truckload of bucks you have to fork over for the pretty plastic
I have nice looking computers. Got the window, the neon, and the jet engine sound to go along with it (too many fans cooling the dual amd chips)... and I still paid a lot less than I would have for a Mac. I used to be a Mac fanatic but when my parents were no longer supporting my addiction, I had to switch to pc's which are considerably cheaper.
If they're issuing you a joint credit card, it might have grounds to stand on
Because of a previous marriage I have terrible credit. I'm not one to pass blame and act like I had nothing to do with a situation I was involved in, but in this case, I didn't have anything to do with it. My ex-wife bounced a large number of checks and hid this from me just long enough to cause lots of problems. It was a mess to sort out and although I was able to get most of it straightened out, and she was able to avoid jail time, I now have bad credit. That being said, at my previous job I had a company credit card even though my boss knew what kind of credit I had. He knew me, knew what kind of a guy I am, and trusted me. I only used the card when I had to for work purposes and there was never an issue.
But when you are interviewing someone you've never met before, you want all of the information you can get. While I have bad credit, I understand why I may get turned down for a job because of it. I realize that a lot of people have stellar credit and that says something about them 90% of the time. Sure some people have bad credit due to luck or whatever, but most people with bad credit have it because they were not wise with their money. At least that could have been said a while back. Now with all of the people out of work, I think the majority of America does or soon will have bad credit. Times are tough and I'm very thankful that I'm self-employed and not looking for work.
Well, some of us like consistency. When I write an html page and a user views it in IE or Mozilla, or Konqueror, or whatever, they should see the exact same thing. I don't want customers to have problems viewing the page because they happen to prefer Netscape or Mozilla or anything else. I prefer Mozilla and I hate getting messages that I need a different browser to view a page and I would not do business with a company that was unwilling to code it's pages in a manner that is viewable by whatever browser I want to use.
I think it all boils down to doing the bare minimum you have to, or doing the job right. I take the time to code the page correctly, and then make any needed adjustments so that it works in several different browsers.
Yes indeed. I misstated my point a bit. I code to standards first, and then I code in work arounds for any browser specific problems I come across. One thing I've found that works quite well is testing my pages first in Mozilla. Once I have things working the way I want in Mozilla, there is usually very little that needs to be changed for them to work in IE. Going the other way is a nightmare though since IE is so loose (like a 2 bit whore? hehe).
Actually it's not. And when IE7 comes out, I'll add more code if I need to. I maintain my code for compatiblity. I wish this wasn't needed but clients often want features that require work-arounds for cross-browser compatibility. It's very annoying when I try to go to a site and I get a page that tells me I need IE... and even more annoying when I get a page that says I need Netscape since I'm using Mozilla. I take the time to code for multiple browsers and then integrate the code into a single seamless page that handles each browser equally well.
Since I use Linux as my primary desktop, I think not. I use Mozilla as my default browser and it works great. I often have to change the text size to 120% so that I can read it, but that's pretty much the only problem I've had... other that sites that tell me I need a different browser.
When I write an html page, I write to standards (if you call them that). Then I test it and make changes to small parts that don't work correctly in various browsers. Sometimes I'll leave off a feature if it causes problems, but that's not always an option. Sometims I will get a project that requires web pages to a spec that was created in Photoshop. Often there is no way to code it so that it will match the spec in both IE and Netscape/Mozilla without using scripting to alter parts of the pages based on the browser. Then you figure in the other browsers and you get into a bigger mess.
I agree with other posters that it would be wonderful to code it once and leave it at that but it's just not possible if you want to use any advanced features, yet have it work on more than one browser.
Yea, that's why this state has the highest un-employment rate in the nation. The state doesn't do shit to help small businesses grow. I am self-employed and my clients are all in different states/countries thankfully. I would never be able to survive depending on locals for business.
This is fine for a personal or hobby site but for e-commerce, you need to write to users, not standards. It makes no difference to the user that your page is coded to standards if he/she can't view it. Telling them they need a different browser isn't the answer either. Showing them what they want, in a manner that works correctly with their browser, is unfortunately the best solution if you want to be profitable.
I've had to code drop down menus differently for different browsers to get things to look the same, however when I'm done, you get the exact same page, with everything the same size and in the same place in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, and Konqueror. I've never used Opera so I don't test that one, but I guess I probably should.
