That's interesting, I don't remember that bit from Lovell's book - but it's been a while since I read it (I assume you're talking about "Lost Moon")
I also remember reading something somewhere - was it Kraft? - about how the tank was apparently dropped at some point during the changeover.
Wasn't the ultimate cause of the explosion determined to be due to a faulty heater coil that overheated and sparked?
I would think that any damage done during the changeover would have been repaired, so I can't see how it would have been relevant unless the damage was simply missed - now that I think about it, there was something about the heater coil in question not being designed for the voltage being put thru it - I think that was from Chris Kraft's book (which unfortunately I don't have here ATM) as the specs had changed.
See, now I'm going to have to go back and read all these books all over again, and it's all slashdot's fault:D
Fuel cells aren't an energy source, they are a storage mechanism.
Um, fuel cells *utilize* an energy storage mechanism - hydrogen - whether it comes from raw hydrogen, ethanol, natgas, etc, is irrelevant. They are simply a translation mechanism, much like a car engine or home furnace.
ALL fuels are energy storage mechanisms. The "engines" are simply the liberators of that energy.
I agree with everything you said, except for your generalization of Americans as energy hogs. Not all of us are; indeed, there are millions of people in this country working on these problems all the way from passive energy reduction to active (fuel) reduction, and many of us, including me, who do everything we can to reduce what we consume.
Please remember that what our idiot government/corporate/public_sheep sector does is not representative of all of us. We have a lot of ingenuity left yet:) and sooner or later the public-at-large is going to wake up. Cheap oil isn't going to help that. (not sure anything will at this point, there are too many sheep here, but one keeps grinding away:)
Anyway, cheers, SB PS I do disagree somewhat with your offhand dismissal of global warming, but that's a topic for another time.
Absolutely agreed wrt to solar water heating - water heaters are huge consumers of energy and anything that can reduce that helps. I know quite a few people who have solar water heaters augmenting their more traditional ones and they've been quite satisfied with the reductions in their fuel bills.
Another good use of solar is passive heating. Of course this requires the house to be designed better, but we *are* moving towards more energy efficient homes... now if the stick frame fundies would get their act together, maybe we could really make a dent.
It isn't the flashy things that are going to do it. It is a lot of people doing dull things.
You bet!
More efficient appliances & vehicles, more efficient homes, more efficient fuels. We need to look at all the aspects. That's something that entirely too many people don't seem to understand...
1) the global climate is not a linear system. small changes in overall temperatures can have *huge* effects, and not just in thousands of years, either. FE, it's been shown that a lot of the ice ages in the last million years didn't gradually creep in over thousands of years, but rather the major effects happened over decades, with the accumulation of the glaciers taking thousands of years. (also, surely you've read about the Little Ice Age, or the effects of the 1-2 C drop in global temps during the 1800s?)
2) One major effect of global warming that we'll see (and, I suspect, are already seeing) is much more violent weather patterns. The atmosphere is essentially an unstable heat engine, after all. Another effect is of changing local climate patterns; which can produce effects totally out of proportion to their scale. Rainfall patterns, etc.
According to Kraft and Lovell's books, the CM batteries and reserve oxy tank weren't "depleted" but drawn down a little. They did transfer some power from the LM bateries to the CM, but no oxygen.
Had the SM oxygen tank explosion occurred on Apollo 8, where there was no LM, the astronauts wouldn't have survived.
An interesting tidbit from Gene Cernan's biog is that the tanks on 13 were actually the original tanks from Apollo 10. I don't remember why they were pulled, I'd have to go find the reference. But if that explosion had occurred on A-10, it's likely we wouldn't have landed on the moon for some time; would have changed a lot of history:)
A more likely motivation for McBride's praise of Slashdot is that it was an attempt to slime Groklaws system of deleting posts. Trying to suggest some suppression of legitimate viewpoints. In other words, more FUD.Here be post deleters.
Exactly. Trying to create dissension between the various groups/allies of your enemy is a common propoganda tactic, one that Darl - at least so far - seems to be very incompetent at. I'd guess that SCO is getting a bit desperate.:)
If I were an investor I'd be breaking into a cold sweat. I wonder if he also eats his own excrement now, and hums tunelessly to himself while rocking back and forth.
Darl: I was once important! I nearly defeated Open Source! *rocks back and forth*
Nurse: Yes, Darl, now be nice and take your medication, you'll feel a lot better, I promise. *makes note to increase meds*
Well, actually I was thinking about the other civilizations hunkering down and not wanting to communicate because they're paranoid:) Kinda like we'd be, if anyone cared enough about SETI to link the public gestalt with the science. Not sure whether it's better either way, lol!
