The requirements are part of the design. You can't just excuse this epic failure on that and accept the outcome.
The requirements went away as soon as the Air Force saw that the resulting design was a dog, and canned it in favor of expendable rockets. Even the Soviets realized the same thing and dumped their shuttle after one flight. NASA should have followed suit decades ago.
There is nothing in those original requirements that NASA actually needs or needed, so keeping this money pit around has been nothing but a dangerous waste of taxpayers' money.
No, what it shows is the great grandparents thesis is false as it is unsupported by the facts. Yours is equally false, because it is unsupported by facts, requires ignoring relevant facts, and requires special pleadings to explain why design flaws in Shuttle are bad but design flaws in Soyuz aren't germane to the discussion.
Blah blah blah.
Did I mention that the Shuttle costs orders of magnitude more money for each passenger killed than Soyuz, even after considering higher body count?
Soyuz has flown fewer times (90 odd vice 120 odd times) than the Shuttle, yet has killed the same number of crews,
However, those both happened back in the days of corner-cutting space race mode, the same era when we put highly flammable upholstery in 100% oxygen capsules. IIRC, they were due to small details (stuck air valve, parachute packing) that could be corrected in later flights.
The shuttle accidents, however, were the results of fundamental design blunders which cannot be fixed (strapping a manned vehicle with no escape system below a cryogenic ice-spewing tank and next to uncontrollable multi-ton firework sticks with seams).
had multiple reentry problems (failing to detach a module once, detaching a module too early another time, plus numerous ballistic entries and off target landings due to failed equipment), plus two non fatal loss of mission launch accidents.
Showing that their system is highly survivable even with shoddy Soviet quality control. Imagine what a great launch system it would be if *we* operated this design.
There's another alternative, too. It turns out that streaming coverage will also be available using a wireless, thin client protocol.
I've set up my wireless client gear, and it's pretty sweet. For only a few hundred bucks, I got a 34-inch diagonal screen, WXGA resolution, and stereo sound. It streams video over a new protocol called "ATSC" in the ~500MHz band. And it all works for free without needing a subscription!
This event in particular will be delivered by multiple, simultaneous video streams that they call "channels". I encourage anyone who's not familiar with this technology to check it out.
Your claim is interesting. Are you saying that *new* construction in the UK uses brick for structural support (i.e., not just brick veneer over a wood, steel or concrete frame)? That's a very expensive, labor intensive way to build. (Also would be very unsafe in an earthquake zone, not that it matters much there.) You'd probably get better value out of more modern alternative construction methods.
I'm not going to go into specifics for the F-22 because they're readily available, but it's resultant cost is due to NRE/sunk costs and the original plan of 750 airframes being reduced to 183. While the total program cost decreased by a small amount due to the reduction of airframes ordered, the end result was to cause the cost of each individual airframe to skyrocket.
That cost-increase/order-decrease spiral effect has probably happened for most US military aircraft ordered since the 1970s. So you can't ignore it just because it was "unexpected". It's not unexpected, it's business as usual.
If UAVs are cheap enough that they don't tend to get caught in such a feedback loop in the first place, then that's another advantage for them.
a standardized 400-VDC connector and cabling solution
I set this kind of system up myself and it works great, assuming you need a lot of cores. I strung together 296 Intel Core 2 Duo chips in series accross the 400VDC supply, so each one gets the specified 1.35 volts. If I want to overclock, I just take a set of alligator clips and shunt across a few dozen of the chips, and it boosts the voltage to the remaining CPUs.
The only problem is that with so many chips, I get occasional failures, just like I do with my old Christmas lights. Then I have to try shunting around each of the CPUs by trial and error until I isolate the burnt out one before I can get my cluster running again. Oh yeah, I also have to be really careful to keep any peripherals I plug in away from each other and/or grounded objects.
Right. If people had lower taxes, the first thing they'd think of to spend the money on would be EMP-resistant electronics.
They would forgo extra vacations, faster cars, Jacuzzis, expensive Champagne and plastic surgery, so that they could upgrade to a rad-hardened TV set. They would show off their Faraday-enclosed gear at parties to impress their friends.
I'm 100% confident that's what everyone would do, and solar storms would be no longer be a risk to anyone.
Going to the Moon with chemical fueled rockets is like building computers with vacuum tubes. Both were done 40-50 years ago. Where would computing be now if we had relied on building better vacuum tubes rather than investing in the research the lead to the transistor?