Umm... since Netscape is derived from Mozilla, shouldn't they be considered the same? I use Mozilla because Netscape is always a bit behind on the updates but I consider them to be about the same. I think the last version of Netscape released had all of the Mozilla features... but I may be wrong.
I also use Konq once in a while when a site tells me I don't have the right browser. I have it set to report that it's IE and that works just fine. It really pisses me off that by telling the server it's IE, it can display the page perfectly. Why do people require a specific browser? That's just plain ignorance.
I live in Seattle... or rather Burien which is 10 miles south of Seattle. Portland is only a couple of hours form here and has lots of nice big stores for me to shop at without paying sales tax. Yes I know that it's my duty as a citizen residing in Washington state to report what I have purchased and pay sales tax on it once I return, but I say screw that. I bought it in another state and WA did nothing at all to earn that money from me so they can't have it.
It's not like they have a way to tell what I bought here and what I bought there. Sure they could have a check point at the border but they don't, and until they do, shop in Oregon I will. I do shop here as well but going to Portland for the weekend is fun and I find myself doing a lot of shopping whenever I'm there. Next month I'm going to be in Ashland, OR for two weeks and will most likely do some shopping on the way home. Sales tax doesn't seem like much but 8% adds up rather quickly.
This has been happening all day for me. It will say 27 comments, then I click read more, then there are no comments. Then I refresh and there are 5 or 100... kinda odd... but at least it's faster right now than it has been lately. And I understand that they are making changes to the code all the time so I'm not complaining mind you. I never bitch about stuff that's free... that's just rude.
Anyway, on to the topic at hand:
We know a few things about this fuel. First, it works really well. Second, it burns like a.. well, you know. Why are we not able to use something that works just as well yet is much safer? I thought the fuel of the future was supposed to be hydrogen with the only byproduct being water? I keep reading about how great it is, how some cars are using it or are going to start in the next couple years, how it's completey renewable, etc., etc., etc. So why is peroxide being studied and tested if hydrogen is so great?
I think one thing we need to keep in mind is the safety factor. If a tank of peroxide explodes during a rocket launch, will any of the liquid make it back to the ground, or will there be any harmful residue that will make it to the ground? I'm assuming that most of the liquid would be burned and would not reach the ground but there could be a toxic cloud and/or harmful residue.
Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE?
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Gnome 2.2 Released
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· Score: 1
After all, KDE apps run under Gnome and vice versa, so you can decide on a per app basis which software to use.
Now if only the Gnome apps would have the look and feel of KDE when I run them in KDE... but then they would be KDE apps and not Gnome apps...
Re:EDO and Orbiter mission durations
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Columbia Coverage
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· Score: 1
Columbia didn't have enough fuel to change it's orbit to that of ISS.
Columbia was not equipped for docking with ISS was it? I know they mentioned that on CNN but I haven't verified that.
So from what you have listed, it's plausible to estimate that Columbia could have made it for 18 days. Would there not have been any way to get a second shuttle into orbit to simply pick up the 7 crew members of the Columbia shuttle, and bring them back to Earth safely? Obviously abandoning a shuttle would be quite costly, having it explode over Texas was the end result.
All I have been trying to say is that NASA could have rescued the Columbia crew. They may not have been able to save Columbia, but they could have sent up a second shuttle that had the capability to dock with ISS, and could have take the crew there. I doubt there would have been anyway to bring them all back to Earth at once because of limited seating. They could have come back one at a time or a second escape vehicle could have been taken to the ISS for their return.
NASA is not a single person. Nor did only a single person at NASA know about the problem with the O-rings and cold temperatures. My point in bringing up what happened with the Challenger was that NASA has been known for letting things slide in an effort to keep the program going. Faced with budget cuts, rising costs, and several notable failures and problems, they have from time to time, decided that it's ok to risk lives needlessly.
If you read the findings from the investigation after the Challenger explosion, you'll see that the design was flawed from the beginning. O-rings were not the correct type of seal. O-rings work well for some types of joints but only when the two items being joined don't move around. O-rings can only expand and contract so much, and the amount of movement in the joint on the Challenger where the O-rings failed moved a great deal more than that.
