The article mentions walk around inspections. He talks these up and I've heard other pilots do this too. I'm sure it is a good thing to do, if you fly infrequently. If you're flying much more often and that really is the point of this vehicle, to get pilots flying more, then a visual inspection is just "eyeballing".. you're going to get complacent and miss things. With today's technology is there really any need? Even light planes can have a sensor array network with computer analysis of the sensor data giving a green light to fly or not. Aircraft is so behind the times in this way. Even the big commercial operators get by with people visually inspecting the plane.
And this is why I say to you, and the article, no shit sherlock. The article is trying to play this up as some great about turn for NASA. It's not. It's a little toe in the water to see how warm it is.
That very few people actually work for NASA as opposed to "NASA contractors", as such, saying that NASA is "opening to private industry" is just ignorant.
When NASA stops offering "cost plus" contracts to the usual suspects (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc) then you can have a big celebration, but until then its just business as usual.
Potato, potato. Most everything we know about comets suggests they are the thing is asteroids.. they just happen to have the oxygen and the hydrogen embedded in them in different ways. Extracting oxygen from an asteroid isn't all that hard. Extracting iron from a comet, might just well be.
It would be awesome, don't get me wrong.. I actually think this is The Way To Go [TM] and I'm surprised to even see this being studied but NASA is not planning to send a manned mission to an asteroid, not now, not in 20 years time.. maybe *after* Mars is done but as I doubt NASA will have anything to do with that, I'm thinking they won't have anything to do with going to an asteroid either.
Yawn, that's what non-disclosure agreements are for.
The purpose of a patent is so that you can keep your competitors from adopting your newest innovation, thus giving you an advantage in the market place for a limited time in return for disclosing how your invention works.
Originally patents were a means for attracting skilled immigrants to come set up shop.
huh? Where have you been for the last 100 years dude? Yes, this is a good example of why the patent system is broken.. but its been that way for quite a while now.
First of all, the article goes on and on about brainstorming... which is universally known to be a really bad way to come up with ideas. If you have an idea and you want to flesh out what it is good for or, better yet, what it is not good for, then brainstorming is great way to do it, but inspiration does not come from brainstorming - it comes in the shower or when you're walking the dog or whatever.
Then there's this whole "ideas have value" thing. Their whole business model is based on that tenant. Which is why they're not actually selling these patents to anyone, no-one goes out looking for a great idea to pour money into and create a business from.. investors go looking for *people* who have both a great idea and the technical skills to turn it into a workable business.. you can't just pick up someone else's idea and run with it, no matter how well the patent is written, and there's never written well. So how are they making their money? By litigation. So they're not actually helping progress, they're hindering it.
All in all, its a dot com era idea for a business.. "let's get smart people together and invent stuff" and leave all the pesky marketing and sales to someone else.. but that's what business *is*, so you're basically saying you want to be in the business of not being in business.
There's no part of copyright law that allows a tool creator to dictate how the output of the tool can be licensed.. unless, of course, there's some significant amount of copyrightable material being added to the output above and beyond what the user of the tool is supplying. For example, a compiler compiler will generate code from the input CFG and embed additional code in the output that was written by the author of the tool, so this could be claimed as his copyright, but the generated code, no matter how well it was generated, is a result of the CFG writer, and is therefore his copyright.
The one with Martin Sheen in it and they keep sending the soldiers into nuclear fallout to test whether or not they can advance to ground zero.. oh yeah, that's right Nightbreaker. How many times exactly does NASA need to study the effect of weightlessness? It's bad, ok? Long term exposure to "micro-gravity" causes not too nice symptoms. Great, move on. NASA never seems to approach anything as a problem that needs to be overcome - or at least they haven't since the '60s. Problem: without some form of gravity, long term space flight is bad for humans. Solution: provide some form of gravity. There's two that readily come to mind; either accelerate the vehicle at 9.8m/s/s or make the vehicle big enough so that you can spin it and not get dizzy. The first uses up way too much energy and just isn't an option at the moment. The second is so damn obvious that Von Braun was talking about it in the '40s. But it has never been done.
Not everything in this world is the result of a conspiracy. I never said or implied it was.
There are national security concerns for anything involving space flight. Any release of technology has to be approved by an export control officer. Wow, kinda sounds like people are conspiring to keep that information secret.
Suppose you were to ask NASA why they don't provide the complete blueprints for their spacecraft to the general public.. not the launch vehicles mind you, the actual spacecraft - there's no national security concerns here. They'll tell you that they don't *own* the blueprints.. the companies they contract to do. So if you ask them why they don't demand the blueprints when they contract for the spacecraft, they'll tell you that this would cost more. So they're saving money by not demanding the blueprints.
This, of course, is crazy. If they were to demand blueprints from the contractor for the first model of a particular spacecraft and then make those blueprints available to the general public then, the next time they want to contract for a similar spacecraft, they'll find there are a whole mess of companies lining up to bid.. and to bid very low indeed - as they don't have to spend all that money designing a basic spacecraft - they don't have to re-invent the wheel.
As the bids are so much lower, NASA could then start asking for more capable spacecraft.. and quickly a publicly owned repository of blueprints would be built up that all the various contractors could work with.
But instead, we get million dollar spacecraft from the same 3 contractors, over and over again. No standardization, no spin-offs for other purposes.
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Sure, all of that could be automated.. a lot of what you've said have already been automated for cars.
The article mentions walk around inspections. He talks these up and I've heard other pilots do this too. I'm sure it is a good thing to do, if you fly infrequently. If you're flying much more often and that really is the point of this vehicle, to get pilots flying more, then a visual inspection is just "eyeballing" .. you're going to get complacent and miss things. With today's technology is there really any need? Even light planes can have a sensor array network with computer analysis of the sensor data giving a green light to fly or not. Aircraft is so behind the times in this way. Even the big commercial operators get by with people visually inspecting the plane.
