first, there's no such standard like "Web 2.0". second, code space does not equal freestore(heap) or stack space. often, one is a tradeoff for other. third, see my post above. i said that you have to sacrifice features.
i could also tell you about what i HAVE implemented in under 100kb of Thumb codespace, but its not possible, no way in hell, so why bother:)
There are very few "things that require a lot of memory", really. Most of the "things" you do in programming are tradeoffs, often between complexity of implementation, speed and memory requirements. There are usually off the shelf algorithms for each approach. Simplest solutions are often the most inefficient ones. There is no reason why a minimal web browser could not be implemented, utilizing something like ~100kb of memory, in fact, i have seen the code to one. However, it wont be a) fast b) portable c) full featured d) very easy to understand
yeah, finding one of these nations that a) has a launch platform b) can somehow get one of the existing launchers from world to launch from there is going to be difficult.
GLXP 20 mil purse is NOT enough to design and build the lunar hardware AND the launcher
It might be of no interest to you, but im running "linux environment" on a machine that likely has less RAM than your core 2 duo cache. I dont compile applications for it with GCC, because its code output for ARM is just bloat, and its accompanying GLIBC is bloat squared.
de-facto GCC and GLIBC replacement that does not weigh in with minimum 500KB statically linked binaries would be hailed as a Good Thing across the globe too. Newlib, dietlibc and a couple of others are a good start and actually crossplatform as well, whats missing is a good compiler.
Being able to expend that much energy in a certain amount of time is just difficult.
The problems ( the cost and reliability ) of spaceflight have very little to do with how much energy it takes. Guns and explosives involve high energies in little time as well, nevertheless they have been affordably deployed to the masses ( and yes, explosives have lots of constructive uses, look up mining and mountain engineering )
Fuel costs of an average medium-lift expendable launch vehicle for example make up a fractional percent of the actual billed launch prices. Homework assignment: figure out where does the rest of the money go.
i know you meant it as a joke but.. Space Shuttle is a result of "intelligent design". They put together best and the brightest in one big agency, tasked them with building The One and Only Space Transportation System now and for decades to come.
The result, as expected ( regardless of individual talents ) is something that is horribly expensive, costs billions a year whether you fly it or not, is notorious for killing astronauts seven at a time, and goes nowhere particularly useful.
Had someone done the same anno 1900, gobbled up all talented engineers into one agency to design and develop the one and only National Aero Shuttle, dirigibles would probably still be the dominant mode of air transportation and the total aviation would be limited to a handful government employees flying a few circles each year. Maybe there would be an International Aero Station too by now, manned by two men whose only useful function, apart from fixing the station, would be to have a few live interviews on TV to tell us how great it feels being up there.
are you sure you prefer "intelligent design" ? evolution and market forces can be cruel, but one thing they tend to guarantee is that only the fittest designs survive.
oh, i wont argue with how the protection circuits are built, i wouldnt trust any of them for any of my own apps anyway ( which currently is robots and smallscale EVs )
so yes, an off the shelf pack intended for some other application is clearly the wrong choice for this.
but nothing wrong with a custom built pack of lithium ( preferrably phosphate ) cells with appropriate electronics. LiFePos often dont even need any protection electronics, as they are overcharge, deep discharge and generally abuse tolerant, a pack balancer only protects your investment and makes the pack live longer.
whats wrong with lithium packs ? im not talking any old cobalt oxide cells, but lithium phosphate like A123 systems ones. you can reliably, consistently pull 10C discharge from them and they last far beyond any lead or nickel batteries, like > 2000 cycles or more. In addition, lithium phosphate is safe and environmentally benign. Whats not to like about them ?
Right, the difference is, aircraft followed the natural evolutionary approach to safe and economical transportation.
Space launchers have never done that. They have always tried to leapfrog to a "complete solution". Most of the launchers active today have their heritage in ICBMs. Apollo program got started by replacing the warheads with men in tin can. Thats not how you build a reliable and safe transportation device.
Or take shuttle. It was designed on paper, and the very first hardware iteration was declared operational configuration. Thats just nuts. You try to take and build worlds first ever reusable space transport, and you try to do it in one hardware iteration ? Try more like something between ten and hundred to get it right.
The trouble is, space industry has always been run by governments across the globe, due to certain historical circumstances. It never undertook the normal evolution of hardware and technologies that has happened with other, commercial transportation markets.
And thats exactly what Armadillo and their kin are trying to do now. Build stuff from the ground up, fly a bit, crash a few times, build it better and so on. Enter the competitive pressure of marketplace, and you will get the right incentives to build affordable, safe and reliable space transportation.
We dont know what these will turn out to be, whether its VTOL rockets like Armadillo and Masten are building, or XCOR HTOL approach, or something else entirely. This evolutionary path is yet to be walked down.
