Even if going to LEO was free, what business could make sense? Grow up.
If getting to LEO was free, tourists would be flocking up there ASAP, there'd be hotels on the Moon, and cruise ships would be heading for Mars and beyond.
It makes complete sense. Why add weight and complexity when you've got a perfectly good propulsion system already on your capsule.
Isn't this one reason why SpaceX want to remove the parachutes, too? If you design it to land with the thrusters, they can perform launch abort, in-orbit maneuver, and landing with the same fuel (obviously, if you do a launch abort, you don't need any fuel for in-orbit maneuver, so it can be used for landing).
Considering it's the only system not having massive failures in 30 years, well...
It's come pretty close, though. If I remember correctly, the last decade has had at least one backward reentry when the service module failed to detach, and at least one ballistic reentry when the computer lost contol for some reason.
I don't know if the dragon can be stored in space for half a year and still function reliably.
That's not particularly hard, unless you generate your power from fuel cells, which would have to keep hydrogen liquid for months. And even the Apollo CSM could stay in space for 2-3 months for the longer Skylab missions.
Actually, my quibble isn't with the gender connotations of the statement, but with the verb tense of the statement. The V2 hasn't, as far as I know, actually received certification for manned space flight.
Nor did the shuttle, as far as I'm aware. Certainly it couldn't meet NASA's current requirements for commercial crew (1 in 500 loss on ascent and 1 in 500 loss on descent, according to Wikipedia).
Marshall Brain has some very good ideas about what we could do as a society to ease our way past our 3rd generation society into a more-fair 4th generation post-scarcity society. http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
Singularitarians may be nutty, but believing in a 'post-scarcity society' is worse. Threre will never be more resources than humans can use, unless you discover a way to magic stuff out of nothing, forever.
It's all very well to say that machines will learn to program themselves, but someone has to be the first to teach them, and it has not yet been established if we're smart enough to do that.
So who taught humans to program themselves?
If humans aren't magic, then they can be simulated by a sufficiently complex machine. Therefore, if humans can be 'intelligent', a machine can, too.
Otherwise you have to believe humans are magic and 'intelligence' somehow exists outside physical reality.
The latter part of your story isn't really all that hard or time consuming. This is *why* you hire an agent and a lawyer, so they can do all the hard work.
You don't 'hire' any competent agent, you spend months or years sending out begging letters and hoping that one will deign to represent you.
And are you really saying that a writer who can 'hire' an agent and lawyer, can't manage to hire an editor and cover artist?
If every single author tried the self distribution model, the signal to noise ratio with Hogwarts fan Fiction and Tolkien ripoffs would drown everything out.
If every single movie-maker could upload their movies to Youtube, the signal to noise ratio with home cat videos would drown everything out.
If every single person could create their own web pages, the signal to noise ration with cat pictures would drown everything out.
Because seeing see your enemy face to face in the pre-firearms era stopped any of the (for their time) large scale wars or the atrocities committed during them? LOL, literally.
Maybe you should actually read some studies of miltary history, and not just LOL.
I'm not sure about the sword-swinging era, but it seems pretty well established that most Western soldiers wouldn't fire guns at the other guys until their militaries went all out to create killers after WWII.
Amazon is responsible for createspace? Then they aren't doing those things very well. Createspace titles aren't exactly top tier offerings.
Createspace is a printer, and, yes, it's owned by Amazon now. Actually, in many cases I believe it's more a distributor than a printer, and often farms out the printing to third parties.
They do offer various services to authors, but they primarily just print books from whatever PDF the author or publisher uploads.
Again, Amazon aren't pushing DRM, publishers are. As I said elsewhere, when you upload a book to Amazon, it asks if you want to enable DRM, which is only there because the publishers demanded it.
And, if I remember correctly, Amazon have only ever disabled access to books they had no legal right to sell. Which would have made no difference if the books were DRM-free and the reader had already backed them up.
Oh, they're definitely worth the price if you're Stephen King or some other huge name; you won't get there without having you books in pretty much every book store in the world. But not if you're Joe Newbie receiving a $1,000 advance for a book he spent a year writing.
IMHO, most of the newbie writers still chasing publishing contracts are just doing it for the hope of seeing their book on a shelf in their local book store. Would be cheaper to have a PoD printer print one for them and put it there themselves when the store staff aren't looking.
The funny part is where writers claim they want a publisher so they can spend more time writing, while ignoring the years they'll be submitting to agents and publishers and hiring lawyers to go over contracts and revising their book from editors' feedback, and all the other work they'll have to do in trade publishing. Particularly when the publisher then says 'God no, you can't release two books a year, how could we possibly handle that volume of work?'
That is interesting. It doesn't have that 'simultaneous device usage' line on the Amazon page, so maybe Amazon removed that so you can't tell which books are DRM-free any more?
Slashdot Mirror
Even if going to LEO was free, what business could make sense? Grow up.
If getting to LEO was free, tourists would be flocking up there ASAP, there'd be hotels on the Moon, and cruise ships would be heading for Mars and beyond.
I've still got a working Dragon 32. For those that don't know this was a British COCO clone.
Hopefully the SpaceX version will connect the heatsink properly, so it doesn't overheat after a few hours.
It makes complete sense. Why add weight and complexity when you've got a perfectly good propulsion system already on your capsule.
Isn't this one reason why SpaceX want to remove the parachutes, too? If you design it to land with the thrusters, they can perform launch abort, in-orbit maneuver, and landing with the same fuel (obviously, if you do a launch abort, you don't need any fuel for in-orbit maneuver, so it can be used for landing).
Considering it's the only system not having massive failures in 30 years, well...
It's come pretty close, though. If I remember correctly, the last decade has had at least one backward reentry when the service module failed to detach, and at least one ballistic reentry when the computer lost contol for some reason.
