My buddy Chris built the "BITCH" at MIT's ILG Fenway House. It stands for Bathroom Integrated Tracking something something, he tortured an innocent acronym to make it. Anyway, in a classic Boston Brownstone (right on the Fens, beautiful) they have 4 bathrooms and up to 25 people. So, each floor has a box with LEDs that light up when different bathrooms are in use. No indication of when the automatic Out-of-TP warning lights go in.
And what's kitchen pantry without an Athena terminal? 8)
If your goal is human colonization, then robots are mere tools to extend presence.
Shuttle, ISS, etc will not open the solar system. Fighting over those systems (and "science") is a sideshow. It is people squabbling over a couple of rowboats, compared to the fleets that will need building. Arguing over a very small pie. NASA is not going to open the Solar System up, that can only be done by individuals and companies making the decision to go there and stay.
There is money to be made on passenger spaceflight, and new systems becoming available. The future of spaceflight hasn't been brighter in decades, and it looks like a sustainable industry is developing.
They should outlaw the use of English in all communication. It is used in an activity called "planning" of almost all major crimes, cyber or real world. Very dangerous language. Ban it!
Or, as others might say "Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people." Perl is not your enemy.
The only mega-texturing I'm interested from Carmack is the charred hulks of Armadillo Aerospace craft on the Texas playa. C'mon John, FLY SOMETHING! Build it, fly it, break it! Whatever happened to your X-vehicle?
That is not the bottom line. The bottom line is that America, The Good Ol' USofA, does not have manned access to space. We have a system that is broken beyond usefulness, that is bringing the rest of our government space program down. The astronauts being volunteers has little to do with our strategic requirements. We can't get up there even if we want to.
We need to have a frank national discussion. If we are going to stop being spacefaring, stop. If we are going to develop cislunar space and beyond, we need to start with reliable (ie. commercial) flights to LEO for human beings. There is a new aerospace industry growing out there, and doing quite well, see Space Adventures recent PR. NASA may have to leverage these new businesses to survive. Does America need a "Space Shuttle" or be able to purchase tickets to LEO? Capabilities are more important than hardware.
The current price for a six-month stay in space via Russia, including Soyuz up and down: $44million. That and the mythical "Tito" of $20million are commercially available. That is the going rate, and American aerospace is going to need to be able to match it for the market to expand.
One potential threat for American travellers carrying this kind of chip is a sniffer weapon. The hi-tech version is an RFID sensitive smart missile and the dumber version is an IED in Cairo that sits and waits for Joe Sixpack to walk by. If you think I'm full of it, the Russians used a cell-phone sniffing missile to kill a Chechen general. For US RFID passports in other countries, all the munition needs to do is detect the chip's presense.
I want my "papers" to stay paper, please. Bar code them or whatever, but don't delibrately make it prone to identity theft, hacking or IEDs.
I don't necessarily agree with all the top-down government solutions proposed. I support revising CAFE, but am leary of what/how they get things done. My wife and I put our money where our mouths are. We do this for the environment:
- Drive a high-MPG car, our Matrix gets 34-36 mpg on the hiway. - ride bikes whenever possible. - have 1.7kw photovoltaic solar panels on our house, piped into the grid - other hippy stuff like compost and recycling
I'd also like to say how stupid all the NIMBYs on Cape Cod are. We desperately need wind farms in New England. They complain about the windmills blocking the view, but if there's orange smog over everything you won't even be able to see the water. I've been to Holland and the modern windmills there are elegant and non-intrusive despite the size.
that you need reliable Net access to use any of these "apps". I've got Google's personalized start page set up, and if there are any network issues I end up with a lot "temporarily unavailable" warnings. Not the greatest thing when you really need to finish that paper. If there was a way to write then upload it would provide more usability.
>And yet we consider David Smith and Tanaka Jiro to be of different 'races', while two Africans of far greater genetic diversity from each other we lump together as 'black'.
That, then, is ignorance on the part of the lumper. i've read it described as there being three genetic "clans" (re: races) in the human family: the really big West Africans (like Nigerians), the really small Africans ("pygmies"/San peoples) and everyone else. The following map shows it, they are L1, L2, and the rest of us are L3. That doesn't change the fact that even with few, small changes to our DNA, there are vast differences among the human family.