-and how much do our scientists care about actually communicating with... I dunno, pick some little critter at random, I'm in the south, we'll say possums. If joe scientist wanted to study possums, he would try to stay as hidden as possible and just watch/observe/ take notes, etc. Some alien species could feel the same way if they are even marginally more advanced than we are. We might just be dumb critters to them. They might be fully aware of us, but really not give a care other than watching, and use a totally different way to communicate than what we use, along the lines of the article suggestions.
Which is another possibility(ies), but not what I was hinting at. I still think it's possible some "grad student" might break the rules, and that might explain some of the not-so-easily explainable sightings. But - to address your last bit - evidence, man, evidence. I've seen some weird things too, things I couldn't explain, but nothing that convinced me that it was ET. Having been an amateur astronomer for nearly 30 years, I know that one will see things one can't explain right away, and VERY occasionally not at all.
I also know that one doesn't always know how to explain them in light of one's current knowledge, but later is another matter: one of the most convincing UFOs I saw as a teenager I saw later at an AF airshow; same strange objects and maneuvers that were all too familiar. It was a major D'oh moment:)
(I WILL NOT discuss alien surgical procedures or abductions; because they are all too totally absurd and Occams Razor puts them in the paranoid homo sapiens genre:)
It could be we have a host of semi advanced civilisations like ours, all sitting around in passive reception mode, waiting for someone to contact them.
Or hoping nobody figures out where they are;-) I put the odds of hostile aliens vs. benevolent ones at 50/50. Of course, where else would I put it *grin*
Thirty years ago we couldn't generate those pulses at all, much less detect them.
One can't assume that the civilization trying to communicate is at our level of tech, nor that we will remain at this level - we advance by trying to, not by saying "it can't be done."
But if advanced races *do* exist, it's likely we'd find them well ahead of less so - whether it's detecting their strong and widespread emissions or having them come visit/conquer.
I agree it's pretty unlikely they exist - especially out here in the boondocks. However, we don't even approach having enough data to know one way or another, and it's not likely we will for a long, long time. As I pointed out elsewhere, there could be a thriving multi-stellar civilization a few hundred ly away - a pittance - and we, at our very primitive level of detection, wouldn't even know they are there, *especially* if they practiced secure communications.
At this point the real limitation is not in Drake's equation - it's our technological backwardness; and that means that we really can't begin to formulate our chances.
If they are trying to be elusive, it's likely we won't find them at all until we have interstellar spaceflight and have spread out far enough to run across them.
Right now, a thriving civilization could exist a few tens or hundreds of l.y. from here, and even if we know what we are looking for, build the right equipment to look for it, point it in *exactly* the right direction, at the right time, and can parse encrypted transmissions (not encrypted to be elusive, but rather to compress information transmission), AND can realiably sort the transmission out from the background noise, we wouldn't necessarily find it.
As an example of a hard to find yet not "hiding" civilization, let's suppose a civilization that uses lasers or masers for communication rather than radio - perhaps they consider them much more efficient (they can be) or they have their own internal reasons to use tight-beam communications. Or not. The problem we face here is unimaginably vast.
Compared to the problem we face, even the resources of the US are pretty pitiful. Vastly more so, when one considers how little of those resources we are actually spending on looking ( as a comparison, the pennies, nickels and dimes you lose in the laundry each year compared to an six figure income is about the ratio of SETI expenditure compared to our total resources.)
The problem of finding one person on the surface of the Earth is massively trivial in comparison, even if that person is accomplished at concealment.
My only comment on your last sentence is that it's uninformed crap. We're really no different as individuals from the rest of the world.
This is valid but the era of NASA could also quickly be brought to an end by private enterprise. And think; when private industry can profit from their research we won't have to worry about taxpayer funding or the grumblings from the peanut gallery that space is a waste but paying for a new stadium for a professional sports team adds value to the community.
Agreed, but mostly because I think that NASA should stick to research and X-projects, and stay out of regular spaceflight otherwise.
Don't feel bad at being pissed at stupid people, they deserve a bit of anger directed at them. These people have the majority voice that's keeping society at large from making the kinds of advancements that visionaries had years ago and could be accomplished today with a bit of money, a bit of wit and a willingness to accept that science is really a great thing and should be embraced instead of mocked and belittled.
