignorance is all that is. They don't even have the most basic understanding of what they are protetsting
You know - I support nuclear power, and launches with RTG's onboard scare the hell out of me. Why? Because space launchers have an abysmal safety record. Historically, something around 2% of them fail - and a disturbingly large percentage of those involve scattering bits of the launcher and payload right back on earth.
Of the fifty odd launches of reactors or RTG's - no fewer than nine have resulted in the radioactive material being returned to earth. This article lists eight failures, but misses a ninth. It's not a pretty record - and it's only by luck that major contamination has been avoided.
Lemmings.
A lemming in this instance is someone who blindly repeats something without understanding it. Consider the carefully the walls of your house before casting stones.
Re:Don't suppose the No Nukes freaks will apologiz
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Pluto Probe Launches
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· Score: 1
Any comment from the "OMG! Plutonium powered space probes are evil!" people that were hanging little origami birds on a fence outside the launch site? They seemed certain that launching this craft was going to be a disaster. Damn! Now they're going to have to wait for the next one, since neither Cassini nor this new launch have obliged them by crashing into an old growth redwood grove or a daycare center.
Ever notice how tough they build those RTG's? Among other things, it's because they know that historically around 2% of all launches fail. It's not the plutonium that's the problem - it's the system that accepts such a failure rate as normal.
I think you misunderstand me - what they don't have to do is abide by the disclosure requirements in their NYSE listing agreement.
I never claimed otherwise. But the disclosures required by the NYSE are just pretty window dressing on top of the one required by the SEC.
Nor do they have to follow the exchange rules on corporate governance, or otherwise meet the minimum standards for listing.
The minimum standards for listing aren't all that impressive, and the oversight rules of the exchange are toothless eye candy. The big (US) exchanges in practice provide almost no oversight - even though they claim to protect the investor. Even as Enron was collapsing and the SEC was investigating them - their shares continued to trade.
Let's not forget the other Google story today, that while all the *other* major search engines rolled over and gave the government their log files to protect us from porn, Google alone refused. To suggest this was just about the money is shortsigted.
You are darn right it's not just about money. Google also wants to protect it's crown jewels - it's records of who searches for what. Before praising Google you might want to ask yourself this; why is a self avowed 'non-evil' corporation storing personally identifiable records of searches?
Do keep in mind that, contrary to popular belief, buying stock in a company (other than at IPO) sends no money to the company.
Of course, but the advantage to investing in exchange-listed stocks is that the disclosure requirements and SEC filing requirements give potential investors far more information than what is required of delisted or unlisted companies.
Not true. You can only avoid the reporting requirments if you have less than 500 investors and less than 10 million (US) dollar in assets. (One suspect Vivendi fails to meet that requirement.) Go past those limits and you are required to meet the same reporting requirements as Boeing or General Foods. (This is why Google went public for example - they were being forced to start reporting, which they had been (illegally) avoiding. Do no evil my ass.)
If you plan to hit the pink sheets, be my guest, but that's not much more than high-stakes gambling, IMO:)
It's only gambling if you go with the microcaps (I.E. those that fail to pass the test above).
Just because they're moving off the American stock market, however, doesn't mean Vivendi Universal won't seek, rely on or utilize US investors.
Yeah. The problem for those investors is that Vivendi's reporting and disclosure requirements just got a whole lot looser. Better get a real close look at their books if you're planning on sending any money their way.
Do keep in mind that, contrary to popular belief, buying stock in a company (other than at IPO) sends no money to the company. The money you pay, less brokerage fees, goes to the previous owner of the company.
IANAL, but 'not listed on a public exchange' != 'not being a publically traded stock'. They aren't closely held, so they still come under the same disclosure and reporting requirement as well as supervision by the SEC. A stock exchange provides a place to trade stocks - and a level of supervision above and beyond that of the SEC, but it does not replace the SEC.
There's no legal requirement that you list your stock on one of the big exchanges - but there is a practical one, most brokers won't touch a stock not so listed, or charge an additional fee to do so, as the trade must take place outside of the exchanges network which the broker is connected to. (In theory there is no reason why you cannot open your own exchange.)
Didn't we (shareholders/taxpayers/markets) already pay/subsidize for the massive install of 'dark-fiber' (unused fiber optics cables) in the dot.com runup? There is so much unused fiber out there that ISP prices should be dropping, not increasing.
Sure, there's a lot of dark fiber - but it costs money to light it up and operate.
I notice you don't mention any usage of security tools... If he must use IE, then build him a reasonably secure Windows system. (If he's reformatting/reinstalling that often, he's running a horribly configured system.) Get him Zone Alarm, and an AV program.
The moderation system serves many purposes, but perhaps the most important is to provide a user, 24 hours later viewing at Score 2 or 3 an accurate pulse on the topic at hand. If the comment is not about the new motherboard chipset, that comment at least should not be modded 'insightful', and in many cases, ought to be modded offtopic of flamebait.
Taco; you brought up moderation last week, and again this week - in both instances complaining moderation is not being used the way you think it should be.