As I demonstrated during the hearings held by the Rogers commission, the rubber that the O- rings were made of cannot expand and act as a seal at temperatures below 32 degrees F: I dunked one of the rubber rings into a beaker of ice water and showed that it became brittle and unable to function. Because the launch went on in weather of that temperature, they malfunctioned. Why was the launch carried out in dangerous conditions? Publicity. Bureaucracy. The official management NASA was not living in a state of reality about their missions--they had convinced themselves through faulty logic that everything was safe. "One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers... taken from http://www.msu.edu/~hought27/isp213h/feynman/chall enger.html which is the first link I came to that had the info I wanted. I just watched a show a few nights ago that again went into detail regarding the Challenger explosion and the subsequent investigation and hearings. You would think that NASA would have learned a great deal from that but unfortunately it would appear that they have not.
Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE?
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Gnome 2.2 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
All of the discussions I have seen about the differences between Gnome and KDE end up being flame wars. Is there anything I can read that gives a non-biased look at the differences and similarities between the two?
I have only tried Gnome once and that was only because KDE wasn't working at the time. I've used KDE since I started using Linux (and FreeBSD) and it has always worked pretty well for me. I've noticed however that Gnome seems to have a pretty good following and I'm wondering why.
Atlantis? Columbia is the shuttle that would have needed to stay in orbit for an extended period of time. Also note that Columbia's mission lasted 16 days, 22 hours, and some odd minutes which exceeds your statement that the shuttle would lose power after 16 days.
Also note that we are talking about emergency conditions. Remember that with Apollo 13, drastic measures were taken. If Columbia has enough provisions for 16 days of normal use, and maybe 2 or 3 days of extra use in case the mission needs to be extended, then it seems to me that in the event of an emergency, that they knew about just after launch, Columbia could have possibly lasted several days beyond the normal 16.
Electricity, food, and water could have been conserved. I know none of this was planned for, nor designed for, but they were able to get Apollo 13 home safely, and I think if they would have realized how much damage was done to the heat shields (if that was the cause), and would have made an effort to send a rescue shuttle, the 7 lives lost may have been saved.
If NASA had evidence that the landing wasn't going to be safe, you can bet they would have done *something*. Or are you suggesting that these people are so calous that they'd let their friends die rather than admit an error?
I am suggesting just that. They launched the Challenger Shuttle knowing that there would be problems. The company that designed and manufactured the O-rings told them that if the temperature got below a certain point, they would no longer be able to function correctly. NASA knew what that critical temperature was, knew that it was well below that at the time of launch, and still chose to attempt the launch.
I don't think that this situation was much different. Just because we have never had two shuttles in space at the same time, nor have we performed a tile repair in space, is not evidence that it would have not been possible. There is a first time for everything and this could have been the first time for several things. The first rescue mission. The first tile repair in space. My point was that this option may have been able to save the lives of the seven individuals onboard Columbia.
It takes AT LEAST three weeks to do the final preps of a shuttle for launch
How long could Columbia have stayed in orbit? It was up for 15 days 22 hours but I know they have extra provisions for things like weather.
Secondly, if it was an emergency situation, would it really take a full 3 weeks to get a second shuttle off the ground? I agree that they can't simply wheel it out and launch it, but if they aren't loading experiments and/or pieces of the ISS, could they not have it ready to go in a much shorter amount of time?
If not, why not? Shouldn't they have some sort of an emergency plan of action? Maybe in the future they should have a second vehicle ready to launch in case there is a problem with the first one.
Re:Mothball the ISS and the Shuttle.
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Columbia Coverage
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· Score: 1
Obviously you have no idea what the experiments aboard the Colubmia shuttle were all about. Maybe your against the search for a cure for cancer but one of the experiments focused on growing cancer cells in space so that they could better understand how they grow. I'm not a scientist, nor do I know what each experiment was for, but I would bet my last dollar that NASA knew what they were doing with each experiment and that the data they did get back from the experiments will prove to be very useful. It's a shame that the first strictly scientific mission in a very long time was not able to make it back so that they could have had all of the data. I'm sure it will be many years before another "strictly scientific" mission will go up.