Where is the science in it ? Its pure commercial development, it has nothing to do with NASA or CERN, apart from the technology heritage.
Space is finally becoming a place of conducting other business apart from telecom and remote sensing sats, and you tag it the boring old "science" ?
Toshiba ( IIRC ) just announced they have the best efficiency commercial quantity cells. 18%. lame.
Plus, all the cheap thin-film that is talked about, its taking ages to bring it to production.
radio waves dont travel through air. sound waves do, but radio waves dont. so they arent violating any AIRspace. so unless someone has implementing drumming on tam-tams or yelling as one of the carrier signals for any phone stack, they dont have much of an argument there.
windows has had code signing since like prehistoric times. MSIs, EXEs and DLLs can ( and should ) be digitally signed. I'd let the thing download and install the stuff which has a signature that verifies up to a given root certificate fingerprint.
PKI is there to be used.
on the "operatin systems are in C".. this is true only to a limit. Take two that we commonly refer to as opsyses: linux and windows ( yea i know linux is just a kernel, but nobody "installs linux" nowadays without getting BASHed in the process )
The idea of "Op sys" usually includes more than just a kernel and drivers. It usually has some sort of basic user interface and other facilities included. Kernels are C and assembler, true. but usually even the most basic installs of linux will make use of some scripting language, just to process startup scripts for instance. windows wouldnt be windows without large block of COM classes that make up the foundations of how win works. Much of the COM classes are written in c++. windows also inevitably comes with graphical shell, i believe large parts of it are also written in C++
Vista ? i may be wrong but some stuff on it is running on.NET CLI out of the box, which means managed languages, likely C# or abomination called VB.NET
at the most basic level, its always going to be assembler. but i wouldnt be surprised if next installment of Windows for example will consist of very much CLI code out of the box. with drivers moving to userspace, its not hard to imagine a "bridge" driver that will bring some system buses to managed space as well.
It seems odd NASA would need to move so much in such a short time.
There are couple of potential uses for regolith digging. In order of technical feasibility : cooking out oxygen from it, sintering and depositing solar cells on the surface, extracting HE3.
As a side product of oxygen processing, you can get metals like aluminium and iron.
Looking at oxygen alone, its primary use would be to refill the propellant tanks of some future lunar lander, secondary to provide breathable atmosphere for astronauts. Propellant is the pacing item, as it takes in the order of tons to be useful.
So you can go and calculate, at competition rate of 5KG/minute of regolith, how long would it take to refill say around 5-ton tanks of Oxygen which is about the useful size for three-man lander.
Now oxygen might yield feasible timeframes as the rocks are around 10% oxygen by weight IIRC, but when you look at He3, to get a gram out you have to sift through tons of regolith.
Er , System Shock brought the storyline, spookyness and all the quirks to FPS genre and almost fused it with RPG. System Shock 2 did more of that and dropped in massive audio kick in the bowels and scared the living bejeezus out of the people. People liked it, and shortly after, Looking Glass Studios, the developer, went bankrupt. No hype was involved.
Have you been to Siberia in summer ? Believe me, the hotter it gets, the more hostile it is. Just mosquitoes will eat you alive.
Definitely put warming of siberia down in the negative section.
Seriously, robotics is going and is big, growing at insane rate. Getting your feet wet with it now can pay off big, although a few years back when the advent of MEMS sensors and cheap easy to use DSP computing power began, would have been better. Lots of software skills to make use of, some electronics, systems engineering and hacking is a plus.
Space tech and Rocketry.. see how many IT industry moguls went with the NewSpace boom ? John Carmack, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Paul Allen.. there are other less noticed guys involved. Rocketry nowadays doesnt involve much science, science has been done and put down in the books. It requires good system engineering and integration skills, plenty of persistence and analytical thinking. If you are good at chewing through math, thats a strong plus. Lots of NewSpace startups are hiring.
... whatever version is actual right now. Heck, even my HTC Wizard at 200 Mhz constantly kept beating me at any higher difficulty setting, and it was definitely not cheating, if you take my meaning.
No, its plain old engineering. There is hardly any science in building a two-stage liquid rocket in 2007. They arent doing something that isnt done before.
What _is_ novel here is that for the first time, an orbital space launcher is built primarily with the profit motive in mind. No other company has really attempted that before ( or they have, but never gotten so close to pulling it off ).
Thus also different design choices, different incentives and ultimately a price tag couple of times lower than your regular cost-plus aerospace contract would yield.
Slashdot Mirror
first, there's no such standard like "Web 2.0".
