Re:More bias/social engineering from the hawks at
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Battlefield Lasers
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[[Congress is already leery of "star wars" (the SDI kind), seeing how there is so much pressure to deploy the damn thing, when star wars misses 3 out of 6 targets in *lab* conditions.
Now they want the same unproven technology on the ground. Fox runs nothing but editorials against "government pork" and "big government" EXCEPT when it serves the war hawks or their stock portfolio. ]]
Interesting. There is no failure or redesign in any of our (being citizens) projects?
Oh, wait!
We're *human*. That means we know we aren't perfect and we aren't going get it right the very first time trying to do a complicated thing!
Or did you *not* fall down while you were learning to ride a bycicle?
And the rest of this 'article'? Sounds like someone has their pet conspiracy theory.
Newsflash----
Not even Fox Network took the 'Moon Hoax' seriously. Sure it was titilating and it was a huge uproar.
Got decent ratings too.
But if you're blaming NASA's problems on FOX, you aren't looking in the right place.
Most of its problems are within congress and management
Neverwinternights is *not* supposed to be a MMORPG. It was never designed or concepted to do so. It's meant for a much smaller, *interactively* controlled gaming experience.
It can be run in single player mode no problem, but it is aimed at parties between 4-8 with a Dungeon Master.
D&D geek and proud of it.
Of course I'm not playing D&D right now, but I'm *going* to be when this game comes out.
[[[Let's be honest with ourselves here... NASA is not as costly as it is because of the innovations it comes up with but rather because at its heart NASA is a political beast. I give you the Space Shuttle as evidence. This 30 year old technology costs about $470 millon dollars to launch one shuttle, one time. That cost skyrockets to 1.7 BILLON dollars if you factor in R&D (although R&D costs are spread out over subsequent missions). There are _far_ more cost effective means of getting things into space so why doesn't NASA use them? Easy... The shuttle program is popular and very well known by the public. ]]]
It also, as I've noted before, also does more than a Titan or other contermporary launchers. Also, are you adding in to their launcher's cost's devlopment into each flight?
As to the bunk of 1.7 Billion per flight, that's all it cost to *build* a space shuttle ten to fifteen years ago (the replacement of the Challenger!)
The original development cost of the shuttle fleet is pointed at as 5.71 Billion in 1971 dollars. Even counting in inflation, the shuttles were never 1.7 billion per flight.
So a more accurate cost of development would be to take that 5.7 billion, devide it by the number of shuttle flights a year and years (going for another five or so years, that was the original life expectancy, after all).
So, on average, your 'development' costs for designing the damn things averages out to be about 57 million (in 1971 dollars). So, in US dollars today, that's *still* only 206 million.
The only way you can jack that number up at all is if you add in *continuing* development which will also end up in the next generation of shuttles.
So the Space shuttle would cost 680 Million per flight for a five ton item that needed a support crew into low Earth orbit.
Except that NASA doesn't have to pay the development cost per year anyways. It was all paid up front by the budget years ago.
If they were a business, it'd make a big difference.
[[[Does anyone else remember all the savings that we were told were going to be realized because of the shuttle's ability to reuse it's solid rocket boosters and the orbiter? Unfortunately, quite the inverse occurred. Costs ballooned and NASA didn't even blink. In fact until relatively recently (the past 10 years or so) NASA hasn't even seriously tried to find a replacement for the aging shuttle fleet. In the eyes of congress NASA is just another special interest looking for their turn at the budgetary feeding trough and quite frankly that's how NASA acts. This makes NASA do things that doesn't make sense economically but make lots of sense politically. While this does explain their behaivor it does not change the fact that NASA is wasteful with the money that they are given. NASA does cool geeky stuff and has come up with a lot of innovations but given the amount of cash they're given one would think they could do more. Looking at where we are technologically and watching how NASA burns through cash I'd say there is a pretty compelling arguement for pushing efforts for privatized space flight even harder than we have until now.]]]
When you actually look at the costs that Beoing quoted to build a replacement Shuttle, five billion doesn't sound as bad as you would think.
Of course, it still isn't great a price. Boeing would need to have a build price of about 750 million to 1 billion per each with a launching cost of about 150 to 250 million each to really make it worth while.