I do agree with you to some extent about the ISS. I don't think we have done enough with that and I don't see that changing anytime soon, so I agree that we should abandon it for now. It has a lot of uses and I have always thought it was a good idea, but NASA doesn't have the funding to do enough with it right now. They need a much cheaper space vehicle, and maybe with this second shuttle disaster, they will finally focus on getting something cheaper and safer.
how do you propose, genius, that they could have "repaired" the "damage" in space?
Columbia was/is not the only shuttle NASA had/has. They could have very quickly sent up a second shuttle, equipped with a robotic arm, astronauts schooled in heat tile repair, and spare tiles. That would have been the very costly, but very sensible thing to do. Let us not forget that NASA is hurting for money these days (and has been for many years). Sending up a second shuttle to check on the first shuttle would have been a PR nightmare had no damage been found, and even if serious damage had been found, and repaired, there would still have been many questions about the viability of the shuttle fleet.
NASA has an agenda that costs a certain amount of money. They get less than that amount and are forced to cut costs when they can. This is not the first time that an attempt to cut costs and "keep things moving" has cost human lives. NASA was informed that there were problems with the O rings on Challenger that prevented them from sealing when the temperature dropped below a certain point. NASA chose to ignore that information and attempted to launch the Challenger when the temperature was well below the critical point. The O rings did not seal properly and we all know what happened after that.
I don't think this time was much different. NASA knew from past experience what happens when a single heat tile comes off. If you have been watching the news lately, you have undoubtedly seen pictures of the damage done when a heat tile comes off. They have shown several different pictures of that. It's not pretty. The aluminum underneath the heat tiles is not designed to be able to withstand the force and heat that is suddenly applied to it when a tile is removed. In this case, they knew from looking at the video of the launch, that there was significant damage done to a few heat tiles. They were unsure of how much damage, and how many tiles were affected, but they knew that any damage at all put the shuttle in jeapordy.
At this point they should have decided that human life is worth more than their agenda and they should have acted quickly to prepare a second orbiter for launch. Obviously getting a shuttle prepped for launch takes time, just as preparing a crew for launch takes more than a day or two. Some people have said there wasn't time to launch a second shuttle. That's not true. Columbia was in space for over two weeks and could have remained in space for several more days if it had needed to. They don't launch a shuttle for a mission of a certain length, and only supply it with exactly what it needs for that length of time. Extra provisions are on board in case of bad weather prohibiting an on-schedule return, or other issues that may happen while in orbit. So it would have been possible to send a shuttle to repair Columbia.
I think that the main reason this option was addressed is the cost. Launching a shuttle is very expensive. Launching one for the sole purpose of repairing another shuttle, if the other shuttle was not in need of repair, would have been a huge waste of funds that NASA must have felt it couldn't spare. So they took a gamble. They wagered 7 human lives and they lost.
Shouldn't it be Linux or Windows or Mac OS? If he's using a Mac, then he's most likely not running Windows... and if he is running Windows on a Mac... don't even get me started.
you get your self a dual Athlon MP system with 512MB Ram or more
Your right. I have two of these... one for me and one for my wife. They rock.... and it's a damn good thing they do because who knows when AMD will release the next generation of chips. I'll most likely buy them when they come out, and sell the systems I have now... or use them for something other than primary machines.... there is my problem.
What do I do with the two computers I already have? Or my laptop for that matter? I have three computers using 5 AMD processors. I can't simply buy the new processors and pop them into the hardware I already have. Nor do I want to junk what I already have. It's going to be worth hardly anything on eBay, yet it cost me quite a bit when I purchased all of this stuff. Do I keep using what I have because it's more than fast enough for my uses, or do I throw it on a shelf and let it collect dust so that I can buy shiny new toys and help support a company (AMD) that I really like?
Slashdot Mirror
I have nice looking computers. Got the window, the neon, and the jet engine sound to go along with it (too many fans cooling the dual amd chips)... and I still paid a lot less than I would have for a Mac. I used to be a Mac fanatic but when my parents were no longer supporting my addiction, I had to switch to pc's which are considerably cheaper.
Maybe they'll sellout to Microsoft and become MSCastle.
Is there any other way?
Damn! After all of this, she'll need another holiday!