Agreed.
Mostly I lay the blame on the commonilization of our educational system. Sure, there are many upon many pathetic ass-sitters out there, but at least some of them could have been enlightened were our education system better.
When people ask me how I've managed to learn all the stuff I have, specialties and cross-field, I tell them that it was two things: One, I had some really excellent teachers who encouraged my interests; and Two, I bust my tail:)
Don't know that I would say that laziness kills, but ignorance certainly does. Sigh;(
Re:The Space Race will be won by Russia and China.
on
Soyuz To The Moon?
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure that the American Way means what it used to; but I do think that the war in Iraq is, perhaps, changing that.
We lost a lot of national pride somewhere. We need it back, and we're getting it back - not, perhaps, in the best way, but it is happening. How that translates to purely "science fiction" endeavours - not my words - I don't know.
Commercial space entrepeneurs are definitely going to be the future. Hopefully we won't let civil lawsuits choke them. I'm not going to hold my breath on that one, either, tho. There *will* be the suits and the fight, one can pretty much guarantee that. How it affects the fledgling industry remains to be seen.
Agreed, any country that can establish themselves in space is welcome to. It might foster some competition among the rest. Good. We need to get up there, any way we can. Long term, I'd place money on the Chinese.
Just FYI, most euthanasia techniques in shelters are painkiller overdosages, which is about as painless as it gets. I doubt suffocation is painless. CO2 suffocation may be.
(BTW, Rob, Gina and I are considering becoming shelter volunteers next year; although the paperwork is crazed. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff they ask you. It's almost like applying for adoption. Hurk.:)
Something that was an eye-opener for me in Kraft's book was that there were people in the hierarchy of the early NASA who considered doing centrifugal and other tests on chimps to the point, where, quote "some of them were destroyed in the interest of science" so that they could continue testing the Mercury systems before a human manned launch - apparently, forever and ever. Somehow I doubt that even then that would have gone over that well with the public (it sure as hell wouldn't now) but fortunately it was slapped down, and not for humanitarian reasons, either.
This country is so confused at this point it's a wonder it's still functioning. The frontier spirit is not dead among individuals, but it's hopelessly tangled/strangled as to government policy. I'm not even going to go into the rest of the tangle here.
You're right about White, I screwed up there ( and already admitted to it elsewhere in this thread) - don't know where that came from.
But the modern MMU's certainly proved important in satellite repair during the shuttle flights - indeed, I'd say they were even essential - as in it'd be impossible to stop a spinning satellite and maneuver it into the shuttle bay while tethered. (sure, we could use remotes to accomplish the same thing - but that's as difficult a proposition as using remotes in SAR, wouldn't you say?)
Free-flight maneuvering is going to be *very important* during future construction & other missions. Assembling components while tethered could be fatal, and FF will be essential for anything involving journeys further away from the craft than just a few dozen feet.
Even during a simple spacewalk, tethers can represent a danger, as they can become fouled. Just like seat belts, they can be both useful and dangerous, as Collins found out during Gemini 10.
Agreed. We need heavy lifters and medium lifters for cargo; the next shuttle should be personnel/parts/tools only. It makes a lot more sense that way (and will undoubtedly be more economical all around).
Now if the BureauIdiots could be convinced...and that's assuming there's a next shuttle. I'm willing to bet that the next reusable space plane won't be NASA's:) and that would probably be a good thing, too.
We are going about this whole thing the wrong way...well, that's what happens when bureaucrats and corporate planners get ahold of good ideas. Kraft had quite a bit to say about that, and he wasn't amused.
(Rob, you really oughta read that book. It's SUPERB. Likely a local library has a copy, it's pretty popular. )
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks!
:D
That's interesting, I don't remember that bit from Lovell's book - but it's been a while since I read it (I assume you're talking about "Lost Moon")
I also remember reading something somewhere - was it Kraft? - about how the tank was apparently dropped at some point during the changeover.
Wasn't the ultimate cause of the explosion determined to be due to a faulty heater coil that overheated and sparked?
I would think that any damage done during the changeover would have been repaired, so I can't see how it would have been relevant unless the damage was simply missed - now that I think about it, there was something about the heater coil in question not being designed for the voltage being put thru it - I think that was from Chris Kraft's book (which unfortunately I don't have here ATM) as the specs had changed.
See, now I'm going to have to go back and read all these books all over again, and it's all slashdot's fault
Cheers!
