I suspect that more than confidence that this is about he is at the end of what he can spend. My guess is that if falcon 9 is successful, he will follow up with the next one within 3-4 months. I believe that with falcon 9's launch, he gets some good money from NASA, but it is on the first real launch of dragon that he makes LOADS of money. I would also guess that if falcon-9/dragon is successful on this trip, then congress/NASA will throw money at him for COTs-D.
First, it is falcon 9 HEAVY that has the ~30K kg. The falcon 9 has under 12K KG depending on what press release you read.
Ideally, the feds will not allow one company to put others out of business. We need MULTIPLES of these to compete against each others. I would not mind paying a bit for ULA's private entry for at least a flight every 2 years or so. Once they lower their price to the same as SpaceX or lower, then give them the majority. Basically, we need more flights and more competition.
China currently does this, but it is so that they can hide their budgets from the foreigners. While it allows for a number of things (quick progress), it also prevent systems from being used for mankind's use. Worse, it means that ALL OF THE SYSTEMS are logical targets in a war. OTH, NASA would not be that kind of a target (even though USSR has actually painted a laser on a shuttle's window several times back in the 80's).
As other have pointed out, NASA does a great deal more than just manned space. They do lots of robotics missions, astronautics, etc.
It really makes sense that NASA remains separate from our military.
If NASA blew up three rockets in a row, they would be crucified by the press, and (more notably) by congress
The DOD and NASA blew up MANY more than that in it early days. And like SpaceX, they took some heat for it.
NASA contracts almost all of their work out to private companies, you know. A few probes are built by NASA labs (JPL in particular), but mostly the spacecraft are bid out to industry, and the launch services are also bid out to industry.
But the difference is that NASA tells just a FEW private companies how to do the job. Now, they will simply request a service. BIG difference.
That was DOD's. NASA provided the launch vehicle, and the crew, but it is NOT a manned military space. Basically, all they did was retrieve a sat, and they have launched others. They were doing nothing more than simply transporting sats.
If I were a VC like Paul Allen or the Google boys, I would be contacting SpaceX and offering to fund the escape tower. Get it started so that come the end of 2011, human flights can start. Also contact Bigelow Aerospace and help get them building. With relatively little money, private space systems can really be profitable. In fact, I would bet that for less than what Allen put into Charter Cable, he can help get this started, be a part of it, and then GET OUT.
Meta-moders,
There are posts on here that are from the NASA story. The reason is that/. is currently broke (as in a bug, not as in USA debt). Some came here automatically. Mine was posted because I was following the other posters. Please nuke the modders that hit these as off-topic. It should be obvious that they KNEW that/. had issues and some of the posts came here (a post from in front of here told them so). For these modders to be nuking ppl for posting in this area is ridiculous considering the situation.
The nasa story does not accept postings right now.
Bush and the neo-cons did a hatchet job on NASA's X-33 and then continually dropped NASA's funding over the entire 8 years. If the dems (and hopefully the entire west) are smart, they will spend a bit today, and get the private space industry going. It is on the verge of being internet 1992. Most importantly, the world needs to start mining in space. The reason is that China is running around buying as much mineral right as they can, taking it off the market (either shutting down the mine, or only allowing the resources back to China), while allowing their own abundant resources to be sold only in China. Basically, if we want to avoid a future world war, then we MUST shoot for space and mining.
Hopefully, Obama, the Dems, EU, Canada, Russia, etc have enough foresight to see this.
So, you made the New innovators, eh? And you say that the google ideas are bad. OBVIOUSLY, you did not read it. NONE OF THEM, were truly ideas. They are classes of ideas lumped together. Had you actually read the site, you would have seen the suggestions underneath it.
Next time, please read the site PRIOR to boosting and critizing. As it is, the google guys HAD a great idea AND HAVE made a MAJOR IMPACT on the world. In addition, they did it in a RELATIVELY SHORT TIME. So, how does their work compare to yours?
BTW, a number of VC guys thought that Google's idea was well worth funding for much more than 1.5Million.
This one is the only one that will have the ability to make a LARGE impact. The reason is that America, Canada, Australia, etc use roughly 1/5 to 1/3 of our energy on transportation, EU uses something like 1/6, and the developing world, such as China, is really starting to move to cars. China is already the worlds largest polluter (emits more pollutions than the entire western world due to inefficiency) and their CO2 emissions (I do not count this as pollution) has already overtaken America and several other western nations COMBINED. If we do not come up with more efficient transportation systems, then the world really is in for "a world of hurt".
