Yeah, they did. Remember, the payload is just a payload - you can structure it however you will as long as it is at the right end of the rocket. The choice to put a capsule on the tip of the rocket has advantages - you can have an escape tower, for instance.
The Shuttle design had a few key selling points at the time:
Looks like an airplane - psychologically important.
Can return items from orbit to the ground safely. Turns out this was some obscure Air Force demand for military sats.
Reusable - therefore sort of compels additional missions, which was the obvious goal of the professional astronaut corps
The bad part was that it was not as safe as a capsule based design. The assumption was technology would conquer the problems. The assumption was wrong.
The project was mismanaged. You're trying to twist words around to prove out that it wasn't NASA's fault. There's plenty of blame to go around, but the project was mismanaged and ill-advised. The nature of the launch vehicle was dominated by political considerations, not ones of survivability and quality.
The loss of tiles was not a failure. It was a loss of tiles. A failure is when the craft breaks up and the mission fails.
You'd be hard pressed to find a mission that demands an astronaut on anything that we reasonably can do in the next 10 years.
I like space flight and the whole prospect of same, but think like a bean counter for a moment. This is fluff.
If I _weren't_ interested in space flight, i'd recommend axing all but a tiny bit of NASA's budget. They don't do much that is useful. Chop out the whole manned space program at the very least. They invested their dollars in a very fragile spacecraft combining all the worst elements of a solid-fueled and liquid fueled rocket. Moreover they took on all the limitations of the airplane. 5 operational craft were constructed, two have been lost. The suggestion is that each craft has a lifespan on the order of 25 flights. All failures to date have been catastrophic, with 7 fatalities apiece.
This is really hard to justify particularly considering that at least Atlantis and Discovery are close to EOL based upon our past experience. Two more disasters to look forward to. It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Shuttle was a flawed design and should not have been built.
While NASA may fly a Shuttle again, the program will never be back 'on track'. I think this is what O'Keefe keeps telling us. The US might wish to keep the *possibility* of using a Shuttle available for military reasons or as an ISS rescue, the program is fundamentally dead. The Shuttle will be retired when some other manned vehicle is made available in the mid-2010s. Hopefully a non-reusable, proven capsule design.
This is sort of a parallel to the RIAA issue - I refuse to use because I dislike what the site has become. Ditto, I won't buy cds new because of the same issue. There is no 'used Yahoo' market, unfortunately.
You mean that thing that was really cool back in 1995 but has become the net equivalent of a tourist trap?
I haven't even visited the site in years, literally. Do people still use that? Between the slanted stories on the front page and the increasing use of flash on the site, they drove me away a long time ago.
Because considerable sounds like some washington think tank came up with it. It's dry and unpersonable. The use of 'not inconsiderable' was a meagre attempt to insert some humanity into it.
I personally don't see this robot as delivering a military-pressed and lightly starched shirt. That said, if someone came up with one, i'd love to avoid visiting the dry cleaner regularly to get that. Mr. Lee is a great guy but it's a pain in my ass to go there, not to mention a not inconsiderable expense.
Call me when the technology is actually there, i'll buy.
It's pretty much the same deal you'd get walking into a CIO's office in XXX Corporation and trying to sell your software. I think that was the intent of the system, and it tends to work that way. Individual commanders have freedom of choice to pick the systems that meet their mission.
That said, the reason Microsoft wins contracts in the DoD is because the commercial world is dominated by Microsoft. All things in government are controlled by politics, and if a govt agency were to start singling out Microsoft as a purveyor of inferior software, heads would roll due to the economic impact to Microsoft, and the simple proof that the rest of the US is using their software almost exclusively. When the commercial world changes, the DoD will too.
That is quite incorrect. The software wasn't Common Criteria certified up to that point, but you could run it.
The ability to run/not run software in a DoD environment is controlled mostly by mission - there are very few applications you 'can't' run. There is a person in every military organization called a DAA "Designated Accrediting Authority" who can issue an ATO "Authority to Operate" for anything he/she feels like doing. This person is usually the commander of an installation or organization, and will usually be of 0-6 or higher rank.
If you run something in the DoD without getting a DAA signoff, you are screwed. If the software is insecure, the DAA and the IA "Information Assurance" staff are the ones who are screwed.
The ultimate expression of the DAA's ATO is the DITSCAP. The DITSCAP is basically a huge document showing you did due diligence in security testing your software. You are supposed to list all threats in there, and make value judgements as to whether they are deal breakers or acceptable, and what steps you are taking to mitigate.
The DAA signature on ATO means that that commander read the DITSCAP, accepts the risks, and will run the software/system in question. No courts martial. No UCMJ at all.