The problem is that despite of decades of effort, they still haven't figured out how to get nonzero thrust out of solid-state rocket engines.
If it did, then Native Americans tribes would still be fully enjoying their inalienable rights to their homelands, which as a just society we would surely be honoring.
You can not argue that America had a right to secede from the British Empire, but states have no right to secede from the United States.
America in fact did not have the right to secede from the British Empire. That's one major reason that wars are fought: it's a way that a group of people can accomplish things that they don't have a right to do. Whether they accomplish their goal depends on who wins the war, regardless of any "rights".
Actually, I want to know why my cable company is so anxious to tell me through ads on cable channels.
The *channel* is probably sending the ad, not your cable company. They're just passing it through, just like they pass through the ads that DirecTV puts on cable channels.
My cable company scrolls an overlay over the digital transition ads that basically says: "You can ignore this ad! But just to be sure, sign up now for a more expensive digital package!"
If you're forced to use nuclear power, lots of little installations installed near population centers is exactly the wrong solution.
Contrary to popular belief, the biggest problem with nuclear power is proliferation risk. If this kind of solution is going to replace much of the worldwide use of fossil fuel, then EVERY country will have hundreds or thousands of these stations. This includes Iran, Syria, Cuba, Somalia, Zimbabwe, etc. What are the chances that none of these tempting seeds for new clandestine nuclear programs won't be tampered with? We already have "rogue regimes" who stop cooperating with international nuclear watchdogs, and we can't figure out what to do about it. This would just compound the problem.
These will be an attractive nuisance for terrorists. The British invented bunker buster bombs using primitive 1940s technology, and the US Air Force brags about how they kludged far better ones during the Gulf War out of old cannon barrels in a couple of weeks. Anybody with access to an airplane, GPS and some control theory could slap some fins onto a pipe and take a shot at blowing one of these open.
If these aren't breeder reactors, then you're still using a fossil fuel that will run out within a few decades while generating a bunch of politically intractable long-term waste.
If we're stuck going nuclear, then it should be the exact opposite approach. Build a few huge breeder reactor complexes with integrated fuel processing on platforms in the middles of oceans, hundreds of miles from the nearest back yard. That way, if anything goes wrong, you don't kill real estate values for an entire small state for 50 years. More importantly, fuel and waste all gets handled in place and is much easier to supervise for attempts to divert materials. Long term waste gets recycled and burned up, and shorter term waste can be buried right below the site, solving that whole issue.
So transmitting the electricity would be challenging and expensive. So what? We already send it 1000 miles or farther just to balance fossil fuel loads. You could deduct the extra cost from the (taxpayer subsidized) liability risk that nuclear plants near population centers currently carry.
Why shouldn't I believe it? Less than 200 years ago a volcano only 1/1000 of that size caused the "year without a summer", which disrupted crops worldwide. If that were to happen again today, there would be widespread starvation.
Where do you get your idea that an event several orders of magnitude greater would be no big deal?
At its worst, there will be an immense disruption of the electrical and telecommunications grid, immense expense from ash damage and removal, alot of immediate deaths and some ash deaths.
You forgot one little detail: Widespread subzero temperatures and no new food anywhere on the planet for at least a year.
I remember seeing a History-channel type documentary on oil tankers where the expert said that shipping oil is 99% energy efficient. IOW, it takes 1 kg of fuel to ship 100 kg of oil across the ocean.
Therefore, shipping a 100g CFL bulb should only consume something in the ballpark of a few grams of oil. The 5 incandescent bulbs that it replaces would require hundreds of kg of coal to light them over their lifetimes.
Slashdot Mirror
The requirements are part of the design. You can't just excuse this epic failure on that and accept the outcome.
The requirements went away as soon as the Air Force saw that the resulting design was a dog, and canned it in favor of expendable rockets. Even the Soviets realized the same thing and dumped their shuttle after one flight. NASA should have followed suit decades ago.
There is nothing in those original requirements that NASA actually needs or needed, so keeping this money pit around has been nothing but a dangerous waste of taxpayers' money.
No, what it shows is the great grandparents thesis is false as it is unsupported by the facts. Yours is equally false, because it is unsupported by facts, requires ignoring relevant facts, and requires special pleadings to explain why design flaws in Shuttle are bad but design flaws in Soyuz aren't germane to the discussion.
Blah blah blah.