SB
Fuel cells aren't an energy source, they are a storage mechanism.
Um, fuel cells *utilize* an energy storage mechanism - hydrogen - whether it comes from raw hydrogen, ethanol, natgas, etc, is irrelevant. They are simply a translation mechanism, much like a car engine or home furnace.
ALL fuels are energy storage mechanisms. The "engines" are simply the liberators of that energy.
SB
I agree with everything you said, except for your generalization of Americans as energy hogs. Not all of us are; indeed, there are millions of people in this country working on these problems all the way from passive energy reduction to active (fuel) reduction, and many of us, including me, who do everything we can to reduce what we consume.
:) and sooner or later the public-at-large is going to wake up. Cheap oil isn't going to help that. (not sure anything will at this point, there are too many sheep here, but one keeps grinding away :)
Please remember that what our idiot government/corporate/public_sheep sector does is not representative of all of us. We have a lot of ingenuity left yet
Anyway, cheers,
SB
PS I do disagree somewhat with your offhand dismissal of global warming, but that's a topic for another time.
n/t
Absolutely agreed wrt to solar water heating - water heaters are huge consumers of energy and anything that can reduce that helps. I know quite a few people who have solar water heaters augmenting their more traditional ones and they've been quite satisfied with the reductions in their fuel bills.
:)
Another good use of solar is passive heating. Of course this requires the house to be designed better, but we *are* moving towards more energy efficient homes... now if the stick frame fundies would get their act together, maybe we could really make a dent.
It isn't the flashy things that are going to do it. It is a lot of people doing dull things.
You bet!
More efficient appliances & vehicles, more efficient homes, more efficient fuels. We need to look at all the aspects. That's something that entirely too many people don't seem to understand...
Sigh.
SB
Nice reply, but a couple comments:
1) the global climate is not a linear system. small changes in overall temperatures can have *huge* effects, and not just in thousands of years, either. FE, it's been shown that a lot of the ice ages in the last million years didn't gradually creep in over thousands of years, but rather the major effects happened over decades, with the accumulation of the glaciers taking thousands of years. (also, surely you've read about the Little Ice Age, or the effects of the 1-2 C drop in global temps during the 1800s?)
2) One major effect of global warming that we'll see (and, I suspect, are already seeing) is much more violent weather patterns. The atmosphere is essentially an unstable heat engine, after all. Another effect is of changing local climate patterns; which can produce effects totally out of proportion to their scale. Rainfall patterns, etc.
Cheers,
SB
So then we use hemp. Hemp is easier to break down into fuel, it grows in places that corn simply won't, and is a very low maintenance crop.
Of course there's this little political problem...
SB
Um, no.
Some parts have sprayed on ablatives, but the underside had tiles and the leading edge of the damaged wing was composed of a carbon composite.
Google has plenty of references.
What you're talking about is simply the support struts for the External tank, not the orbiter underside.
SB
Just a minor correction:
:)
According to Kraft and Lovell's books, the CM batteries and reserve oxy tank weren't "depleted" but drawn down a little. They did transfer some power from the LM bateries to the CM, but no oxygen.
Had the SM oxygen tank explosion occurred on Apollo 8, where there was no LM, the astronauts wouldn't have survived.
An interesting tidbit from Gene Cernan's biog is that the tanks on 13 were actually the original tanks from Apollo 10. I don't remember why they were pulled, I'd have to go find the reference. But if that explosion had occurred on A-10, it's likely we wouldn't have landed on the moon for some time; would have changed a lot of history
Cheers,
SB
A more likely motivation for McBride's praise of Slashdot is that it was an attempt to slime Groklaws system of deleting posts. Trying to suggest some suppression of legitimate viewpoints. In other words, more FUD.Here be post deleters.
:)
Exactly. Trying to create dissension between the various groups/allies of your enemy is a common propoganda tactic, one that Darl - at least so far - seems to be very incompetent at. I'd guess that SCO is getting a bit desperate.
If I were an investor I'd be breaking into a cold sweat. I wonder if he also eats his own excrement now, and hums tunelessly to himself while rocking back and forth.
Darl: I was once important! I nearly defeated Open Source! *rocks back and forth*
Nurse: Yes, Darl, now be nice and take your medication, you'll feel a lot better, I promise. *makes note to increase meds*
Cheers,
SB
Well, actually I was thinking about the other civilizations hunkering down and not wanting to communicate because they're paranoid :) Kinda like we'd be, if anyone cared enough about SETI to link the public gestalt with the science. Not sure whether it's better either way, lol!