Some of my friends in college (at art school, natch) had this old German lady that taught history. She insisted that human evolution had stopped with the creation of society. This attitude seems to assume that if you aren't in the wilds eating twigs and grubs you aren't effected by breeding processes. Totally ridiculous. The idea that we are somehow 'frozen' comes from a combination of Christian dogma against sciences and the natural foreshortened view of existence that comes from only living a few decades. 5000 years of "civilization" is hardly a blip in the genetic record.
That evolutionary change shows up at all would, IMHO, indicate evolution is accelerating as we create new niches and new chemicals that directly influence our DNA and cells. The pseudo-hormonal effects of plastics, for instance, are going to have profound effects for thousands of years even if we stopped making them now.
Everything else: tested life support, avionics, the Service Module with main engine (Kestrel? SM is probably shortened version of their second stage), maybe a full cockpit and some kind of pressure vessel. From the quote, it sounds like it's flight-weight or very nearly. I half-agree on calling it vapourware: I'll give Dragon more credit when they start drop tests. The 30-man-day lifesupport test is no small cookies. They do have an impressive base of contractors for it, they definitely can build this vehicle with funding.
This vehicle is an interesting contrast to t/space's CXV. t/space has focused on a demo-or-die drop test and tour vehicle, while SpaceX has focused on the internals of their capsule. They are both blunt cones, one reenters 'sideways' the other base-first. The CXV has both Burt Rutan and Gary Hudson's prints all over it, their is a certain fly-boy cachet to the craft: dropped from a high-altitude craft with an innovative rocket attached. From the first look at SpaceX's Dragon, it seems to take a very conservative approach to aerodynamics and basic design. Elon even called it a mix of Soyuz and Apollo, they are focusing on a functional capability and relying on brute-forcing the vehicle to orbit with their Falcon 9. A lot of aerospace cost is getting the last 10% of weight shaved off the craft. If you own the rockets and they are delibrately over throwweight for an average capsule (5 tons), you have the option to not bother losing that extra 10%. With the estimated costs and business savvy that SpaceX has shown, the added mass cost is not going to matter. So, it'll cost them slightly more per flight, but they'll still be able to profit while undercutting every other provider.
1. Get rich in Internet biz 2. ??Build rockets?? 3. Profit!
yeah, if we had working Shuttles. They are currently grounded and no fluff-piece is going to cover up the very serious problems with STS. The only thing that is going to "save" Hubble is to build a new space telescope with the 3 grounded instruments.
when you pry it from cold, dead fingers, Jack. In a world where the best music is on used, imported $30 CDs, you're frickin' right that I'm going MP3s every one of them. You want to steal my VCR, too?
What about using a JPAerospace "darksky" station as the bottom end of a tether? It's also vaporware (they have prototypes) on a practical, current scale, but very interesting. THey've proposed launching rockets from the eventual station, it seems a natural for a space elevator that lacks the strength to go to ground.
ah, yes, you have been sucked into the Battletech universe. It doesn't much matter which media you encounter it in: novel, comic, tabletop miniatures, RPG or the incredible series of computer games. Battletech is incredibly compelling. A future galaxy, but decidedly low-tech (or grunge-tech?), feudal and dangerous. The recent computer games, especially MechAssault, have been extremely playable. Welcome to Terra.
Delta IV-H has plenty of capacity to handle handle a "Cargo Bay" adapter and still fly the Columbus and Kibo modules. The modules are each around 12 tons-15tons, Delta IV-H can theoretically fly 25tons to LEO. Also, the real question to ask w/ this is: Would the cost of adapting current mainfest to fly on EELV exceed the cancellation costs of Shuttle? At $4+ Billion per year, the Shuttle is definitely eating the rest of NASA alive. Station isn't in as bad a shape, IMHO, at least it is functional. Also, compare the cost of Shuttle (or upcoming CEV) to Soyuz: we now have a price for one six-month stay via Soyuz, $44 million. Compared to Shuttle costs, that should be sobering news to Dr. Griffin, policy wonks and all us space cadets.
For getting modules to ISS, I think they should actually use a Soyuz (with bigger service module and American CBM adapter on nose) to meet and tug the EELV-launched modules into the proper orbit. It's still pennies on the dollar compared to maintaining STS.