Did I mention that the Shuttle costs orders of magnitude more money for each passenger killed than Soyuz, even after considering higher body count?
Soyuz has flown fewer times (90 odd vice 120 odd times) than the Shuttle, yet has killed the same number of crews,
However, those both happened back in the days of corner-cutting space race mode, the same era when we put highly flammable upholstery in 100% oxygen capsules. IIRC, they were due to small details (stuck air valve, parachute packing) that could be corrected in later flights.
The shuttle accidents, however, were the results of fundamental design blunders which cannot be fixed (strapping a manned vehicle with no escape system below a cryogenic ice-spewing tank and next to uncontrollable multi-ton firework sticks with seams).
had multiple reentry problems (failing to detach a module once, detaching a module too early another time, plus numerous ballistic entries and off target landings due to failed equipment), plus two non fatal loss of mission launch accidents.
Showing that their system is highly survivable even with shoddy Soviet quality control. Imagine what a great launch system it would be if *we* operated this design.
There's another alternative, too. It turns out that streaming coverage will also be available using a wireless, thin client protocol.
I've set up my wireless client gear, and it's pretty sweet. For only a few hundred bucks, I got a 34-inch diagonal screen, WXGA resolution, and stereo sound. It streams video over a new protocol called "ATSC" in the ~500MHz band. And it all works for free without needing a subscription!
This event in particular will be delivered by multiple, simultaneous video streams that they call "channels". I encourage anyone who's not familiar with this technology to check it out.
Yes... with the government involvement, their directive is no longer "to make money" but "do what we tell you to do".
Which is as it should be.
The old owners (shareholders) objective in running these companies was to make money. The new owner (the government) has different objectives.
Too bad. When you work at a company, you do what the boss wants.
Brick is a horrible insulator.
Your claim is interesting. Are you saying that *new* construction in the UK uses brick for structural support (i.e., not just brick veneer over a wood, steel or concrete frame)? That's a very expensive, labor intensive way to build. (Also would be very unsafe in an earthquake zone, not that it matters much there.) You'd probably get better value out of more modern alternative construction methods.
That's because you're not transferring data between yourself and another thread.
But he is transferring data between himself and another sockpuppet.
I'm not going to go into specifics for the F-22 because they're readily available, but it's resultant cost is due to NRE/sunk costs and the original plan of 750 airframes being reduced to 183. While the total program cost decreased by a small amount due to the reduction of airframes ordered, the end result was to cause the cost of each individual airframe to skyrocket.
That cost-increase/order-decrease spiral effect has probably happened for most US military aircraft ordered since the 1970s. So you can't ignore it just because it was "unexpected". It's not unexpected, it's business as usual.
If UAVs are cheap enough that they don't tend to get caught in such a feedback loop in the first place, then that's another advantage for them.
If all American houses were surrounded by the waters of a mild ocean current year round, they'd have heating bills similar to yours.
BTW, most any home in the USA built in the last few decades has been heavily insulated and tightly sealed.
a standardized 400-VDC connector and cabling solution
I set this kind of system up myself and it works great, assuming you need a lot of cores. I strung together 296 Intel Core 2 Duo chips in series accross the 400VDC supply, so each one gets the specified 1.35 volts. If I want to overclock, I just take a set of alligator clips and shunt across a few dozen of the chips, and it boosts the voltage to the remaining CPUs.
The only problem is that with so many chips, I get occasional failures, just like I do with my old Christmas lights. Then I have to try shunting around each of the CPUs by trial and error until I isolate the burnt out one before I can get my cluster running again. Oh yeah, I also have to be really careful to keep any peripherals I plug in away from each other and/or grounded objects.
Right. If people had lower taxes, the first thing they'd think of to spend the money on would be EMP-resistant electronics.
They would forgo extra vacations, faster cars, Jacuzzis, expensive Champagne and plastic surgery, so that they could upgrade to a rad-hardened TV set. They would show off their Faraday-enclosed gear at parties to impress their friends.
I'm 100% confident that's what everyone would do, and solar storms would be no longer be a risk to anyone.
I meant solid-state as in trying to build rocket motors out of doped silicon crystals.
Going to the Moon with chemical fueled rockets is like building computers with vacuum tubes. Both were done 40-50 years ago. Where would computing be now if we had relied on building better vacuum tubes rather than investing in the research the lead to the transistor?
The problem is that despite of decades of effort, they still haven't figured out how to get nonzero thrust out of solid-state rocket engines.