:)
second, code space does not equal freestore(heap) or stack space. often, one is a tradeoff for other.
third, see my post above. i said that you have to sacrifice features.
i could also tell you about what i HAVE implemented in under 100kb of Thumb codespace, but its not possible, no way in hell, so why bother
There are very few "things that require a lot of memory", really. Most of the "things" you do in programming are tradeoffs, often between complexity of implementation, speed and memory requirements. There are usually off the shelf algorithms for each approach. Simplest solutions are often the most inefficient ones.
There is no reason why a minimal web browser could not be implemented, utilizing something like ~100kb of memory, in fact, i have seen the code to one. However, it wont be a) fast b) portable c) full featured d) very easy to understand
hey, if 2D works already then 3D is just one more D to implement. we are 2/3rds on the way to linux 3d nirvana!
yeah, finding one of these nations that a) has a launch platform b) can somehow get one of the existing launchers from world to launch from there is going to be difficult.
GLXP 20 mil purse is NOT enough to design and build the lunar hardware AND the launcher
It might be of no interest to you, but im running "linux environment" on a machine that likely has less RAM than your core 2 duo cache. I dont compile applications for it with GCC, because its code output for ARM is just bloat, and its accompanying GLIBC is bloat squared.
de-facto GCC and GLIBC replacement that does not weigh in with minimum 500KB statically linked binaries would be hailed as a Good Thing across the globe too.
Newlib, dietlibc and a couple of others are a good start and actually crossplatform as well, whats missing is a good compiler.
Being able to expend that much energy in a certain amount of time is just difficult.
The problems ( the cost and reliability ) of spaceflight have very little to do with how much energy it takes. Guns and explosives involve high energies in little time as well, nevertheless they have been affordably deployed to the masses ( and yes, explosives have lots of constructive uses, look up mining and mountain engineering )
Fuel costs of an average medium-lift expendable launch vehicle for example make up a fractional percent of the actual billed launch prices. Homework assignment: figure out where does the rest of the money go.
i know you meant it as a joke but .. Space Shuttle is a result of "intelligent design". They put together best and the brightest in one big agency, tasked them with building The One and Only Space Transportation System now and for decades to come.
The result, as expected ( regardless of individual talents ) is something that is horribly expensive, costs billions a year whether you fly it or not, is notorious for killing astronauts seven at a time, and goes nowhere particularly useful.
Had someone done the same anno 1900, gobbled up all talented engineers into one agency to design and develop the one and only National Aero Shuttle, dirigibles would probably still be the dominant mode of air transportation and the total aviation would be limited to a handful government employees flying a few circles each year. Maybe there would be an International Aero Station too by now, manned by two men whose only useful function, apart from fixing the station, would be to have a few live interviews on TV to tell us how great it feels being up there.
are you sure you prefer "intelligent design" ? evolution and market forces can be cruel, but one thing they tend to guarantee is that only the fittest designs survive.
oh, i wont argue with how the protection circuits are built, i wouldnt trust any of them for any of my own apps anyway ( which currently is robots and smallscale EVs ) so yes, an off the shelf pack intended for some other application is clearly the wrong choice for this. but nothing wrong with a custom built pack of lithium ( preferrably phosphate ) cells with appropriate electronics. LiFePos often dont even need any protection electronics, as they are overcharge, deep discharge and generally abuse tolerant, a pack balancer only protects your investment and makes the pack live longer.
whats wrong with lithium packs ? im not talking any old cobalt oxide cells, but lithium phosphate like A123 systems ones.
you can reliably, consistently pull 10C discharge from them and they last far beyond any lead or nickel batteries, like > 2000 cycles or more.
In addition, lithium phosphate is safe and environmentally benign. Whats not to like about them ?
Right, the difference is, aircraft followed the natural evolutionary approach to safe and economical transportation.
Space launchers have never done that. They have always tried to leapfrog to a "complete solution". Most of the launchers active today have their heritage in ICBMs. Apollo program got started by replacing the warheads with men in tin can. Thats not how you build a reliable and safe transportation device.
Or take shuttle. It was designed on paper, and the very first hardware iteration was declared operational configuration. Thats just nuts. You try to take and build worlds first ever reusable space transport, and you try to do it in one hardware iteration ? Try more like something between ten and hundred to get it right.
The trouble is, space industry has always been run by governments across the globe, due to certain historical circumstances. It never undertook the normal evolution of hardware and technologies that has happened with other, commercial transportation markets.
And thats exactly what Armadillo and their kin are trying to do now. Build stuff from the ground up, fly a bit, crash a few times, build it better and so on. Enter the competitive pressure of marketplace, and you will get the right incentives to build affordable, safe and reliable space transportation.
We dont know what these will turn out to be, whether its VTOL rockets like Armadillo and Masten are building, or XCOR HTOL approach, or something else entirely. This evolutionary path is yet to be walked down.