Basically, transportation truly can change the world quickly. All the other ones required lots from governments and that is not likely to happen.
On the moon. There is possibility of thorium as well. That is where we should build up a small processing plant so that we can also send it to various locations through out the solar system. And the great part about that, is that we can create plutonium. MUCH better.
Some virus can survive centuries.
Bacteria mutate fairly easily.
Prions are still large unknowns.
And it is possible for life to be something different than what we are looking for.
Any mission that goes there should be one-way for a LONG time.
There are no hand held weapons that reach out that far. Those people talking about RPG's and sniper rifles are clueless.
Max height of the airship is 20K feet (but cruise will likely be less for a better look). Max altitude of afghan is 24K feet. Assume that the terrorists are up higher, so they are around 10-13K feet. That means that a bullet has to travel 7-10K feet.
So, IS IT POSSIBLE? ABSOLUTELY.
Is it probable? Not likely. THey will have to be in the right place at the right time. And anybody who shoots at one of these will likely not want to be standing in the same place in the next minute or two.
Back under Apollo, we brought back samples that had small amounts of water. We assumed that it was simply a leak of our atmosphere into the containers. But it was a wrong assumption. It shows that we really can get things wrong.
Now, we have seen lots of interesting points on mars that suggests life (in particular, viking). Yet, we are over and over saying no. This makes me wonder if Mars will hold life. In addition, it really says that our first couple of human missions to mars really should be one-way (who knows how long it will take an alien virus/bacteria to show symptoms)
Every hear of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld? They got elected, killed many useful projects for our nation, and then awarded LARGE contracts to their friends (sight unseen). In addition, when ppl spoke up about, they were QUICKLY shut down. Bunny Greenhouse comes to mind. So many others who have spoken about the corruption and all were swept under the rug. Of course, we did catch a criminal who got a blow job, but that is a different issue all together.
I am amazed that for all the large number of reservoirs that western USA has, we never put heating/cooling coils in the bottom of these. Almost all from Colorado north contain snow melt and the bottom of these are around 40F (4C). It seems like many of these would be good places to run large pipes and simply use these for cooling AND heating. For example, Horsetooth reservoir of Ft. Collins could easily heat/cool a number of facilities and even a data center. Cherry creek, Chatfield, etc would also be capable of doing the same. Many of these are 100-200 f/40-70m deep. Nuts, taking it a step further, I am surprised that some of these nuke plants do not use this as a means of energy storage (2 side hydro plant) combined with the ability to dump heat on the hotter days.
Hmmm. My understanding is that they are going to pull up the water and pump it back, not just a simple heat exchange. If so, then insulation may be useful.
BTW, had to laugh about the black pudding. I assume that is basically Blutwurst. When I was in Germany working, I had some of that. That had to be about the blandest sausage that I have ever tried. Did not care for it just based on that. Had they put in some spices to it, say some Habenero, that might have improved it.
Odd; My wife was born in England and attended COE schools. She had haggis every friday and she does not describe it with the same terms as either you or wiki does. Needless to say, she has outlawed it EVER being in our house.
The reason why MS beat out Apple was never about MS, but about the many PC builders. They were fast and limber in building new systems and designs.
Likewise, the Big 3 car companies were disasters because there was only three (that is why I have been arguing that we needed to break up GM and Chrysler).
Now, you have IBM, HP, Oracle and Dell all doing the same thing. That is they are exporting the jobs to Asia and there is really very little innovation (though in time, both China and India WILL be innovative) due to such few companies. What is needed is not to block this, but the West desperately needs to encourage small companies in all these industries. That means that if Obama, Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel, Harper, Rudd, etc want to bring back manufacturing to the west, they will need to start small companies, and buying from them.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that more than confidence that this is about he is at the end of what he can spend. My guess is that if falcon 9 is successful, he will follow up with the next one within 3-4 months. I believe that with falcon 9's launch, he gets some good money from NASA, but it is on the first real launch of dragon that he makes LOADS of money. I would also guess that if falcon-9/dragon is successful on this trip, then congress/NASA will throw money at him for COTs-D.
First, it is falcon 9 HEAVY that has the ~30K kg. The falcon 9 has under 12K KG depending on what press release you read.
Ideally, the feds will not allow one company to put others out of business. We need MULTIPLES of these to compete against each others. I would not mind paying a bit for ULA's private entry for at least a flight every 2 years or so. Once they lower their price to the same as SpaceX or lower, then give them the majority. Basically, we need more flights and more competition.