:)
:)
-and how much do our scientists care about actually communicating with... I dunno, pick some little critter at random, I'm in the south, we'll say possums. If joe scientist wanted to study possums, he would try to stay as hidden as possible and just watch/observe/ take notes, etc. Some alien species could feel the same way if they are even marginally more advanced than we are. We might just be dumb critters to them. They might be fully aware of us, but really not give a care other than watching, and use a totally different way to communicate than what we use, along the lines of the article suggestions.
Which is another possibility(ies), but not what I was hinting at. I still think it's possible some "grad student" might break the rules, and that might explain some of the not-so-easily explainable sightings. But - to address your last bit - evidence, man, evidence. I've seen some weird things too, things I couldn't explain, but nothing that convinced me that it was ET. Having been an amateur astronomer for nearly 30 years, I know that one will see things one can't explain right away, and VERY occasionally not at all.
I also know that one doesn't always know how to explain them in light of one's current knowledge, but later is another matter: one of the most convincing UFOs I saw as a teenager I saw later at an AF airshow; same strange objects and maneuvers that were all too familiar. It was a major D'oh moment
(I WILL NOT discuss alien surgical procedures or abductions; because they are all too totally absurd and Occams Razor puts them in the paranoid homo sapiens genre
SB
It could be we have a host of semi advanced civilisations like ours, all sitting around in passive reception mode, waiting for someone to contact them.
Or hoping nobody figures out where they are
Cheers,
SB
Thirty years ago we couldn't generate those pulses at all, much less detect them.
One can't assume that the civilization trying to communicate is at our level of tech, nor that we will remain at this level - we advance by trying to, not by saying "it can't be done."
Cheers,
SB
Thought you might find this interesting...
SB
But if advanced races *do* exist, it's likely we'd find them well ahead of less so - whether it's detecting their strong and widespread emissions or having them come visit/conquer.
I agree it's pretty unlikely they exist - especially out here in the boondocks. However, we don't even approach having enough data to know one way or another, and it's not likely we will for a long, long time. As I pointed out elsewhere, there could be a thriving multi-stellar civilization a few hundred ly away - a pittance - and we, at our very primitive level of detection, wouldn't even know they are there, *especially* if they practiced secure communications.
At this point the real limitation is not in Drake's equation - it's our technological backwardness; and that means that we really can't begin to formulate our chances.
SB
If they are trying to be elusive, it's likely we won't find them at all until we have interstellar spaceflight and have spread out far enough to run across them.
Right now, a thriving civilization could exist a few tens or hundreds of l.y. from here, and even if we know what we are looking for, build the right equipment to look for it, point it in *exactly* the right direction, at the right time, and can parse encrypted transmissions (not encrypted to be elusive, but rather to compress information transmission), AND can realiably sort the transmission out from the background noise, we wouldn't necessarily find it.
As an example of a hard to find yet not "hiding" civilization, let's suppose a civilization that uses lasers or masers for communication rather than radio - perhaps they consider them much more efficient (they can be) or they have their own internal reasons to use tight-beam communications. Or not. The problem we face here is unimaginably vast.
Compared to the problem we face, even the resources of the US are pretty pitiful. Vastly more so, when one considers how little of those resources we are actually spending on looking ( as a comparison, the pennies, nickels and dimes you lose in the laundry each year compared to an six figure income is about the ratio of SETI expenditure compared to our total resources.)
The problem of finding one person on the surface of the Earth is massively trivial in comparison, even if that person is accomplished at concealment.
My only comment on your last sentence is that it's uninformed crap. We're really no different as individuals from the rest of the world.
Cheers,
SB
This is valid but the era of NASA could also quickly be brought to an end by private enterprise. And think; when private industry can profit from their research we won't have to worry about taxpayer funding or the grumblings from the peanut gallery that space is a waste but paying for a new stadium for a professional sports team adds value to the community.
Agreed, but mostly because I think that NASA should stick to research and X-projects, and stay out of regular spaceflight otherwise.
Don't feel bad at being pissed at stupid people, they deserve a bit of anger directed at them. These people have the majority voice that's keeping society at large from making the kinds of advancements that visionaries had years ago and could be accomplished today with a bit of money, a bit of wit and a willingness to accept that science is really a great thing and should be embraced instead of mocked and belittled.
Agreed.