A *territory* has no "inalienable rights".
If it did, then Native Americans tribes would still be fully enjoying their inalienable rights to their homelands, which as a just society we would surely be honoring.
You can not argue that America had a right to secede from the British Empire, but states have no right to secede from the United States.
America in fact did not have the right to secede from the British Empire. That's one major reason that wars are fought: it's a way that a group of people can accomplish things that they don't have a right to do. Whether they accomplish their goal depends on who wins the war, regardless of any "rights".
Actually, I want to know why my cable company is so anxious to tell me through ads on cable channels.
The *channel* is probably sending the ad, not your cable company. They're just passing it through, just like they pass through the ads that DirecTV puts on cable channels.
My cable company scrolls an overlay over the digital transition ads that basically says: "You can ignore this ad! But just to be sure, sign up now for a more expensive digital package!"
... and the economy takes a huge hit due to the massive shortage of electricity.
Could you point out exactly where in my post I said that the amount of electricity generated should be less than what's needed?
Having an entire continent's electrical generation capacity concentrated in a small number of sites is terribly risky.
Well gee, a lot of people around here keep saying that any risks associated with nuclear power are negligible.
If you're forced to use nuclear power, lots of little installations installed near population centers is exactly the wrong solution.
Contrary to popular belief, the biggest problem with nuclear power is proliferation risk. If this kind of solution is going to replace much of the worldwide use of fossil fuel, then EVERY country will have hundreds or thousands of these stations. This includes Iran, Syria, Cuba, Somalia, Zimbabwe, etc. What are the chances that none of these tempting seeds for new clandestine nuclear programs won't be tampered with? We already have "rogue regimes" who stop cooperating with international nuclear watchdogs, and we can't figure out what to do about it. This would just compound the problem.
These will be an attractive nuisance for terrorists. The British invented bunker buster bombs using primitive 1940s technology, and the US Air Force brags about how they kludged far better ones during the Gulf War out of old cannon barrels in a couple of weeks. Anybody with access to an airplane, GPS and some control theory could slap some fins onto a pipe and take a shot at blowing one of these open.
If these aren't breeder reactors, then you're still using a fossil fuel that will run out within a few decades while generating a bunch of politically intractable long-term waste.
If we're stuck going nuclear, then it should be the exact opposite approach. Build a few huge breeder reactor complexes with integrated fuel processing on platforms in the middles of oceans, hundreds of miles from the nearest back yard. That way, if anything goes wrong, you don't kill real estate values for an entire small state for 50 years. More importantly, fuel and waste all gets handled in place and is much easier to supervise for attempts to divert materials. Long term waste gets recycled and burned up, and shorter term waste can be buried right below the site, solving that whole issue.
So transmitting the electricity would be challenging and expensive. So what? We already send it 1000 miles or farther just to balance fossil fuel loads. You could deduct the extra cost from the (taxpayer subsidized) liability risk that nuclear plants near population centers currently carry.
Imagine the amounts of mouth-foam, if Bush administration did this...
Yeah, and imagine the mouth foam that would have been generated if that lefty Jimmy Carter that gone to commie China instead of Nixon.
So what?
... and go with the 2.5 kernel.
Why shouldn't I believe it? Less than 200 years ago a volcano only 1/1000 of that size caused the "year without a summer", which disrupted crops worldwide. If that were to happen again today, there would be widespread starvation.
Where do you get your idea that an event several orders of magnitude greater would be no big deal?
How many Library of Congresses is that?
$ units
2445 units, 71 prefixes, 33 nonlinear units
You have: area-of-usa * 2/3
You want: library-of-congress
conformability error
5.33e12 m^2
1.6e14 bit
At its worst, there will be an immense disruption of the electrical and telecommunications grid, immense expense from ash damage and removal, alot of immediate deaths and some ash deaths.
You forgot one little detail: Widespread subzero temperatures and no new food anywhere on the planet for at least a year.
Nevertheless, the claim is asinine.
I remember seeing a History-channel type documentary on oil tankers where the expert said that shipping oil is 99% energy efficient. IOW, it takes 1 kg of fuel to ship 100 kg of oil across the ocean.
Therefore, shipping a 100g CFL bulb should only consume something in the ballpark of a few grams of oil. The 5 incandescent bulbs that it replaces would require hundreds of kg of coal to light them over their lifetimes.
Use it as a ticker to scroll the real-time DoHS advisory status: