Given current rates of launches per year, 25 launches before scrapheap is quite reasonable. You'd get a vehicule you could use years on end w/o expensive overhauls (read:shuttle) and simply scrap it after a predetermined # of launches or age, whichever comes first.
Of course, the temptation to keep using it beyond its designed lifetime will be there, esp. if that could save you a serious wad of roubles...
Elon Musk's Falcon V is supposed to be man-rateable, so who knows... Of course he still has to launch the first Falcon I, but given the serious contracts he already has in his pocket, he must inspire a lot of confidence in professional circles.
It won't be anywhere as cheap as a SS1/2 ride, though. And I guess his company won't organize trips itself, but 'merely' sell their rocket and services.
Did Canada willingly agree to the removal of their flag? You got some more info on this? I clearly remember the quite noticable, proud "Canadarm" logo-flaf on the arm on the first few flights. But now that you mention it... I haven't seen it in a while, always subconsciously thought that was a P.O.V. thing, not that it was actually removed...
there was talk about aerobreaking, that is 'skipping' off the upper layer of the atmosphere, in order to reduce speed and so get into a circular orbit, this saves a lot of fuel (which) reduces launchcost. then again, aerobraking taxes the heatshield, too. Russians succesfully did this, though with the zond (from spaceref:) The 7K-L1 then made the first successful double skip trajectory, dipping into the earth's atmosphere over Antarctica, slowing from 11 km/sec to suborbital velocity, then skipping back out into space before making a final re-entry onto Soviet territory"
But the Zond trials were not always a success, one re-entry pulled 20g, ouch!
True about the Zond, but Soyuz is not Zond. They'd have to get the Zond plans demothballed for that. And... Zond was NOT a 100% success, not enough to declare it man-rated anyway...
Don't misunderstand me, i like the plan, no, I love it, and the fact they bring it up again might very wel mean they actually looked into the feasibility of it a little closer and are confident it may work. Despite people constantly nagging about how Russian tech is obsolete, they have very good records re: getting things done.
They posted this idea before. Looked extremely nice, but there are some problems with this... Biggest stumblingblock: the heatshield is not up to the increased punishment it'll get when re-entering from a trans-luna trajectory instead of a deorbit from LEO...
But then again, that's only a matter of strenghthening the shield. But then again, that needs testing, and will add serious weight.
So they can't do this tomorrow, the hardware is not tried and tested... Yet...
I like the idea of the Mozilla browser with the bookmarks. You could do a presentation with only FireFox/Mozilla, too... Present them the 'naked' version, w/o bells and whistles, and do a round of 'wouldn't it be great if the browser could do...' and then demonstrate how easy it is to, yes, add those wishes with the extensions/themes.
Show them a page without and with adblock installed and see their faces...
Show them how to personalise browsers... for people with different priorities (people in sales or r&d have different prefs of getting things done...)
Then explain them, if they still are not convinced, that it is possible to come up with further suggestions, to put them up at Mozilla, and get feedback frrom the maintainers...
Not too great example, maybe, but I liked this one: the Gmailnotifier stopped working, because Gmail restructured somethings, lo and behold, people started to complain, and now there's already an upgrade that not only restores functionality, but expands it. Try doing that with IE...
It's not an understatement to say this book changed my view on the world, hence my life. Talk about far reaching consequences to today's givens, like Moore's Law, this book is a real eye-opener in that respect.
A look at the list reveals some of the off-the-shelf stuff is very pricey (like the battery charger, boy oh boy, what a rip-off.)
I guess we'll see people come up with homebrew solutions to expensive off-the-shelf parts, and bring the price down to, say $400, easily. Might be an interesting project to follow.
it's a bit weird to hear the announcer introducing the piece. At first I was going to complain about that, but then I thought it was kind of neat, to get a bit of background info about the pieces Not too sure about the stuff about how and when to download it, though.. They could've scrapped the talk about the downloading stuff, just put that in the datapath (or whatever it is called) of the mp3, so you can read instead of having to listen to that.
That might be the underlying thinking. But I'm always puzzled by our school insisting on us using Powerpoint, Word, Excell and Photoshop, when most of the computers there run unofficial stuff (read: in the best case several copies of one registered package... Students regularly install their own, newer versions, all copies). So they are saying you have to use this product because "it's the standard,"(sigh...) but we don't mind if you run illegal copies. We do it too.
And no-one I know runs official packages, "why should we? It's only for one presentation, some photo-editing for in our papers etc etc." When I start about OpenOffice and other free stuff, 99% of them do not see why they should use it. You can as easily copy the 'real thing,' because they know it works.