Moderation is the tool that a portion of the community uses to tell the remainder of the community which comments it feels are the most useful. The fact that R.P. comments get modded up, and so do grammatical comments should tell you something. Instead, both this week and last, we (the community) are told were are wrong because we don't share your vision.
Really you have two options; 1) limit the moderator pool to people who share your vision, or 2) live with the fact that the community and you disagree on fundementals.
The second one really is a key one - you want Slashdot to be a pub, etc... etc... The community wants a source of quality news.
Re:For the rocket scientists out there....
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· Score: 1
I understand the heat/technical problems with actually landing on Pluto or Charon; but is the energy requirement to enter orbit rather than just flyby that large?
Yes - because of the high speed that must be bled off. The only way to reduce that energy requirment is to accept a longer transit time - which increases the chance of failure.
Wind limits on rocket lauches are a combination of several things, just as most complex engineering problems.
The structural forces placed on the structure from side winds are negligible when compared to the acceleration forces due to lauch.
Negligible compared to acceleration forces is not the the same as trivial. (Especially since the wind forces manifest themselves in a direction other than that where the rocket is strongest - along the vertical axis.) Side loads can and do induce body bending and a variety of vibratory modes.
For the most part, it's not the final trajectory of the payload that sets them, as secondary burns and mid-course corrections are more than adequate to correct any small variation in the launch vector.
Assuming of course the variation is small, (defined as within the excess performance available). If the winds are strong enough, and the margin small enough, then they can in fact affect the final trajectory.
All that aside, the winds that were the problem today were ground winds, not altitude winds. Right after launch the rockets ability to correct for errors is the least, leading to the possibility of impacting the tower. Another problem from ground winds is ensuring they are blowing in a direction that will carry any gases released (from the launch or from a failed launch) in the proper direction.
I realize these ion engines have a low thrust/acceleration as a tradeoff against their better fuel economy, which means they're really meant for the long-duration missions such as to the outer planets, etc. Yet I wonder if this new ion thruster design, and also the Double Layer Helicon Thruster that was also recently tested, will result in ion engines that could take man to Mars?
Nope; because of the elephant in the room that the various ion engine research folks won't talk about and hope you won't notice - Power. There doesn't exist a power plant light enough per megawatt to propel something as small (relatively speaking) as an Apollo CSM - let alone the larger spacecraft that a manned mission to Mars will require.
However it seems that the packaging for this new engine is also far smaller than the breed of ion propulsion, and will greatly increase the thrust available to a spacecraft. Its not clear yet whether that will be an order of magnitude increase, or something smaller. But it does appear to be enough to open-up exploration of the solar system with travel times lower than what we currently endure.
The new engine will do almost nothing to open up space - because the problem isn't the engines.
The problem is power - a power plant light enough to supply the energy a spacecraft of significant size will need simply doesn't exist.
One idea is to put a linear acellerator on the side of mount kilimanjaro (strategic position near equator) and use it to "kickstart" rokets. this way you can get more payload from a smaller rocket that uses less fuel.
The reality is that you get less payload from much larger rockets. The maximum reasonable 'kick' you can apply is something under 5% of the total delta-V required - but at the cost of adding large amounts of heat shielding and structural reinforcement. (Both of which need fuel to accelerate, thus meaning that when holding the rocket size steady - the total fraction available for payloads goes down.)
On a planet with an atmosphere, catapults don't work. (Nor do jet engine assisted boosters. Nor do Bull type guns.)
About 10 years ago, when visiting an air force base in Australia (as a journalist) I asked about the clear navigational dome on some of the older aircraft. I expected to hear a response about how the aircraft in service were all so old that they predated more modern navigation methods, but was suprised to hear,
"The US government may be able to turn off the GPS system, but they still can't turn off the stars".
They were serious. This pretty much illustrated to me that most countries don't trust the GPS system for critical purposes.
The reality is they were handing you a line of crap. You'll only find those domes on larger (I.E. multiple crew) aircraft that are fairly old. The reality is that the real backup to GPS is inertial, not stellar - if it were the other way around, you'd see those domes on all aircraft.
And, with ten seconds over at Wikipedia, you could find out that Galileo has a much better resolution than GPS.
And about ten minutes of research using actual authoritative websites reveals that better-than-GPS resolution is only available for a fee. The free portion of the service is in fact no better than GPS.
However, you can't say that America is better in any significant way. Instead of spending huge amounts of money on social programs, we spend absolutely obscene amounts of money on the military. Money we don't even have... we are borrowing incredibly heavily to finance our war machine. (and you people are giving us the wealth to do it!)
Out here in the real world, the US spending on social programs is almost triple what it spends on military programs. The difference is that 80% of the social spending is 'off budget' - it's skimmed off the top of tax income and paid automatically. When the annual budget appears, that money isn't listed, thus making it appear to the uneducated that real source of our financial woes is the military.
That sounds nice in theory - but the reality is that all the heavy development *is* taking place inside the US.
Such as? And how advanced is this technology in comparison to North Korean ballistic missiles?
The technology is sufficient to the task - comparing it to a ballistic missile is apples and oranges. (For two reasons - 1) the missile is missing the 'manned' portion, 2) despite the surface similarities they are different vehicles with different operating paradigms.)