The point is that it doesn't matter if it's $1.5 billion per launch, $400 million per launch, or $100 million per launch - no commercial operator could make money using the Shuttle to launch payloads, and they know it.
That is only marginally the point, and you know it. You are trying to obscure the fact that you purposefully inflated the costs to make your point seem "valid".
Is it so tough to say you screwed up?
And you are *quite* incorrect that at $100 million that no one would ever make money off of the Shuttle. There are several launcher that make decent money at that point.
(This of course ignores that the shuttle also bring a support crew up there at the same time. Something *no* other launcher does. Oh, and recover/repair things too. I'd love to see you do that on some other launcher.)
You are basing the Shuttle against the lowest cost light-weight launchers out there, not the median cost of a comparable lifter. You're comparing apples to walnuts (not even to oranges!)
But that's because you're trying to shoehorn the shuttle simply as a satallite launcher. Something that it isn't soley built for!
No wonder it fails in your eyes!
**Until the politics of space gets cleaned up, NASA has to make do with what it can do and what its told to do.
That is exactly right - but NASA's bureacrats *are* the problem! We need to get the vested interests of middle managers out of the space program.
No, NASA does what it does because that's what Congress tells them to do. They manage to get by and actually still do exploration and science while feeding the US national ego at the same time.
***Damn. Real life doesn't meet unreal expectations. Too bad. Deal with it.
All great things in human history were accomplished by people who made unreal expectations into concrete realities, people who refused to "deal with it". Once, it was an "unrealistic expectation" to consider going to the Moon, but we did it in less than ten years!
And haven't been back because we didn't do it right!
I'm sorry, I don't want another "Flags and Footprints" mission any time soon.
So your saying that NASA gets to have an exception because, well, it's NASA?
*NOTHING* carried on the Shuttle should be considered part of its development cost, because amazingly enough, that had nothing to do with with the cost of designing and making the Shuttle.
Amazing that! I'm sure that the Air Force would be amazed at their spy satallites being included into NASA's costs.
What you are doing is artificially inflating the costs of the Shuttle to 'prove' that it is too expensive.
When you pull the lies out of your statements, the Shuttle actually end ups being a fairly competitive vehicle.
As a matter of fact, with the Shuttle, more flights a year makes it cheaper. It can easily get down to the 400 Million per flight that NASA quotes.
And when you consider that the Shuttle carries a crew of five to seven and its payload and its capabilities of recovering payloads, the Shuttle is a pretty damned good deal.
A lot of people love to complain about NASA because we aren't on Mars and don't have space stations like in 2001.
Damn. Real life doesn't meet unreal expectations. Too bad. Deal with it.
NASA might not be perfect, but that's because of the politics involved.
Until the politics of space gets cleaned up, NASA has to make do with what it can do and what its told to do.
And that can be damn tough.
Arthur Hansen
P.S. It seems odd to me that Fenris keeps getting modded up while my responses aren't.
An intergrated suit like they are developing is for use of critical data retrieval and interaction with computer system with ease of movement and transportation.
This has some nice benefits for areas where you *don't* want to be lugging a notebook around, but need it for your job.
Like deep earth mining, areas of high toxcity (radiation, poisons, etc.), people with health issues and dangerous fire-fight situations.
Imagine a cop who gets pinned down and his clothes detect he's wounded, calls for backup and medical aid all at the same time.
Even if the officer isn't capable of *asking* for help.
Firefighters, cops, soldiers, miners, nuclear technicians, hazardous manufacturers and ailing people could all reap benefits from this sort of *smart* technology.
Considering that materials that it requires, it wouldn't surprise me that it is expensive as all get out.
There are, however, applications where money is less of a concern. The DOD should be seriously investigating this as a long term fuel cell for their powered-armor infantry research.
I believe Texas has more executions than the other states combined. (Which I believe there are only four, Florida, Utah, Texas and... I can't remember.)
So let's average that out. We'll say about 100 to 120 people are executed yearly (sounds about right, IIRC.)
The US has a population of 250+ million. That averages out to 0.00004 to 0.000048 of the population. Definitely a non-zero number, but I think that may be stretching the bounds of 'a lot'.
If you only count all criminals, the numbers increase by a factor of ten to a blistering four hundredth of a percentage.
108 countries in the world have abandoned capital punishment, including all of western europe countries.