And they (school) keep yammering about standards... Which most of those packages are not too good at, you never know what version you'll be running on the school's laptops, for instance, when you have to do a presentation. Several times that turned out to be disastreous...
Everyone running around, saying 'industry-standards,' while using dodgy copies, nice going...
Errr... They did do a $$$ special mission to retrofit secondary optics to make the pictures sharp again, so I guess the calulation solution only worked marginally at best. Or maybe they didn't have the computing power back then? Hmmm...
God, don't rub it in please.... Just today exactly that happened to me, with a looming deadline etc... Very bad for the heart, when you're running on caffeine, nicotine and lack of sleep (I'm a student, in the middle of exams, papers to bring in and all that merry stuff.) I was soooooo mad, in my exhausted, mind-scrambling rage, almost threw a bunch of computers through the window.... And when I went home, there were these big posters hanging around in the station, "Microsoft Office has evolved, have you?"
People walked around in a wide circle, away from me, wearing a *very* menacing look.
Sigh. So fed up with this. The world is quickly starting to be really, really dependant on computer-data, and yet the single biggest softwareprovider releases broken stuff, again and again.
Oh, and why wasn't a single computer in the whole acadamy able to read my RTF-file, or supposedly-Word compatible file output from a OS X computer????
Ok, end of rant. But this is how become what they are, I'm afraid. Sure feel like starting a flamewar, now. Urg.
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Given current rates of launches per year, 25 launches before scrapheap is quite reasonable. You'd get a vehicule you could use years on end w/o expensive overhauls (read:shuttle) and simply scrap it after a predetermined # of launches or age, whichever comes first.
Of course, the temptation to keep using it beyond its designed lifetime will be there, esp. if that could save you a serious wad of roubles...
You mean like the http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/home.html guys?
Elon Musk's Falcon V is supposed to be man-rateable, so who knows...
Of course he still has to launch the first Falcon I, but given the serious contracts he already has in his pocket, he must inspire a lot of confidence in professional circles.
It won't be anywhere as cheap as a SS1/2 ride, though. And I guess his company won't organize trips itself, but 'merely' sell their rocket and services.
Also in the news today:
Arianespace has launched the heaviest comsat to date, also aimed at providing bradband services to the Asian market....
Your group?
What are predictions based on?
I mean, 10 years with current R&D efforts or 10 yrs with massive inceased R&D?
nano being a buzzword, in many respects, but I guess the field is expanding quite rapidly, how hard is it to do predictions?
Erm... That should be "flag", not "flaf"
Yea,yea, there's a preveiw buttan, I kow...
Woa! You serious?
Did Canada willingly agree to the removal of their flag? You got some more info on this? I clearly remember the quite noticable, proud "Canadarm" logo-flaf on the arm on the first few flights. But now that you mention it... I haven't seen it in a while, always subconsciously thought that was a P.O.V. thing, not that it was actually removed...
Why such childish behaviour?
Nice, but Parent was talking about "for a reasonable price" solution, though! :P :P
My dog can climb stairs and fetches my newspaper, but its skills re: vacuuming the floor are marginal at best ;)
Yes, but...
there was talk about aerobreaking, that is 'skipping' off the upper layer of the atmosphere, in order to reduce speed and so get into a circular orbit, this saves a lot of fuel (which) reduces launchcost.
then again, aerobraking taxes the heatshield, too.
Russians succesfully did this, though with the zond (from spaceref:) The 7K-L1 then made the first successful double skip trajectory, dipping into the earth's atmosphere over Antarctica, slowing from 11 km/sec to suborbital velocity, then skipping back out into space before making a final re-entry onto Soviet territory"
But the Zond trials were not always a success, one re-entry pulled 20g, ouch!
True about the Zond, but Soyuz is not Zond.
They'd have to get the Zond plans demothballed for that.
And... Zond was NOT a 100% success, not enough to declare it man-rated anyway...
Don't misunderstand me, i like the plan, no, I love it, and the fact they bring it up again might very wel mean they actually looked into the feasibility of it a little closer and are confident it may work.
Despite people constantly nagging about how Russian tech is obsolete, they have very good records re: getting things done.
They posted this idea before.
Looked extremely nice, but there are some problems with this...
Biggest stumblingblock: the heatshield is not up to the increased punishment it'll get when re-entering from a trans-luna trajectory instead of a deorbit from LEO...
But then again, that's only a matter of strenghthening the shield. But then again, that needs testing, and will add serious weight.
So they can't do this tomorrow, the hardware is not tried and tested... Yet...