Agreed, they could have at least made it look like an SUV.. that thing looks like it is made for a European market.
And this is why I say to you, and the article, no shit sherlock. The article is trying to play this up as some great about turn for NASA. It's not. It's a little toe in the water to see how warm it is.
Which is why the development of the Ares I is barreling ahead. You can't just make shit up and then say "wow, that's unusual" to get a story.
That very few people actually work for NASA as opposed to "NASA contractors", as such, saying that NASA is "opening to private industry" is just ignorant.
When NASA stops offering "cost plus" contracts to the usual suspects (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc) then you can have a big celebration, but until then its just business as usual.
Ya mean like Second Life?
Heh, sorry, couldn't resist.
It *is* a great idea.. which is why I don't think NASA are interested.
Potato, potato. Most everything we know about comets suggests they are the thing is asteroids.. they just happen to have the oxygen and the hydrogen embedded in them in different ways. Extracting oxygen from an asteroid isn't all that hard. Extracting iron from a comet, might just well be.
It would be awesome, don't get me wrong.. I actually think this is The Way To Go [TM] and I'm surprised to even see this being studied but NASA is not planning to send a manned mission to an asteroid, not now, not in 20 years time.. maybe *after* Mars is done but as I doubt NASA will have anything to do with that, I'm thinking they won't have anything to do with going to an asteroid either.
That was sorta the point of my post.
Yawn, that's what non-disclosure agreements are for.
The purpose of a patent is so that you can keep your competitors from adopting your newest innovation, thus giving you an advantage in the market place for a limited time in return for disclosing how your invention works.
Originally patents were a means for attracting skilled immigrants to come set up shop.
Oh I'm not. I'm just saying that the level of play that *I* am capable of is so low that I bet even the simplest algorithm could beat me.
huh? Where have you been for the last 100 years dude? Yes, this is a good example of why the patent system is broken.. but its been that way for quite a while now.
It crashed, that's why I stopped :)
First of all, the article goes on and on about brainstorming... which is universally known to be a really bad way to come up with ideas. If you have an idea and you want to flesh out what it is good for or, better yet, what it is not good for, then brainstorming is great way to do it, but inspiration does not come from brainstorming - it comes in the shower or when you're walking the dog or whatever.
Then there's this whole "ideas have value" thing. Their whole business model is based on that tenant. Which is why they're not actually selling these patents to anyone, no-one goes out looking for a great idea to pour money into and create a business from.. investors go looking for *people* who have both a great idea and the technical skills to turn it into a workable business.. you can't just pick up someone else's idea and run with it, no matter how well the patent is written, and there's never written well. So how are they making their money? By litigation. So they're not actually helping progress, they're hindering it.
All in all, its a dot com era idea for a business.. "let's get smart people together and invent stuff" and leave all the pesky marketing and sales to someone else.. but that's what business *is*, so you're basically saying you want to be in the business of not being in business.
Yeah, I've been playing it.. it's pretty awesome. I have no idea what I'm doing but my score goes up.
As such, I'm pretty sure genetic algorithms could give similar performance.
Click through contracts are rarely enforcible.
Copyright owners being megalomaniacs? Never!
There's no part of copyright law that allows a tool creator to dictate how the output of the tool can be licensed.. unless, of course, there's some significant amount of copyrightable material being added to the output above and beyond what the user of the tool is supplying. For example, a compiler compiler will generate code from the input CFG and embed additional code in the output that was written by the author of the tool, so this could be claimed as his copyright, but the generated code, no matter how well it was generated, is a result of the CFG writer, and is therefore his copyright.
Of course, none of this has been tested in court.
The one with Martin Sheen in it and they keep sending the soldiers into nuclear fallout to test whether or not they can advance to ground zero.. oh yeah, that's right Nightbreaker. How many times exactly does NASA need to study the effect of weightlessness? It's bad, ok? Long term exposure to "micro-gravity" causes not too nice symptoms. Great, move on. NASA never seems to approach anything as a problem that needs to be overcome - or at least they haven't since the '60s. Problem: without some form of gravity, long term space flight is bad for humans. Solution: provide some form of gravity. There's two that readily come to mind; either accelerate the vehicle at 9.8m/s/s or make the vehicle big enough so that you can spin it and not get dizzy. The first uses up way too much energy and just isn't an option at the moment. The second is so damn obvious that Von Braun was talking about it in the '40s. But it has never been done.
Watch as this project never sees use.
Pork belly politics doesn't work this way.
Suppose you were to ask NASA why they don't provide the complete blueprints for their spacecraft to the general public.. not the launch vehicles mind you, the actual spacecraft - there's no national security concerns here. They'll tell you that they don't *own* the blueprints.. the companies they contract to do. So if you ask them why they don't demand the blueprints when they contract for the spacecraft, they'll tell you that this would cost more. So they're saving money by not demanding the blueprints.
This, of course, is crazy. If they were to demand blueprints from the contractor for the first model of a particular spacecraft and then make those blueprints available to the general public then, the next time they want to contract for a similar spacecraft, they'll find there are a whole mess of companies lining up to bid.. and to bid very low indeed - as they don't have to spend all that money designing a basic spacecraft - they don't have to re-invent the wheel.
As the bids are so much lower, NASA could then start asking for more capable spacecraft.. and quickly a publicly owned repository of blueprints would be built up that all the various contractors could work with.
But instead, we get million dollar spacecraft from the same 3 contractors, over and over again. No standardization, no spin-offs for other purposes.