Among countries still doing it:
Afghanistan
USA
China
Iran
Sudan
Saudi Arabia ...
Terribly off topic, but...
As has been previously noted, this list seems to be targeted to 'make' the USA look like it is as bad as some terribly cruel (opinionated, of course) countries.
Let's take a look at a few of the differences to show the invalidity of this.
Let's snag Iran from the list. Yup, it has capital punishment, terribly biased judges and an amazing short trial times by the US's standards. Many forieners are almost always considered guilty and the trials are shams.
The US also has capital punishment in *some* states. (Utah, the state I live in is one of those.) It's standard trial time (by and by) for a murderer that they actually execute (which is not always sought out by the prosecuter) is about, oh, ten to twenty years. Conviction rates with executions are not high.
The US also regularly tries to use the best forensic technology around to help prove that guilt. The difficulty to actual execute someone within the US is staggering.
Just because two countries share a law (capital punishment) does not mean that the law *means* the same thing in each country or how it is followed.
As I pointed out on sci.space.policy, a Venture* vehicle would be very handy if you had to put a bunch of stuff up into orbit. Like anti-nuke lasers and anti-sattelite sattlelites(SP?)
Even if it only chopped the cost of launches by half, it would still end up saving billions.
This isn't correct. The cable can be under tension (a verifiable amount of force) from the counter weight beyond the geosync point. As long as the loads going up don't pull 'harder' than that tension, you don't need to worry about the whole shebang falling on your heads.
And you don't *have* to use rocket fuel.
In all likelyhood, the counterweight will probably be on some sort of motorized track system to adjust the tension as needed.
Slashdot Mirror
[[Congress is already leery of "star wars" (the SDI kind), seeing how there is so much pressure to deploy the damn thing, when star wars misses 3 out of 6 targets in *lab* conditions.
Now they want the same unproven technology on the ground. Fox runs nothing but editorials against "government pork" and "big government" EXCEPT when it serves the war hawks or their stock portfolio. ]]
Interesting. There is no failure or redesign in any of our (being citizens) projects?
Oh, wait!
We're *human*. That means we know we aren't perfect and we aren't going get it right the very first time trying to do a complicated thing!
Or did you *not* fall down while you were learning to ride a bycicle?
And the rest of this 'article'? Sounds like someone has their pet conspiracy theory.
Newsflash----
Not even Fox Network took the 'Moon Hoax' seriously. Sure it was titilating and it was a huge uproar.
Got decent ratings too.
But if you're blaming NASA's problems on FOX, you aren't looking in the right place.
Most of its problems are within congress and management
Neverwinternights is *not* supposed to be a MMORPG. It was never designed or concepted to do so. It's meant for a much smaller, *interactively* controlled gaming experience.
It can be run in single player mode no problem, but it is aimed at parties between 4-8 with a Dungeon Master.
D&D geek and proud of it.
Of course I'm not playing D&D right now, but I'm *going* to be when this game comes out.
Not really.
After all, we have DBZ, Gundam(wing), Sailor Moon and other Japanese anime's that are becoming a staple in the US households.
The cross-culturism between the US and Japan is pretty amazing at times.
[[[Let's be honest with ourselves here... NASA is not as costly as it is because of the innovations it comes up with but rather because at its heart NASA is a political beast. I give you the Space Shuttle as evidence. This 30 year old technology costs about $470 millon dollars to launch one shuttle, one time. That cost skyrockets to 1.7 BILLON dollars if you factor in R&D (although R&D costs are spread out over subsequent missions). There are _far_ more cost effective means of getting things into space so why doesn't NASA use them? Easy... The shuttle program is popular and very well known by the public. ]]]
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It also, as I've noted before, also does more than a Titan or other contermporary launchers. Also, are you adding in to their launcher's cost's devlopment into each flight?
As to the bunk of 1.7 Billion per flight, that's all it cost to *build* a space shuttle ten to fifteen years ago (the replacement of the Challenger!)
The original development cost of the shuttle fleet is pointed at as 5.71 Billion in 1971 dollars. Even counting in inflation, the shuttles were never 1.7 billion per flight.
http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/lvfam/shu
So a more accurate cost of development would be to take that 5.7 billion, devide it by the number of shuttle flights a year and years (going for another five or so years, that was the original life expectancy, after all).