As to your other assertion about Microsoft giving software away to the Army, realize that we (meaning Army installations) pay a tax each year out of our budgets to finance the Microsoft ELA with the Army, which is costing the Army precisely $151.00 each bundled desktop, which includes Office and the OS, plus a server CAL. Either way, that's a long way from $10.
There is a Powerpoint on the topic (opens up fine in OOO) located here. You can also go to the Army Small Computer Program site if you want to see how the ELA is implemented in real life.
Regardless of the instructions given, the situation is perverse - you are issued an order that will result in the killing of millions of people. Will you carry it out? Will you permit the person next to you to carry it out? What if you are convinced it's a valid order and someone is derelict in their duty? Will you fire?
I think the Wargames depiction is one distinct possibility. Luckily, we'll probably never know.
I'm glad you're not running national defense. You obviously haven't worked in a government job, or in the military. It's a lot different than having the password written on a blotter, or being able to memorize the two passwords that control your entire life.
A password is not security anyway, it was a shared password and it would have become known eventually to people who shouldn't have had it. The guys with the guns were the security measure. The number was to make tinfoil hat types like you happy.
Umm, why is this a troll? Cisco's support policies and hardware reliability are not that great, given the extreme expense for same.
Ferinstance, just try downloading a flash image for say, a CSS 11150 box. You pay $10k for the thing, and then you can't download a ROM image without paying about $1500 a year for support.
There were two personnel in each launch control room with keys which had to be turned simultaneously. They both had pistols. The pistols were to shoot the other one if he went insane.
This was depicted in 'Wargames'
The launch code sounds like some politician's idea of a safeguard. You'd think geeks like us would know better - a password is not security. Furthermore, if we DID have to fire the missile, it would suck if someone forgot the password.
Now we're getting into nuclear deterrence and the difference between the Soviet "first strike" and American "second strike" arsenals. Martin Van Creveld does a nice synopsis of this mode of thought in "Technology and War" if you are interested.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, they did. Remember, the payload is just a payload - you can structure it however you will as long as it is at the right end of the rocket. The choice to put a capsule on the tip of the rocket has advantages - you can have an escape tower, for instance.
The Shuttle design had a few key selling points at the time:
The bad part was that it was not as safe as a capsule based design. The assumption was technology would conquer the problems. The assumption was wrong.
Ad hominem point reached - conversation ends.
You are a NASA shill.
The project was mismanaged. You're trying to twist words around to prove out that it wasn't NASA's fault. There's plenty of blame to go around, but the project was mismanaged and ill-advised. The nature of the launch vehicle was dominated by political considerations, not ones of survivability and quality.
The loss of tiles was not a failure. It was a loss of tiles. A failure is when the craft breaks up and the mission fails.
If a reliable, reusable capsule were devised, i'm all for it.
I note that such technology hasn't been demonstrated in real life, possibly because of display value of the capsules.
You'd be hard pressed to find a mission that demands an astronaut on anything that we reasonably can do in the next 10 years.
I like space flight and the whole prospect of same, but think like a bean counter for a moment. This is fluff.
If I _weren't_ interested in space flight, i'd recommend axing all but a tiny bit of NASA's budget. They don't do much that is useful. Chop out the whole manned space program at the very least. They invested their dollars in a very fragile spacecraft combining all the worst elements of a solid-fueled and liquid fueled rocket. Moreover they took on all the limitations of the airplane. 5 operational craft were constructed, two have been lost. The suggestion is that each craft has a lifespan on the order of 25 flights. All failures to date have been catastrophic, with 7 fatalities apiece.
This is really hard to justify particularly considering that at least Atlantis and Discovery are close to EOL based upon our past experience. Two more disasters to look forward to. It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Shuttle was a flawed design and should not have been built.
While NASA may fly a Shuttle again, the program will never be back 'on track'. I think this is what O'Keefe keeps telling us. The US might wish to keep the *possibility* of using a Shuttle available for military reasons or as an ISS rescue, the program is fundamentally dead. The Shuttle will be retired when some other manned vehicle is made available in the mid-2010s. Hopefully a non-reusable, proven capsule design.
This is sort of a parallel to the RIAA issue - I refuse to use because I dislike what the site has become. Ditto, I won't buy cds new because of the same issue. There is no 'used Yahoo' market, unfortunately.
You mean that thing that was really cool back in 1995 but has become the net equivalent of a tourist trap?
I haven't even visited the site in years, literally. Do people still use that? Between the slanted stories on the front page and the increasing use of flash on the site, they drove me away a long time ago.
"MMMMM...tuna taco"
Because considerable sounds like some washington think tank came up with it. It's dry and unpersonable. The use of 'not inconsiderable' was a meagre attempt to insert some humanity into it.