If McDonald Douglas et al get in on the act it is a different story, but for the moment it's small groups doing small stuff.
Could you retype that sentence in English?
Scramjets aren't a current space technology
OK, there are plenty of examples - how about recent devices similar to ion thrusters used to keep satellites in station? NASA has funded a lot of research worldwide and not just in the USA.
So? Being able to develop an ion thruster has about as much to do with building a commercial craft (sub-orbital or orbital) as developing a tasty new breakfast sandwich.
Scramjets were the obvious one since very little was actually done with this technology in US facilities - but that doesn't stop NASA being involved and having the people, they just need to pay their airfares to get them to the USA if needed.
Quite a bit is actually being done in US facilities - NASA/USAF has already launched prototypes twice, and they just completed a brand new hypersonic wind tunnel specifically for testing scramjet designs. Scramjets have been worked on pretty steadily since the NASP back in the 80's.
Star Wars"... and pork barrel politics... Whose order you get backwards and seem unaware they were seperated by over a decade.
It's obvious they happened at different times and they are discrete events so why does it matter which order they appear in a sentence
Because getting things in order is a sign of careful and ordered thinking. Especially since the two things a 1) not linked, and 2) didn't lead to the result you posit.
and then you state the same thing as my point (no new launchers after the shuttle). Where are we going with this?
Better re-read my post again, because I stated that we have had multiple new launchers since the Shuttle. (At least 2 'clean sheet' Delta's, 1 'clean sheet' Atlas, Pegasus, Minotaur, the Falcon series currently in development, etc... etc...)
My opinion is that space tourism is only likely using some of the infrastructure put together for other types of launches.
Why?
This makes it more likely for a government based organisation to be involved - whether it is China, India, the ESA, Russia, NASA or a US military site. The last two I consider the least likely so I consider the FAA restrictions to be fairly pointless and if drafted in an sort of way that would incur extra costs on the operator it will just push them to another site.
You may consider whatever you wish to be likely - but your considerations are ungrounded by any connection to reality. (Not the least of which being that you assume that the same economics applies to tourism as it does to hamburgers and toothpaste - it doesn't. Note that cruise ships don't operate out of third world ports either, despite stiff and expensive regulations for docking in Miami or Le Havre.)
Next - if you want an equatorial orbit you can get a lot closer than Florida.
If I'm operating an orbital tourism company - an equatorial orbit is just about the last one I want, the scenery there is boring! You want at least a 30 or 40 degree orbit so that a) you get scenery that varies from orbit to orbit and isn't boring, and b) your passenger base is more likely to see 'home' or at least something familiar like the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico.
Slashdot Mirror
As a matter of fact - this list from Google news shows a pretty even balance between US and the rest of the world in coverage. Blame the Slashdot editor, not the media on this one.
Crow tastes pretty good with Tabasco.
The gap also allows time for all the bugs and idiosyncrasies of the processor to be figured out and coded around.
Of the fifty odd launches of reactors or RTG's - no fewer than nine have resulted in the radioactive material being returned to earth. This article lists eight failures, but misses a ninth. It's not a pretty record - and it's only by luck that major contamination has been avoided.
A lemming in this instance is someone who blindly repeats something without understanding it. Consider the carefully the walls of your house before casting stones.IANAL, but 'not listed on a public exchange' != 'not being a publically traded stock'. They aren't closely held, so they still come under the same disclosure and reporting requirement as well as supervision by the SEC. A stock exchange provides a place to trade stocks - and a level of supervision above and beyond that of the SEC, but it does not replace the SEC.
There's no legal requirement that you list your stock on one of the big exchanges - but there is a practical one, most brokers won't touch a stock not so listed, or charge an additional fee to do so, as the trade must take place outside of the exchanges network which the broker is connected to. (In theory there is no reason why you cannot open your own exchange.)
I notice you don't mention any usage of security tools... If he must use IE, then build him a reasonably secure Windows system. (If he's reformatting/reinstalling that often, he's running a horribly configured system.) Get him Zone Alarm, and an AV program.
Moderation is the tool that a portion of the community uses to tell the remainder of the community which comments it feels are the most useful. The fact that R.P. comments get modded up, and so do grammatical comments should tell you something. Instead, both this week and last, we (the community) are told were are wrong because we don't share your vision.
Really you have two options; 1) limit the moderator pool to people who share your vision, or 2) live with the fact that the community and you disagree on fundementals.
The second one really is a key one - you want Slashdot to be a pub, etc... etc... The community wants a source of quality news.
All that aside, the winds that were the problem today were ground winds, not altitude winds. Right after launch the rockets ability to correct for errors is the least, leading to the possibility of impacting the tower. Another problem from ground winds is ensuring they are blowing in a direction that will carry any gases released (from the launch or from a failed launch) in the proper direction.
The problem is power - a power plant light enough to supply the energy a spacecraft of significant size will need simply doesn't exist.
On a planet with an atmosphere, catapults don't work. (Nor do jet engine assisted boosters. Nor do Bull type guns.)