China currently does this, but it is so that they can hide their budgets from the foreigners. While it allows for a number of things (quick progress), it also prevent systems from being used for mankind's use. Worse, it means that ALL OF THE SYSTEMS are logical targets in a war. OTH, NASA would not be that kind of a target (even though USSR has actually painted a laser on a shuttle's window several times back in the 80's).
As other have pointed out, NASA does a great deal more than just manned space. They do lots of robotics missions, astronautics, etc.
It really makes sense that NASA remains separate from our military.
If NASA blew up three rockets in a row, they would be crucified by the press, and (more notably) by congress
The DOD and NASA blew up MANY more than that in it early days. And like SpaceX, they took some heat for it.
NASA contracts almost all of their work out to private companies, you know. A few probes are built by NASA labs (JPL in particular), but mostly the spacecraft are bid out to industry, and the launch services are also bid out to industry.
But the difference is that NASA tells just a FEW private companies how to do the job. Now, they will simply request a service. BIG difference.
USSR did have manned military space systems. In particular, Almaz and all of the early Salyut systems were actually military missions.
That was DOD's. NASA provided the launch vehicle, and the crew, but it is NOT a manned military space. Basically, all they did was retrieve a sat, and they have launched others. They were doing nothing more than simply transporting sats.
OTH, a manned military space system would be the MOL had we launched it in the 60's or one of the many Chinese Manned Space stations system that are scheduled to start launch in 2010.
If I were a VC like Paul Allen or the Google boys, I would be contacting SpaceX and offering to fund the escape tower. Get it started so that come the end of 2011, human flights can start. Also contact Bigelow Aerospace and help get them building. With relatively little money, private space systems can really be profitable. In fact, I would bet that for less than what Allen put into Charter Cable, he can help get this started, be a part of it, and then GET OUT.
Meta-moders, There are posts on here that are from the NASA story. The reason is that /. is currently broke (as in a bug, not as in USA debt). Some came here automatically. Mine was posted because I was following the other posters. Please nuke the modders that hit these as off-topic. It should be obvious that they KNEW that /. had issues and some of the posts came here (a post from in front of here told them so). For these modders to be nuking ppl for posting in this area is ridiculous considering the situation.
The nasa story does not accept postings right now.
Bush and the neo-cons did a hatchet job on NASA's X-33 and then continually dropped NASA's funding over the entire 8 years. If the dems (and hopefully the entire west) are smart, they will spend a bit today, and get the private space industry going. It is on the verge of being internet 1992. Most importantly, the world needs to start mining in space. The reason is that China is running around buying as much mineral right as they can, taking it off the market (either shutting down the mine, or only allowing the resources back to China), while allowing their own abundant resources to be sold only in China. Basically, if we want to avoid a future world war, then we MUST shoot for space and mining.
Hopefully, Obama, the Dems, EU, Canada, Russia, etc have enough foresight to see this.
The nasa story is not working. I guess at this time, NASA stands for "Need Another Slashdot Area".
So, you made the New innovators, eh? And you say that the google ideas are bad. OBVIOUSLY, you did not read it. NONE OF THEM, were truly ideas. They are classes of ideas lumped together. Had you actually read the site, you would have seen the suggestions underneath it.
Next time, please read the site PRIOR to boosting and critizing. As it is, the google guys HAD a great idea AND HAVE made a MAJOR IMPACT on the world. In addition, they did it in a RELATIVELY SHORT TIME. So, how does their work compare to yours?
BTW, a number of VC guys thought that Google's idea was well worth funding for much more than 1.5Million.
This one is the only one that will have the ability to make a LARGE impact. The reason is that America, Canada, Australia, etc use roughly 1/5 to 1/3 of our energy on transportation, EU uses something like 1/6, and the developing world, such as China, is really starting to move to cars. China is already the worlds largest polluter (emits more pollutions than the entire western world due to inefficiency) and their CO2 emissions (I do not count this as pollution) has already overtaken America and several other western nations COMBINED. If we do not come up with more efficient transportation systems, then the world really is in for "a world of hurt".
Basically, transportation truly can change the world quickly. All the other ones required lots from governments and that is not likely to happen.
On the moon. There is possibility of thorium as well. That is where we should build up a small processing plant so that we can also send it to various locations through out the solar system. And the great part about that, is that we can create plutonium. MUCH better.
Some virus can survive centuries.