Because of a previous marriage I have terrible credit. I'm not one to pass blame and act like I had nothing to do with a situation I was involved in, but in this case, I didn't have anything to do with it. My ex-wife bounced a large number of checks and hid this from me just long enough to cause lots of problems. It was a mess to sort out and although I was able to get most of it straightened out, and she was able to avoid jail time, I now have bad credit. That being said, at my previous job I had a company credit card even though my boss knew what kind of credit I had. He knew me, knew what kind of a guy I am, and trusted me. I only used the card when I had to for work purposes and there was never an issue.
But when you are interviewing someone you've never met before, you want all of the information you can get. While I have bad credit, I understand why I may get turned down for a job because of it. I realize that a lot of people have stellar credit and that says something about them 90% of the time. Sure some people have bad credit due to luck or whatever, but most people with bad credit have it because they were not wise with their money. At least that could have been said a while back. Now with all of the people out of work, I think the majority of America does or soon will have bad credit. Times are tough and I'm very thankful that I'm self-employed and not looking for work.
I think it all boils down to doing the bare minimum you have to, or doing the job right. I take the time to code the page correctly, and then make any needed adjustments so that it works in several different browsers.
Yes indeed. I misstated my point a bit. I code to standards first, and then I code in work arounds for any browser specific problems I come across. One thing I've found that works quite well is testing my pages first in Mozilla. Once I have things working the way I want in Mozilla, there is usually very little that needs to be changed for them to work in IE. Going the other way is a nightmare though since IE is so loose (like a 2 bit whore? hehe).
Actually it's not. And when IE7 comes out, I'll add more code if I need to. I maintain my code for compatiblity. I wish this wasn't needed but clients often want features that require work-arounds for cross-browser compatibility. It's very annoying when I try to go to a site and I get a page that tells me I need IE... and even more annoying when I get a page that says I need Netscape since I'm using Mozilla. I take the time to code for multiple browsers and then integrate the code into a single seamless page that handles each browser equally well.
Since I use Linux as my primary desktop, I think not. I use Mozilla as my default browser and it works great. I often have to change the text size to 120% so that I can read it, but that's pretty much the only problem I've had... other that sites that tell me I need a different browser.
When I write an html page, I write to standards (if you call them that). Then I test it and make changes to small parts that don't work correctly in various browsers. Sometimes I'll leave off a feature if it causes problems, but that's not always an option. Sometims I will get a project that requires web pages to a spec that was created in Photoshop. Often there is no way to code it so that it will match the spec in both IE and Netscape/Mozilla without using scripting to alter parts of the pages based on the browser. Then you figure in the other browsers and you get into a bigger mess.
I agree with other posters that it would be wonderful to code it once and leave it at that but it's just not possible if you want to use any advanced features, yet have it work on more than one browser.
Yea, that's why this state has the highest un-employment rate in the nation. The state doesn't do shit to help small businesses grow. I am self-employed and my clients are all in different states/countries thankfully. I would never be able to survive depending on locals for business.
This is fine for a personal or hobby site but for e-commerce, you need to write to users, not standards. It makes no difference to the user that your page is coded to standards if he/she can't view it. Telling them they need a different browser isn't the answer either. Showing them what they want, in a manner that works correctly with their browser, is unfortunately the best solution if you want to be profitable.
I've had to code drop down menus differently for different browsers to get things to look the same, however when I'm done, you get the exact same page, with everything the same size and in the same place in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, and Konqueror. I've never used Opera so I don't test that one, but I guess I probably should.
I also use Konq once in a while when a site tells me I don't have the right browser. I have it set to report that it's IE and that works just fine. It really pisses me off that by telling the server it's IE, it can display the page perfectly. Why do people require a specific browser? That's just plain ignorance.
It's not like they have a way to tell what I bought here and what I bought there. Sure they could have a check point at the border but they don't, and until they do, shop in Oregon I will. I do shop here as well but going to Portland for the weekend is fun and I find myself doing a lot of shopping whenever I'm there. Next month I'm going to be in Ashland, OR for two weeks and will most likely do some shopping on the way home. Sales tax doesn't seem like much but 8% adds up rather quickly.