Mostly I lay the blame on the commonilization of our educational system. Sure, there are many upon many pathetic ass-sitters out there, but at least some of them could have been enlightened were our education system better.
When people ask me how I've managed to learn all the stuff I have, specialties and cross-field, I tell them that it was two things: One, I had some really excellent teachers who encouraged my interests; and Two, I bust my tail
Don't know that I would say that laziness kills, but ignorance certainly does. Sigh
Cheers!
SB
Well said. Agree completely.
Sigh.
SB
I'm not sure that the American Way means what it used to; but I do think that the war in Iraq is, perhaps, changing that.
We lost a lot of national pride somewhere. We need it back, and we're getting it back - not, perhaps, in the best way, but it is happening. How that translates to purely "science fiction" endeavours - not my words - I don't know.
Commercial space entrepeneurs are definitely going to be the future. Hopefully we won't let civil lawsuits choke them. I'm not going to hold my breath on that one, either, tho. There *will* be the suits and the fight, one can pretty much guarantee that. How it affects the fledgling industry remains to be seen.
Agreed, any country that can establish themselves in space is welcome to. It might foster some competition among the rest. Good. We need to get up there, any way we can. Long term, I'd place money on the Chinese.
Just FYI, most euthanasia techniques in shelters are painkiller overdosages, which is about as painless as it gets. I doubt suffocation is painless. CO2 suffocation may be.
(BTW, Rob, Gina and I are considering becoming shelter volunteers next year; although the paperwork is crazed. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff they ask you. It's almost like applying for adoption. Hurk.
Something that was an eye-opener for me in Kraft's book was that there were people in the hierarchy of the early NASA who considered doing centrifugal and other tests on chimps to the point, where, quote "some of them were destroyed in the interest of science" so that they could continue testing the Mercury systems before a human manned launch - apparently, forever and ever. Somehow I doubt that even then that would have gone over that well with the public (it sure as hell wouldn't now) but fortunately it was slapped down, and not for humanitarian reasons, either.
This country is so confused at this point it's a wonder it's still functioning. The frontier spirit is not dead among individuals, but it's hopelessly tangled/strangled as to government policy. I'm not even going to go into the rest of the tangle here.
Cheers, and call me sometime, eh?
SB
That's an excellent book, but I don't recall that part. Guess I'll have to read it again
I'll agree, a lot of people did; but that Braun and his team did so probably made a huge impact on history.
Cheers,
SB
You're right about White, I screwed up there ( and already admitted to it elsewhere in this thread) - don't know where that came from.
But the modern MMU's certainly proved important in satellite repair during the shuttle flights - indeed, I'd say they were even essential - as in it'd be impossible to stop a spinning satellite and maneuver it into the shuttle bay while tethered. (sure, we could use remotes to accomplish the same thing - but that's as difficult a proposition as using remotes in SAR, wouldn't you say?)
Free-flight maneuvering is going to be *very important* during future construction & other missions. Assembling components while tethered could be fatal, and FF will be essential for anything involving journeys further away from the craft than just a few dozen feet.
Even during a simple spacewalk, tethers can represent a danger, as they can become fouled. Just like seat belts, they can be both useful and dangerous, as Collins found out during Gemini 10.
Cheers,
SB
Sontag: I say we just nuke the whole thing and start over with another IPO.
McBride: Uh, this company represents several millions dollars of investor property...
Sontag:
.
Sorry, I can't continue. Comparing Sontag to Ripley makes my brain bleed. (Although McBride and Burke have a LOT in common
SB
Agreed. We need heavy lifters and medium lifters for cargo; the next shuttle should be personnel/parts/tools only. It makes a lot more sense that way (and will undoubtedly be more economical all around).
Now if the BureauIdiots could be convinced...and that's assuming there's a next shuttle. I'm willing to bet that the next reusable space plane won't be NASA's
We are going about this whole thing the wrong way...well, that's what happens when bureaucrats and corporate planners get ahold of good ideas. Kraft had quite a bit to say about that, and he wasn't amused.
(Rob, you really oughta read that book. It's SUPERB. Likely a local library has a copy, it's pretty popular. )
SB
I was thinking of something hosted on slashdot, however. Of course it'd be hard to bitch during a 503 Event, tho afterward...heheh. ;)
:) What's the Troll ratio there? lol!
Thanks, tho, I wasn't aware of that group. Hrm... oh joy, another time-waster, erm, uh, place to contribute
Cheers,
SB
Too true, unfortunately.
SB