(canadian site since we're discussing Silver Dart)
I think the Silver Dart is just paper, or PowerPoint. They really, really need to fly the "Arrow", it's almost 2006. If they couldn't fly it for the XPrize or the Zeroth XCup, their probably not going to fly. You or I can easily do what they've done to "make" the Silver Dart: haul out pictures of your favorite NASA airframe, redesign it using modern materials in CAD or 3D software, render it and make media with it. It has nothing to do with actual aerospace engineering. We've suffered 3 decades of viewgraphs from NASA, the small alt.space groups are supposed to be innovating not copying the space agency's worst attributes. Build it, fly it, break it.
This is for all of the guys in the biz or getting there: make me eat crow. Fly something cool and blow my socks off. I was at Mojave for SS1's first XPrize flight, THAT blew my socks off. Some 3D artist's wireframe does not impress me. Prove me wrong.
My word! I must be going senile or something. Tramiel, Ali, Gould, it's been a while. Corporate raiders, all. What I remember is them moving the company to the Cayman Islands and driving it into the ground... That was so long ago...
The A3000+ was supposed to be an amazing box - my own machines included a heavily modified A1200 and A4000. Big fan from back in the day.
Maybe it will run REBOL? That'd be cool, Carl Sassenrath has some interesting software. I'd buy a Commodore-branded GPS or handheld in a second.
Jack Tramiel, there is a special place in Hell for you. A place where you can gaze upon Jay Miner's shining brilliance, but never quite touch it. You killed the coolest computer ever, jerk.
Slashdot Mirror
My buddy Chris built the "BITCH" at MIT's ILG Fenway House. It stands for Bathroom Integrated Tracking something something, he tortured an innocent acronym to make it. Anyway, in a classic Boston Brownstone (right on the Fens, beautiful) they have 4 bathrooms and up to 25 people. So, each floor has a box with LEDs that light up when different bathrooms are in use. No indication of when the automatic Out-of-TP warning lights go in.
And what's kitchen pantry without an Athena terminal? 8)
Robots can't breed.
If your goal is human colonization, then robots are mere tools to extend presence.
Shuttle, ISS, etc will not open the solar system. Fighting over those systems (and "science") is a sideshow. It is people squabbling over a couple of rowboats, compared to the fleets that will need building. Arguing over a very small pie. NASA is not going to open the Solar System up, that can only be done by individuals and companies making the decision to go there and stay.
There is money to be made on passenger spaceflight, and new systems becoming available. The future of spaceflight hasn't been brighter in decades, and it looks like a sustainable industry is developing.
They should outlaw the use of English in all communication. It is used in an activity called "planning" of almost all major crimes, cyber or real world. Very dangerous language. Ban it!
Or, as others might say "Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people." Perl is not your enemy.
The only mega-texturing I'm interested from Carmack is the charred hulks of Armadillo Aerospace craft on the Texas playa. C'mon John, FLY SOMETHING! Build it, fly it, break it! Whatever happened to your X-vehicle?
Who cares about Doom? Build the future!
That is not the bottom line. The bottom line is that America, The Good Ol' USofA, does not have manned access to space. We have a system that is broken beyond usefulness, that is bringing the rest of our government space program down. The astronauts being volunteers has little to do with our strategic requirements. We can't get up there even if we want to.
We need to have a frank national discussion. If we are going to stop being spacefaring, stop. If we are going to develop cislunar space and beyond, we need to start with reliable (ie. commercial) flights to LEO for human beings. There is a new aerospace industry growing out there, and doing quite well, see Space Adventures recent PR. NASA may have to leverage these new businesses to survive. Does America need a "Space Shuttle" or be able to purchase tickets to LEO? Capabilities are more important than hardware.
The current price for a six-month stay in space via Russia, including Soyuz up and down: $44million. That and the mythical "Tito" of $20million are commercially available. That is the going rate, and American aerospace is going to need to be able to match it for the market to expand.
Josh
Sgt. Coughaner was quoted afterward, "We survived the Sunni Triangle, but got 0WN3D by Slashdot!"