Bacteria mutate fairly easily.
Prions are still large unknowns.
And it is possible for life to be something different than what we are looking for.
Any mission that goes there should be one-way for a LONG time.
There are no hand held weapons that reach out that far. Those people talking about RPG's and sniper rifles are clueless. Max height of the airship is 20K feet (but cruise will likely be less for a better look). Max altitude of afghan is 24K feet. Assume that the terrorists are up higher, so they are around 10-13K feet. That means that a bullet has to travel 7-10K feet.
.30 caliber, 150
gr., Spitzer point bullets, at a velocity of 2,700 f.p.s. Using the
bullet ballistic coefficient and elapsed time from firing until the
bullet struck the water, they calculated that the bullet traveled 9,000
feet in 18 seconds and fell to earth in 31 seconds for a total time of
49 seconds.
So, here you go: In 1920 the U.S. Army Ordnance conducted a series of experiments to try and determine the velocity of falling bullets. The tests were performed from a platform in the middle of a lake near Miami, Florida. The platform was ten feet square and a thin sheet of armor plate was placed over the men firing the gun. The gun was held in a fixture that would allow the gun to be adjusted to bring the shots close to the platform. It was surmised that the sound of the falling bullets could be heard when they hit the water or the platform. They fired
And that was 1920's tech.
So, IS IT POSSIBLE? ABSOLUTELY.
Is it probable? Not likely. THey will have to be in the right place at the right time. And anybody who shoots at one of these will likely not want to be standing in the same place in the next minute or two.
Back under Apollo, we brought back samples that had small amounts of water. We assumed that it was simply a leak of our atmosphere into the containers. But it was a wrong assumption. It shows that we really can get things wrong.
Now, we have seen lots of interesting points on mars that suggests life (in particular, viking). Yet, we are over and over saying no. This makes me wonder if Mars will hold life. In addition, it really says that our first couple of human missions to mars really should be one-way (who knows how long it will take an alien virus/bacteria to show symptoms)
Every hear of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld? They got elected, killed many useful projects for our nation, and then awarded LARGE contracts to their friends (sight unseen). In addition, when ppl spoke up about, they were QUICKLY shut down. Bunny Greenhouse comes to mind. So many others who have spoken about the corruption and all were swept under the rug. Of course, we did catch a criminal who got a blow job, but that is a different issue all together.
It was the age of Wisdom.
It was the age of Darkness.
It was the age of neo-cons raping and pillaging all that they could.
And a merry Christmas to all.
I am amazed that for all the large number of reservoirs that western USA has, we never put heating/cooling coils in the bottom of these. Almost all from Colorado north contain snow melt and the bottom of these are around 40F (4C). It seems like many of these would be good places to run large pipes and simply use these for cooling AND heating. For example, Horsetooth reservoir of Ft. Collins could easily heat/cool a number of facilities and even a data center. Cherry creek, Chatfield, etc would also be capable of doing the same. Many of these are 100-200 f/40-70m deep. Nuts, taking it a step further, I am surprised that some of these nuke plants do not use this as a means of energy storage (2 side hydro plant) combined with the ability to dump heat on the hotter days.
Hmmm. My understanding is that they are going to pull up the water and pump it back, not just a simple heat exchange. If so, then insulation may be useful.
BTW, had to laugh about the black pudding. I assume that is basically Blutwurst. When I was in Germany working, I had some of that. That had to be about the blandest sausage that I have ever tried. Did not care for it just based on that. Had they put in some spices to it, say some Habenero, that might have improved it.
Odd; My wife was born in England and attended COE schools. She had haggis every friday and she does not describe it with the same terms as either you or wiki does. Needless to say, she has outlawed it EVER being in our house.
More likely than not, ppl like Frist will claim that this is proof of why he was right about Schiavo.
The reason why MS beat out Apple was never about MS, but about the many PC builders. They were fast and limber in building new systems and designs.
Likewise, the Big 3 car companies were disasters because there was only three (that is why I have been arguing that we needed to break up GM and Chrysler).
Now, you have IBM, HP, Oracle and Dell all doing the same thing. That is they are exporting the jobs to Asia and there is really very little innovation (though in time, both China and India WILL be innovative) due to such few companies. What is needed is not to block this, but the West desperately needs to encourage small companies in all these industries. That means that if Obama, Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel, Harper, Rudd, etc want to bring back manufacturing to the west, they will need to start small companies, and buying from them.
there is a real reason why it is popular in Austin.