If only they sent people on some kind of training before sending them into space, to, you know, see how well they handle that kind of thing...
If the training is going to involve someone puking on my face, I'm withdawing my application to NASA to become an astronaut...
I don't know if the dragon can be stored in space for half a year and still function reliably.
That's not particularly hard, unless you generate your power from fuel cells, which would have to keep hydrogen liquid for months. And even the Apollo CSM could stay in space for 2-3 months for the longer Skylab missions.
Free markets are just what people do when no statist is pointing a gun at their head to force them to do something else.
Actually, my quibble isn't with the gender connotations of the statement, but with the verb tense of the statement. The V2 hasn't, as far as I know, actually received certification for manned space flight.
Nor did the shuttle, as far as I'm aware. Certainly it couldn't meet NASA's current requirements for commercial crew (1 in 500 loss on ascent and 1 in 500 loss on descent, according to Wikipedia).
I'll say it again. Aside from satellite launches, there is just no other reason for non-governmental entities to go into space right now.
Well, duh. That's why SpaceX are working hard to slash the cost of launching things into orbit until other business opportunities make sense.
And only forty years after the US Government did it. Way to go, private sector!
And probably ten years before the government does it again, at a hundred times the cost if they're using SLS.
Next time NASA astronauts land on the Moon, there'll probably be a crowd of tourists from a SpaceX package tour waiting there to film them.
Ever increasing speed require every increasing power, and the power need increases faster then the increase of power.
That'll be why my i5 laptop only uses a few few more watts than my first Z80 computer, despite being thousands of times faster.
Marshall Brain has some very good ideas about what we could do as a society to ease our way past our 3rd generation society into a more-fair 4th generation post-scarcity society. http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
Singularitarians may be nutty, but believing in a 'post-scarcity society' is worse. Threre will never be more resources than humans can use, unless you discover a way to magic stuff out of nothing, forever.
It's all very well to say that machines will learn to program themselves, but someone has to be the first to teach them, and it has not yet been established if we're smart enough to do that.
So who taught humans to program themselves?
If humans aren't magic, then they can be simulated by a sufficiently complex machine. Therefore, if humans can be 'intelligent', a machine can, too.
Otherwise you have to believe humans are magic and 'intelligence' somehow exists outside physical reality.
The latter part of your story isn't really all that hard or time consuming. This is *why* you hire an agent and a lawyer, so they can do all the hard work.
You don't 'hire' any competent agent, you spend months or years sending out begging letters and hoping that one will deign to represent you.
And are you really saying that a writer who can 'hire' an agent and lawyer, can't manage to hire an editor and cover artist?
If every single author tried the self distribution model, the signal to noise ratio with Hogwarts fan Fiction and Tolkien ripoffs would drown everything out.
If every single movie-maker could upload their movies to Youtube, the signal to noise ratio with home cat videos would drown everything out.
If every single person could create their own web pages, the signal to noise ration with cat pictures would drown everything out.
See how dumb that sounds?
Because seeing see your enemy face to face in the pre-firearms era stopped any of the (for their time) large scale wars or the atrocities committed during them? LOL, literally.
Maybe you should actually read some studies of miltary history, and not just LOL.
I'm not sure about the sword-swinging era, but it seems pretty well established that most Western soldiers wouldn't fire guns at the other guys until their militaries went all out to create killers after WWII.
Amazon is responsible for createspace? Then they aren't doing those things very well. Createspace titles aren't exactly top tier offerings.
Createspace is a printer, and, yes, it's owned by Amazon now. Actually, in many cases I believe it's more a distributor than a printer, and often farms out the printing to third parties.
They do offer various services to authors, but they primarily just print books from whatever PDF the author or publisher uploads.
You mean Iain Banks.
In his later books, I'd say even Iain Banks is no Iain Banks.
No, updating to an actually supported operating system would be better.
Not if it's Window 8.
Again, Amazon aren't pushing DRM, publishers are. As I said elsewhere, when you upload a book to Amazon, it asks if you want to enable DRM, which is only there because the publishers demanded it.
And, if I remember correctly, Amazon have only ever disabled access to books they had no legal right to sell. Which would have made no difference if the books were DRM-free and the reader had already backed them up.
Oh, they're definitely worth the price if you're Stephen King or some other huge name; you won't get there without having you books in pretty much every book store in the world. But not if you're Joe Newbie receiving a $1,000 advance for a book he spent a year writing.
IMHO, most of the newbie writers still chasing publishing contracts are just doing it for the hope of seeing their book on a shelf in their local book store. Would be cheaper to have a PoD printer print one for them and put it there themselves when the store staff aren't looking.
The funny part is where writers claim they want a publisher so they can spend more time writing, while ignoring the years they'll be submitting to agents and publishers and hiring lawyers to go over contracts and revising their book from editors' feedback, and all the other work they'll have to do in trade publishing. Particularly when the publisher then says 'God no, you can't release two books a year, how could we possibly handle that volume of work?'
Oh, I know a number of published writers. Many of them think there's a special place in Hell reserved for the editors who've screwed up their books.
Amazon is a middle-man. It just gets in the way between the creators and consumers.
Absolutely. As I said above, writers would be better off if they could sell direct to readers.
But that's no reason to put two middle-men in the way.
That is interesting. It doesn't have that 'simultaneous device usage' line on the Amazon page, so maybe Amazon removed that so you can't tell which books are DRM-free any more?
And yet somehow even books from Baen and Tor (who don't DRM their books) end up on Amazon indistinguishable from those from other publishers.
Maybe they should stop enabling DRM on their Kindle books, then.
When you upload a Kindle book to Amazon, there's a checkbox to enable DRM. Just don't check it. Job done.