One potential threat for American travellers carrying this kind of chip is a sniffer weapon. The hi-tech version is an RFID sensitive smart missile and the dumber version is an IED in Cairo that sits and waits for Joe Sixpack to walk by. If you think I'm full of it, the Russians used a cell-phone sniffing missile to kill a Chechen general. For US RFID passports in other countries, all the munition needs to do is detect the chip's presense.
I want my "papers" to stay paper, please. Bar code them or whatever, but don't delibrately make it prone to identity theft, hacking or IEDs.
Josh
Patience and a decent flatbed scanner works great.
I don't necessarily agree with all the top-down government solutions proposed. I support revising CAFE, but am leary of what/how they get things done. My wife and I put our money where our mouths are. We do this for the environment:
- Drive a high-MPG car, our Matrix gets 34-36 mpg on the hiway.
- ride bikes whenever possible.
- have 1.7kw photovoltaic solar panels on our house, piped into the grid
- other hippy stuff like compost and recycling
I'd also like to say how stupid all the NIMBYs on Cape Cod are. We desperately need wind farms in New England. They complain about the windmills blocking the view, but if there's orange smog over everything you won't even be able to see the water. I've been to Holland and the modern windmills there are elegant and non-intrusive despite the size.
if that's a real SSH hole, they should no better than to release warnings on April 1st.
But... Dad!! All the other kids are doing it!!
and the flames were gushing out the side. It looked like it's in the same spot as where the blanket was flapping.
Hi George!
- Josh
that you need reliable Net access to use any of these "apps". I've got Google's personalized start page set up, and if there are any network issues I end up with a lot "temporarily unavailable" warnings. Not the greatest thing when you really need to finish that paper. If there was a way to write then upload it would provide more usability.
Josh
It makes me happy to know that someone in the open source community gets paid for their efforts. Firefox is great software.
>And yet we consider David Smith and Tanaka Jiro to be of different 'races', while two Africans of far greater genetic diversity from each other we lump together as 'black'.
That, then, is ignorance on the part of the lumper. i've read it described as there being three genetic "clans" (re: races) in the human family: the really big West Africans (like Nigerians), the really small Africans ("pygmies"/San peoples) and everyone else. The following map shows it, they are L1, L2, and the rest of us are L3. That doesn't change the fact that even with few, small changes to our DNA, there are vast differences among the human family.
http://www.mitomap.org/WorldMigrations.pdf
Some of my friends in college (at art school, natch) had this old German lady that taught history. She insisted that human evolution had stopped with the creation of society. This attitude seems to assume that if you aren't in the wilds eating twigs and grubs you aren't effected by breeding processes. Totally ridiculous. The idea that we are somehow 'frozen' comes from a combination of Christian dogma against sciences and the natural foreshortened view of existence that comes from only living a few decades. 5000 years of "civilization" is hardly a blip in the genetic record.
That evolutionary change shows up at all would, IMHO, indicate evolution is accelerating as we create new niches and new chemicals that directly influence our DNA and cells. The pseudo-hormonal effects of plastics, for instance, are going to have profound effects for thousands of years even if we stopped making them now.
Eh,
josh
>LOL, that's brilliant. What does it have?
Everything else: tested life support, avionics, the Service Module with main engine (Kestrel? SM is probably shortened version of their second stage), maybe a full cockpit and some kind of pressure vessel. From the quote, it sounds like it's flight-weight or very nearly. I half-agree on calling it vapourware: I'll give Dragon more credit when they start drop tests. The 30-man-day lifesupport test is no small cookies. They do have an impressive base of contractors for it, they definitely can build this vehicle with funding.
This vehicle is an interesting contrast to t/space's CXV. t/space has focused on a demo-or-die drop test and tour vehicle, while SpaceX has focused on the internals of their capsule. They are both blunt cones, one reenters 'sideways' the other base-first. The CXV has both Burt Rutan and Gary Hudson's prints all over it, their is a certain fly-boy cachet to the craft: dropped from a high-altitude craft with an innovative rocket attached. From the first look at SpaceX's Dragon, it seems to take a very conservative approach to aerodynamics and basic design. Elon even called it a mix of Soyuz and Apollo, they are focusing on a functional capability and relying on brute-forcing the vehicle to orbit with their Falcon 9. A lot of aerospace cost is getting the last 10% of weight shaved off the craft. If you own the rockets and they are delibrately over throwweight for an average capsule (5 tons), you have the option to not bother losing that extra 10%. With the estimated costs and business savvy that SpaceX has shown, the added mass cost is not going to matter. So, it'll cost them slightly more per flight, but they'll still be able to profit while undercutting every other provider.