I like the idea of the Mozilla browser with the bookmarks.
You could do a presentation with only FireFox/Mozilla, too...
Present them the 'naked' version, w/o bells and whistles, and do a round of 'wouldn't it be great if the browser could do...'
and then demonstrate how easy it is to, yes, add those wishes with the extensions/themes.
Show them a page without and with adblock installed and see their faces...
Show them how to personalise browsers... for people with different priorities (people in sales or r&d have different prefs of getting things done...)
Then explain them, if they still are not convinced, that it is possible to come up with further suggestions, to put them up at Mozilla, and get feedback frrom the maintainers...
Not too great example, maybe, but I liked this one: the Gmailnotifier stopped working, because Gmail restructured somethings, lo and behold, people started to complain, and now there's already an upgrade that not only restores functionality, but expands it.
Try doing that with IE...
Amen to that.
It's not an understatement to say this book changed my view on the world, hence my life. Talk about far reaching consequences to today's givens, like Moore's Law, this book is a real eye-opener in that respect.
Required reading.
if you're willing to do some soldering.
A look at the list reveals some of the off-the-shelf stuff is very pricey (like the battery charger, boy oh boy, what a rip-off.)
I guess we'll see people come up with homebrew solutions to expensive off-the-shelf parts, and bring the price down to, say $400, easily.
Might be an interesting project to follow.
it's a bit weird to hear the announcer introducing the piece.
At first I was going to complain about that, but then I thought it was kind of neat, to get a bit of background info about the pieces
Not too sure about the stuff about how and when to download it, though.. They could've scrapped the talk about the downloading stuff, just put that in the datapath (or whatever it is called) of the mp3, so you can read instead of having to listen to that.
Overall, nice shot.
That might be the underlying thinking.
But I'm always puzzled by our school insisting on us using Powerpoint, Word, Excell and Photoshop, when most of the computers there run unofficial stuff (read: in the best case several copies of one registered package... Students regularly install their own, newer versions, all copies).
So they are saying you have to use this product because "it's the standard,"(sigh...) but we don't mind if you run illegal copies. We do it too.
And no-one I know runs official packages, "why should we? It's only for one presentation, some photo-editing for in our papers etc etc." When I start about OpenOffice and other free stuff, 99% of them do not see why they should use it. You can as easily copy the 'real thing,' because they know it works.
And they (school) keep yammering about standards... Which most of those packages are not too good at, you never know what version you'll be running on the school's laptops, for instance, when you have to do a presentation. Several times that turned out to be disastreous...
Everyone running around, saying 'industry-standards,' while using dodgy copies, nice going...
Errr... They did do a $$$ special mission to retrofit secondary optics to make the pictures sharp again, so I guess the calulation solution only worked marginally at best.
Or maybe they didn't have the computing power back then? Hmmm...
But... But... But...
;)
It has been posted multiple times on Slashdot, so it must be true?
Probably just CO2 in pores of the crust?
Mars atmosphere is 90-ish percent CO2...
Good point. I actually ended up copy/pasting the text into an email, to get it printed, sigh.
Still, this is a crazy situation...
God, don't rub it in please.... ... And when I went home, there were these big posters hanging around in the station, "Microsoft Office has evolved, have you?"
Just today exactly that happened to me, with a looming deadline etc...
Very bad for the heart, when you're running on caffeine, nicotine and lack of sleep (I'm a student, in the middle of exams, papers to bring in and all that merry stuff.)
I was soooooo mad, in my exhausted, mind-scrambling rage, almost threw a bunch of computers through the window.
People walked around in a wide circle, away from me, wearing a *very* menacing look.
Sigh. So fed up with this. The world is quickly starting to be really, really dependant on computer-data, and yet the single biggest softwareprovider releases broken stuff, again and again.
Oh, and why wasn't a single computer in the whole acadamy able to read my RTF-file, or supposedly-Word compatible file output from a OS X computer????
Ok, end of rant. But this is how become what they are, I'm afraid. Sure feel like starting a flamewar, now. Urg.
From TFA
"The revolutionary use of an electromagnetic pump means no internal moving parts, low power consumption and delivers near silent operation. "
Near-silent? What is making the noise then?
Hey, this is SlashDot, one should apologize for *having* read TFA, not the other way round!
FYI I run Ubuntu on a Clamshell iBook and it recognized and configured the airportcard automatically during install.
;) if you are happy running obsolete hardware, that is.
So your double use of 'any Mac,''any built-in wireless hardware,' is a bit errr... FUDdy
OTOH, Airport Extreme does indeed not work, so be warned.