Anyway, on to the topic at hand:
We know a few things about this fuel. First, it works really well. Second, it burns like a.. well, you know. Why are we not able to use something that works just as well yet is much safer? I thought the fuel of the future was supposed to be hydrogen with the only byproduct being water? I keep reading about how great it is, how some cars are using it or are going to start in the next couple years, how it's completey renewable, etc., etc., etc. So why is peroxide being studied and tested if hydrogen is so great?
I think one thing we need to keep in mind is the safety factor. If a tank of peroxide explodes during a rocket launch, will any of the liquid make it back to the ground, or will there be any harmful residue that will make it to the ground? I'm assuming that most of the liquid would be burned and would not reach the ground but there could be a toxic cloud and/or harmful residue.
Now if only the Gnome apps would have the look and feel of KDE when I run them in KDE... but then they would be KDE apps and not Gnome apps...
Columbia was not equipped for docking with ISS was it? I know they mentioned that on CNN but I haven't verified that.
So from what you have listed, it's plausible to estimate that Columbia could have made it for 18 days. Would there not have been any way to get a second shuttle into orbit to simply pick up the 7 crew members of the Columbia shuttle, and bring them back to Earth safely? Obviously abandoning a shuttle would be quite costly, having it explode over Texas was the end result.
All I have been trying to say is that NASA could have rescued the Columbia crew. They may not have been able to save Columbia, but they could have sent up a second shuttle that had the capability to dock with ISS, and could have take the crew there. I doubt there would have been anyway to bring them all back to Earth at once because of limited seating. They could have come back one at a time or a second escape vehicle could have been taken to the ISS for their return.
If you read the findings from the investigation after the Challenger explosion, you'll see that the design was flawed from the beginning. O-rings were not the correct type of seal. O-rings work well for some types of joints but only when the two items being joined don't move around. O-rings can only expand and contract so much, and the amount of movement in the joint on the Challenger where the O-rings failed moved a great deal more than that.
As I demonstrated during the hearings held by the Rogers commission, the rubber that the O- rings were made of cannot expand and act as a seal at temperatures below 32 degrees F: I dunked one of the rubber rings into a beaker of ice water and showed that it became brittle and unable to function. Because the launch went on in weather of that temperature, they malfunctioned. Why was the launch carried out in dangerous conditions? Publicity. Bureaucracy. The official management NASA was not living in a state of reality about their missions--they had convinced themselves through faulty logic that everything was safe. "One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers... taken from http://www.msu.edu/~hought27/isp213h/feynman/chall enger.html which is the first link I came to that had the info I wanted. I just watched a show a few nights ago that again went into detail regarding the Challenger explosion and the subsequent investigation and hearings. You would think that NASA would have learned a great deal from that but unfortunately it would appear that they have not.
I have only tried Gnome once and that was only because KDE wasn't working at the time. I've used KDE since I started using Linux (and FreeBSD) and it has always worked pretty well for me. I've noticed however that Gnome seems to have a pretty good following and I'm wondering why.
Atlantis? Columbia is the shuttle that would have needed to stay in orbit for an extended period of time. Also note that Columbia's mission lasted 16 days, 22 hours, and some odd minutes which exceeds your statement that the shuttle would lose power after 16 days.
Also note that we are talking about emergency conditions. Remember that with Apollo 13, drastic measures were taken. If Columbia has enough provisions for 16 days of normal use, and maybe 2 or 3 days of extra use in case the mission needs to be extended, then it seems to me that in the event of an emergency, that they knew about just after launch, Columbia could have possibly lasted several days beyond the normal 16.
Electricity, food, and water could have been conserved. I know none of this was planned for, nor designed for, but they were able to get Apollo 13 home safely, and I think if they would have realized how much damage was done to the heat shields (if that was the cause), and would have made an effort to send a rescue shuttle, the 7 lives lost may have been saved.
I am suggesting just that. They launched the Challenger Shuttle knowing that there would be problems. The company that designed and manufactured the O-rings told them that if the temperature got below a certain point, they would no longer be able to function correctly. NASA knew what that critical temperature was, knew that it was well below that at the time of launch, and still chose to attempt the launch.
I don't think that this situation was much different. Just because we have never had two shuttles in space at the same time, nor have we performed a tile repair in space, is not evidence that it would have not been possible. There is a first time for everything and this could have been the first time for several things. The first rescue mission. The first tile repair in space. My point was that this option may have been able to save the lives of the seven individuals onboard Columbia.