1. Get rich in Internet biz
2. ??Build rockets??
3. Profit!
Josh
yeah, if we had working Shuttles. They are currently grounded and no fluff-piece is going to cover up the very serious problems with STS. The only thing that is going to "save" Hubble is to build a new space telescope with the 3 grounded instruments.
Josh
when you pry it from cold, dead fingers, Jack. In a world where the best music is on used, imported $30 CDs, you're frickin' right that I'm going MP3s every one of them. You want to steal my VCR, too?
What about using a JPAerospace "darksky" station as the bottom end of a tether? It's also vaporware (they have prototypes) on a practical, current scale, but very interesting. THey've proposed launching rockets from the eventual station, it seems a natural for a space elevator that lacks the strength to go to ground.
josh
ah, yes, you have been sucked into the Battletech universe. It doesn't much matter which media you encounter it in: novel, comic, tabletop miniatures, RPG or the incredible series of computer games. Battletech is incredibly compelling. A future galaxy, but decidedly low-tech (or grunge-tech?), feudal and dangerous. The recent computer games, especially MechAssault, have been extremely playable. Welcome to Terra.
Delta IV-H has plenty of capacity to handle handle a "Cargo Bay" adapter and still fly the Columbus and Kibo modules. The modules are each around 12 tons-15tons, Delta IV-H can theoretically fly 25tons to LEO. Also, the real question to ask w/ this is: Would the cost of adapting current mainfest to fly on EELV exceed the cancellation costs of Shuttle? At $4+ Billion per year, the Shuttle is definitely eating the rest of NASA alive. Station isn't in as bad a shape, IMHO, at least it is functional. Also, compare the cost of Shuttle (or upcoming CEV) to Soyuz: we now have a price for one six-month stay via Soyuz, $44 million. Compared to Shuttle costs, that should be sobering news to Dr. Griffin, policy wonks and all us space cadets.
For getting modules to ISS, I think they should actually use a Soyuz (with bigger service module and American CBM adapter on nose) to meet and tug the EELV-launched modules into the proper orbit. It's still pennies on the dollar compared to maintaining STS.
Josh
OMG! Mike Griffin for President!! Dr G in 08!
Soyuz flies with several dozen thrust chambers, and is the most reliable launcher in the world:i s.jpg
http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/img/soyuz-rocket-comto
(canadian site since we're discussing Silver Dart)
I think the Silver Dart is just paper, or PowerPoint. They really, really need to fly the "Arrow", it's almost 2006. If they couldn't fly it for the XPrize or the Zeroth XCup, their probably not going to fly. You or I can easily do what they've done to "make" the Silver Dart: haul out pictures of your favorite NASA airframe, redesign it using modern materials in CAD or 3D software, render it and make media with it. It has nothing to do with actual aerospace engineering. We've suffered 3 decades of viewgraphs from NASA, the small alt.space groups are supposed to be innovating not copying the space agency's worst attributes. Build it, fly it, break it.
This is for all of the guys in the biz or getting there: make me eat crow. Fly something cool and blow my socks off. I was at Mojave for SS1's first XPrize flight, THAT blew my socks off. Some 3D artist's wireframe does not impress me. Prove me wrong.
Josh
My word! I must be going senile or something. Tramiel, Ali, Gould, it's been a while. Corporate raiders, all. What I remember is them moving the company to the Cayman Islands and driving it into the ground... That was so long ago...
The A3000+ was supposed to be an amazing box - my own machines included a heavily modified A1200 and A4000. Big fan from back in the day.
J
Maybe it will run REBOL? That'd be cool, Carl Sassenrath has some interesting software. I'd buy a Commodore-branded GPS or handheld in a second.
Jack Tramiel, there is a special place in Hell for you. A place where you can gaze upon Jay Miner's shining brilliance, but never quite touch it. You killed the coolest computer ever, jerk.