So, on average, your 'development' costs for designing the damn things averages out to be about 57 million (in 1971 dollars). So, in US dollars today, that's *still* only 206 million.
The only way you can jack that number up at all is if you add in *continuing* development which will also end up in the next generation of shuttles.
So the Space shuttle would cost 680 Million per flight for a five ton item that needed a support crew into low Earth orbit.
Except that NASA doesn't have to pay the development cost per year anyways. It was all paid up front by the budget years ago.
If they were a business, it'd make a big difference.
[[[Does anyone else remember all the savings that we were told were going to be realized because of the shuttle's ability to reuse it's solid rocket boosters and the orbiter? Unfortunately, quite the inverse occurred. Costs ballooned and NASA didn't even blink. In fact until relatively recently (the past 10 years or so) NASA hasn't even seriously tried to find a replacement for the aging shuttle fleet. In the eyes of congress NASA is just another special interest looking for their turn at the budgetary feeding trough and quite frankly that's how NASA acts. This makes NASA do things that doesn't make sense economically but make lots of sense politically. While this does explain their behaivor it does not change the fact that NASA is wasteful with the money that they are given. NASA does cool geeky stuff and has come up with a lot of innovations but given the amount of cash they're given one would think they could do more. Looking at where we are technologically and watching how NASA burns through cash I'd say there is a pretty compelling arguement for pushing efforts for privatized space flight even harder than we have until now.]]]
When you actually look at the costs that Beoing quoted to build a replacement Shuttle, five billion doesn't sound as bad as you would think.
Of course, it still isn't great a price. Boeing would need to have a build price of about 750 million to 1 billion per each with a launching cost of about 150 to 250 million each to really make it worth while.
And that's a lot tougher than you think.
Arthur Hansen
The point is that it doesn't matter if it's $1.5 billion per launch, $400 million per launch, or $100 million per launch - no commercial operator could make money using the Shuttle to launch payloads, and they know it.
That is only marginally the point, and you know it. You are trying to obscure the fact that you purposefully inflated the costs to make your point seem "valid".
Is it so tough to say you screwed up?
And you are *quite* incorrect that at $100 million that no one would ever make money off of the Shuttle. There are several launcher that make decent money at that point.
(This of course ignores that the shuttle also bring a support crew up there at the same time. Something *no* other launcher does. Oh, and recover/repair things too. I'd love to see you do that on some other launcher.)
You are basing the Shuttle against the lowest cost light-weight launchers out there, not the median cost of a comparable lifter. You're comparing apples to walnuts (not even to oranges!)
But that's because you're trying to shoehorn the shuttle simply as a satallite launcher. Something that it isn't soley built for!
No wonder it fails in your eyes!
**Until the politics of space gets cleaned up, NASA has to make do with what it can do and what its told to do.
That is exactly right - but NASA's bureacrats *are* the problem! We need to get the vested interests of middle managers out of the space program.
No, NASA does what it does because that's what Congress tells them to do. They manage to get by and actually still do exploration and science while feeding the US national ego at the same time.
***Damn. Real life doesn't meet unreal expectations. Too bad. Deal with it.
All great things in human history were accomplished by people who made unreal expectations into concrete realities, people who refused to "deal with it". Once, it was an "unrealistic expectation" to consider going to the Moon, but we did it in less than ten years!
And haven't been back because we didn't do it right!
I'm sorry, I don't want another "Flags and Footprints" mission any time soon.
That's an interesting cavieat.
So your saying that NASA gets to have an exception because, well, it's NASA?
*NOTHING* carried on the Shuttle should be considered part of its development cost, because amazingly enough, that had nothing to do with with the cost of designing and making the Shuttle.
Amazing that! I'm sure that the Air Force would be amazed at their spy satallites being included into NASA's costs.
What you are doing is artificially inflating the costs of the Shuttle to 'prove' that it is too expensive.
When you pull the lies out of your statements, the Shuttle actually end ups being a fairly competitive vehicle.
As a matter of fact, with the Shuttle, more flights a year makes it cheaper. It can easily get down to the 400 Million per flight that NASA quotes.
And when you consider that the Shuttle carries a crew of five to seven and its payload and its capabilities of recovering payloads, the Shuttle is a pretty damned good deal.