How long could Columbia have stayed in orbit? It was up for 15 days 22 hours but I know they have extra provisions for things like weather.
Secondly, if it was an emergency situation, would it really take a full 3 weeks to get a second shuttle off the ground? I agree that they can't simply wheel it out and launch it, but if they aren't loading experiments and/or pieces of the ISS, could they not have it ready to go in a much shorter amount of time?
If not, why not? Shouldn't they have some sort of an emergency plan of action? Maybe in the future they should have a second vehicle ready to launch in case there is a problem with the first one.
I do agree with you to some extent about the ISS. I don't think we have done enough with that and I don't see that changing anytime soon, so I agree that we should abandon it for now. It has a lot of uses and I have always thought it was a good idea, but NASA doesn't have the funding to do enough with it right now. They need a much cheaper space vehicle, and maybe with this second shuttle disaster, they will finally focus on getting something cheaper and safer.
Columbia was/is not the only shuttle NASA had/has. They could have very quickly sent up a second shuttle, equipped with a robotic arm, astronauts schooled in heat tile repair, and spare tiles. That would have been the very costly, but very sensible thing to do. Let us not forget that NASA is hurting for money these days (and has been for many years). Sending up a second shuttle to check on the first shuttle would have been a PR nightmare had no damage been found, and even if serious damage had been found, and repaired, there would still have been many questions about the viability of the shuttle fleet.
NASA has an agenda that costs a certain amount of money. They get less than that amount and are forced to cut costs when they can. This is not the first time that an attempt to cut costs and "keep things moving" has cost human lives. NASA was informed that there were problems with the O rings on Challenger that prevented them from sealing when the temperature dropped below a certain point. NASA chose to ignore that information and attempted to launch the Challenger when the temperature was well below the critical point. The O rings did not seal properly and we all know what happened after that.
I don't think this time was much different. NASA knew from past experience what happens when a single heat tile comes off. If you have been watching the news lately, you have undoubtedly seen pictures of the damage done when a heat tile comes off. They have shown several different pictures of that. It's not pretty. The aluminum underneath the heat tiles is not designed to be able to withstand the force and heat that is suddenly applied to it when a tile is removed. In this case, they knew from looking at the video of the launch, that there was significant damage done to a few heat tiles. They were unsure of how much damage, and how many tiles were affected, but they knew that any damage at all put the shuttle in jeapordy.
At this point they should have decided that human life is worth more than their agenda and they should have acted quickly to prepare a second orbiter for launch. Obviously getting a shuttle prepped for launch takes time, just as preparing a crew for launch takes more than a day or two. Some people have said there wasn't time to launch a second shuttle. That's not true. Columbia was in space for over two weeks and could have remained in space for several more days if it had needed to. They don't launch a shuttle for a mission of a certain length, and only supply it with exactly what it needs for that length of time. Extra provisions are on board in case of bad weather prohibiting an on-schedule return, or other issues that may happen while in orbit. So it would have been possible to send a shuttle to repair Columbia.
I think that the main reason this option was addressed is the cost. Launching a shuttle is very expensive. Launching one for the sole purpose of repairing another shuttle, if the other shuttle was not in need of repair, would have been a huge waste of funds that NASA must have felt it couldn't spare. So they took a gamble. They wagered 7 human lives and they lost.
Shouldn't it be Linux or Windows or Mac OS? If he's using a Mac, then he's most likely not running Windows... and if he is running Windows on a Mac... don't even get me started.
Your right. I have two of these... one for me and one for my wife. They rock.... and it's a damn good thing they do because who knows when AMD will release the next generation of chips. I'll most likely buy them when they come out, and sell the systems I have now... or use them for something other than primary machines.... there is my problem.
What do I do with the two computers I already have? Or my laptop for that matter? I have three computers using 5 AMD processors. I can't simply buy the new processors and pop them into the hardware I already have. Nor do I want to junk what I already have. It's going to be worth hardly anything on eBay, yet it cost me quite a bit when I purchased all of this stuff. Do I keep using what I have because it's more than fast enough for my uses, or do I throw it on a shelf and let it collect dust so that I can buy shiny new toys and help support a company (AMD) that I really like?