I personally don't see this robot as delivering a military-pressed and lightly starched shirt. That said, if someone came up with one, i'd love to avoid visiting the dry cleaner regularly to get that. Mr. Lee is a great guy but it's a pain in my ass to go there, not to mention a not inconsiderable expense.
Call me when the technology is actually there, i'll buy.
It's pretty much the same deal you'd get walking into a CIO's office in XXX Corporation and trying to sell your software. I think that was the intent of the system, and it tends to work that way. Individual commanders have freedom of choice to pick the systems that meet their mission.
That said, the reason Microsoft wins contracts in the DoD is because the commercial world is dominated by Microsoft. All things in government are controlled by politics, and if a govt agency were to start singling out Microsoft as a purveyor of inferior software, heads would roll due to the economic impact to Microsoft, and the simple proof that the rest of the US is using their software almost exclusively. When the commercial world changes, the DoD will too.
That is quite incorrect. The software wasn't Common Criteria certified up to that point, but you could run it.
The ability to run/not run software in a DoD environment is controlled mostly by mission - there are very few applications you 'can't' run. There is a person in every military organization called a DAA "Designated Accrediting Authority" who can issue an ATO "Authority to Operate" for anything he/she feels like doing. This person is usually the commander of an installation or organization, and will usually be of 0-6 or higher rank.
If you run something in the DoD without getting a DAA signoff, you are screwed. If the software is insecure, the DAA and the IA "Information Assurance" staff are the ones who are screwed.
The ultimate expression of the DAA's ATO is the DITSCAP. The DITSCAP is basically a huge document showing you did due diligence in security testing your software. You are supposed to list all threats in there, and make value judgements as to whether they are deal breakers or acceptable, and what steps you are taking to mitigate.
The DAA signature on ATO means that that commander read the DITSCAP, accepts the risks, and will run the software/system in question. No courts martial. No UCMJ at all.
As to your other assertion about Microsoft giving software away to the Army, realize that we (meaning Army installations) pay a tax each year out of our budgets to finance the Microsoft ELA with the Army, which is costing the Army precisely $151.00 each bundled desktop, which includes Office and the OS, plus a server CAL. Either way, that's a long way from $10.
There is a Powerpoint on the topic (opens up fine in OOO) located here. You can also go to the Army Small Computer Program site if you want to see how the ELA is implemented in real life.
Please stop lying to these people. Thank you.
Regardless of the instructions given, the situation is perverse - you are issued an order that will result in the killing of millions of people. Will you carry it out? Will you permit the person next to you to carry it out? What if you are convinced it's a valid order and someone is derelict in their duty? Will you fire?
I think the Wargames depiction is one distinct possibility. Luckily, we'll probably never know.
If either one dies, no launch is going to happen from that control room. The whole setup was rather Machiavellian, but very effective.
I'm glad you're not running national defense. You obviously haven't worked in a government job, or in the military. It's a lot different than having the password written on a blotter, or being able to memorize the two passwords that control your entire life.
A password is not security anyway, it was a shared password and it would have become known eventually to people who shouldn't have had it. The guys with the guns were the security measure. The number was to make tinfoil hat types like you happy.
You obviously have never worked in the government.
You're being all too naive here.
Yeah, but you need both guys to turn the keys simultaneously, so the net effect is that no launch happens, which was the goal.
Umm, why is this a troll? Cisco's support policies and hardware reliability are not that great, given the extreme expense for same.
Ferinstance, just try downloading a flash image for say, a CSS 11150 box. You pay $10k for the thing, and then you can't download a ROM image without paying about $1500 a year for support.
Riiiight.
There were two personnel in each launch control room with keys which had to be turned simultaneously. They both had pistols. The pistols were to shoot the other one if he went insane.
This was depicted in 'Wargames'
The launch code sounds like some politician's idea of a safeguard. You'd think geeks like us would know better - a password is not security. Furthermore, if we DID have to fire the missile, it would suck if someone forgot the password.
Now we're getting into nuclear deterrence and the difference between the Soviet "first strike" and American "second strike" arsenals. Martin Van Creveld does a nice synopsis of this mode of thought in "Technology and War" if you are interested.
If you want to experience a 'smell theater', try the bathroom at my job around 5pm, before the janitor gets in there with his bleach.
Fat chicks have mod points, dude.
Umm, which 'essential oil' is going to generate that scent?
Agreed on the pharms, thanks for checking on the RIAA/MPAA stuff.
I'll draft something decent tonight. I suppose pissing into the wind doesn't hurt, just gets you a little wet.
Did that make you feel better about the emptiness of your existence?
Good, glad to be of service.
If I told you the truth, you'd be quite despondent indeed.
No maths required, just a condom.