A lot of people love to complain about NASA because we aren't on Mars and don't have space stations like in 2001.
Damn. Real life doesn't meet unreal expectations. Too bad. Deal with it.
NASA might not be perfect, but that's because of the politics involved.
Until the politics of space gets cleaned up, NASA has to make do with what it can do and what its told to do.
And that can be damn tough.
Arthur Hansen
P.S. It seems odd to me that Fenris keeps getting modded up while my responses aren't.
I hadn't heard that payloads counted towards the development or even launch costs of a vehicle.
Quick! Someone call the trucking and railroad companies! That totally changes the entire accounting methods of the US infrastructure!
We'll name the new accounting system...
Bias towards your political axe-grinding accounting!
So... according to you, it cost 88 billion dollars to develop the Space Shuttle? (5 launches a year, for sixteen years at 1.1 billion.)
Do you have anything that vaguely resembles factual backing of this statement, or are we supposed to take your word for it?
Capitol Office:
Utah State Attorney General
Room 236,
State Capitol Building,
Salt Lake City, UT 84114
Telephone: (801)-538-9600
FAX:(801)-538-1121
Administration Office:
Utah State Attorney General
Administration Office
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Heber Wells Building,
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Telephone:(801)-366-0300
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Attorney General Public Information, call:
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Toll Free for Utah: (800) 244-4636
Contact the Attorney General by Email uag@att.state.ut.us
An intergrated suit like they are developing is for use of critical data retrieval and interaction with computer system with ease of movement and transportation.
This has some nice benefits for areas where you *don't* want to be lugging a notebook around, but need it for your job.
Like deep earth mining, areas of high toxcity (radiation, poisons, etc.), people with health issues and dangerous fire-fight situations.
Imagine a cop who gets pinned down and his clothes detect he's wounded, calls for backup and medical aid all at the same time.
Even if the officer isn't capable of *asking* for help.
Firefighters, cops, soldiers, miners, nuclear technicians, hazardous manufacturers and ailing people could all reap benefits from this sort of *smart* technology.
Considering that materials that it requires, it wouldn't surprise me that it is expensive as all get out.
There are, however, applications where money is less of a concern. The DOD should be seriously investigating this as a long term fuel cell for their powered-armor infantry research.
I guess Iron Man is closer than we expect.
How do you define 'a lot'?
I believe Texas has more executions than the other states combined. (Which I believe there are only four, Florida, Utah, Texas and... I can't remember.)
So let's average that out. We'll say about 100 to 120 people are executed yearly (sounds about right, IIRC.)
The US has a population of 250+ million. That averages out to 0.00004 to 0.000048 of the population. Definitely a non-zero number, but I think that may be stretching the bounds of 'a lot'.
If you only count all criminals, the numbers increase by a factor of ten to a blistering four hundredth of a percentage.
As has been previously noted, this list seems to be targeted to 'make' the USA look like it is as bad as some terribly cruel (opinionated, of course) countries.
Let's take a look at a few of the differences to show the invalidity of this.
Let's snag Iran from the list. Yup, it has capital punishment, terribly biased judges and an amazing short trial times by the US's standards. Many forieners are almost always considered guilty and the trials are shams.
The US also has capital punishment in *some* states. (Utah, the state I live in is one of those.) It's standard trial time (by and by) for a murderer that they actually execute (which is not always sought out by the prosecuter) is about, oh, ten to twenty years. Conviction rates with executions are not high.
The US also regularly tries to use the best forensic technology around to help prove that guilt. The difficulty to actual execute someone within the US is staggering.
Just because two countries share a law (capital punishment) does not mean that the law *means* the same thing in each country or how it is followed.
Arthur Hansen
As I pointed out on sci.space.policy, a Venture* vehicle would be very handy if you had to put a bunch of stuff up into orbit. Like anti-nuke lasers and anti-sattelite sattlelites(SP?)
Even if it only chopped the cost of launches by half, it would still end up saving billions.
Arthur Hansen
This isn't correct. The cable can be under tension (a verifiable amount of force) from the counter weight beyond the geosync point. As long as the loads going up don't pull 'harder' than that tension, you don't need to worry about the whole shebang falling on your heads. And you don't *have* to use rocket fuel. In all likelyhood, the counterweight will probably be on some sort of motorized track system to adjust the tension as needed.