Where is the science in it ? Its pure commercial development, it has nothing to do with NASA or CERN, apart from the technology heritage. Space is finally becoming a place of conducting other business apart from telecom and remote sensing sats, and you tag it the boring old "science" ?
These are the two well designed C++ libraries that i can always instantly remember.
Toshiba ( IIRC ) just announced they have the best efficiency commercial quantity cells. 18%. lame. Plus, all the cheap thin-film that is talked about, its taking ages to bring it to production.
radio waves dont travel through air. sound waves do, but radio waves dont. so they arent violating any AIRspace. so unless someone has implementing drumming on tam-tams or yelling as one of the carrier signals for any phone stack, they dont have much of an argument there.
windows has had code signing since like prehistoric times. MSIs, EXEs and DLLs can ( and should ) be digitally signed. I'd let the thing download and install the stuff which has a signature that verifies up to a given root certificate fingerprint. PKI is there to be used.
Kung pow> Thats a lot of nuts! http://kungpownuts.ytmnd.com/
on the "operatin systems are in C" .. this is true only to a limit. Take two that we commonly refer to as opsyses: linux and windows ( yea i know linux is just a kernel, but nobody "installs linux" nowadays without getting BASHed in the process )
.NET CLI out of the box, which means managed languages, likely C# or abomination called VB.NET
The idea of "Op sys" usually includes more than just a kernel and drivers. It usually has some sort of basic user interface and other facilities included. Kernels are C and assembler, true.
but usually even the most basic installs of linux will make use of some scripting language, just to process startup scripts for instance.
windows wouldnt be windows without large block of COM classes that make up the foundations of how win works. Much of the COM classes are written in c++. windows also inevitably comes with graphical shell, i believe large parts of it are also written in C++
Vista ? i may be wrong but some stuff on it is running on
at the most basic level, its always going to be assembler. but i wouldnt be surprised if next installment of Windows for example will consist of very much CLI code out of the box. with drivers moving to userspace, its not hard to imagine a "bridge" driver that will bring some system buses to managed space as well.
It seems odd NASA would need to move so much in such a short time.
There are couple of potential uses for regolith digging. In order of technical feasibility : cooking out oxygen from it, sintering and depositing solar cells on the surface, extracting HE3.
As a side product of oxygen processing, you can get metals like aluminium and iron.
Looking at oxygen alone, its primary use would be to refill the propellant tanks of some future lunar lander, secondary to provide breathable atmosphere for astronauts. Propellant is the pacing item, as it takes in the order of tons to be useful.
So you can go and calculate, at competition rate of 5KG/minute of regolith, how long would it take to refill say around 5-ton tanks of Oxygen which is about the useful size for three-man lander.
Now oxygen might yield feasible timeframes as the rocks are around 10% oxygen by weight IIRC, but when you look at He3, to get a gram out you have to sift through tons of regolith.
So thats where the requirements come from.
Er , System Shock brought the storyline, spookyness and all the quirks to FPS genre and almost fused it with RPG. System Shock 2 did more of that and dropped in massive audio kick in the bowels and scared the living bejeezus out of the people. People liked it, and shortly after, Looking Glass Studios, the developer, went bankrupt. No hype was involved.
...
thank you for using ValueRep
Have you been to Siberia in summer ? Believe me, the hotter it gets, the more hostile it is. Just mosquitoes will eat you alive. Definitely put warming of siberia down in the negative section.
Seriously, robotics is going and is big, growing at insane rate. Getting your feet wet with it now can pay off big, although a few years back when the advent of MEMS sensors and cheap easy to use DSP computing power began, would have been better. Lots of software skills to make use of, some electronics, systems engineering and hacking is a plus.
.. see how many IT industry moguls went with the NewSpace boom ? John Carmack, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Paul Allen .. there are other less noticed guys involved. Rocketry nowadays doesnt involve much science, science has been done and put down in the books. It requires good system engineering and integration skills, plenty of persistence and analytical thinking. If you are good at chewing through math, thats a strong plus.
Space tech and Rocketry
Lots of NewSpace startups are hiring.
... whatever version is actual right now. Heck, even my HTC Wizard at 200 Mhz constantly kept beating me at any higher difficulty setting, and it was definitely not cheating, if you take my meaning.
No, its plain old engineering. There is hardly any science in building a two-stage liquid rocket in 2007. They arent doing something that isnt done before. What _is_ novel here is that for the first time, an orbital space launcher is built primarily with the profit motive in mind. No other company has really attempted that before ( or they have, but never gotten so close to pulling it off ). Thus also different design choices, different incentives and ultimately a price tag couple of times lower than your regular cost-plus aerospace contract would yield.
For those of you who didnt catch the webcast:
YouTube : launch
SpaceX official, high-res: http://www.spacex.com/video_gallery.php
Five minutes of fame !