Who is to say the seed didn't independently get glyphosate resistance? It would be interesting to find out if the genetic difference among all these seeds is due to Monsanto or not.
Sure. The Hubble isn't that different from a spy sat. The main difference is it is pointing to space rather than the Earth. The mirror for example was made by the same contractors usually used for the spy sats. Another thing that it enabled was assembling large ISS components. However it is arguable it if couldn't have been done cheaper with expendables anyway. The main point of the RLV was putting astronauts into orbit to begin with.
I think the private sector could build a large gridded ion engine quite easily. If they use commercial solar panels as the source of electricity they don't even need to do much additional R&D to get the thing working.
NASA should be spending money on propulsion, ISRU, and life support R&D right now instead of trying to design another Saturn V with Shuttle components.
They could fund lots of asteroid prospecting missions using current vehicles without needing the large launcher. Arguably it would also be better to have propellant depots along the way to Mars or the Moon rather than trying to launch everything in one go. Unless they use nuclear propulsion or whatever it doesn't make sense to do frequent to the Moon or Mars using a single launch IMO.
The French already did Soyuz launches via Starsem. The difference now is they have a Soyuz launch at French Guiana which is nearer the equator and hence the payload to GTO has increased a lot.
Just try asking Shelby how many delays and cost increases Ares I had before it was (rightly IMO) cut. Now congress added Ares V back to the program renaming it SLS. It is as expensive and useless as it was back when it had another name. Worse they aren't even intending to reuse work they did which was actually useful like the J-2X (which is like half complete) and instead plan to use the RS-68 for the second stage. RS-68 was originally meant as a first stage engine and I wouldn't be surprised if it cost as much to make the necessary changes than to complete J-2X. Then there are the discardable SSME engines in the base... the rocket is certainly not going to be cheap. The SSME was only cost effective in Shuttle because it could be reused like 10x without major maintenance between flights.
Titanium isn't that great either. It doesn't melt at as low a temperature as aluminum, but it gets plastic and starts deforming at a much lower temperature than the melting point temperature, contrary to aluminum. The main issue was the USAF requirements. Large cross range (which meant it had to have wings), large payload to launch their spy sats (which meant the whole vehicle was incredibly more costly than the original Max Faget proposal).
Just because you outsourced most of the work to China it doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done by someone as this news tidbit clearly shows. Just because it is across the ocean it doesn't mean there aren't people actually doing a significant part of the job. In a different society if there was less work to do and there was a superabundance of resources and goods the number of working hours would be reduced (some corporations like Google actually do this by giving their employees time to do their own activities) and people could use that time in all sorts of ways that would enhance growth or their own personal well being. Instead everyone is being convinced by the people holding the money that they need to work as much as Chinese laborer, which is something which will never happen, even Chinese laborers aren't happy working like that anymore and are increasingly demanding changes to their situation. There is also a massive wealth transfer in progress towards Asia. Despite some people only looking at the short term balance on their own accounts, in the long run one thing that makes or breaks a society is its own capacity to produce and maintain a healthy import/export balance. This was one of the causes of the fall of the Roman empire which had endemic economic problems due to their trade inbalance with China. This was something they never managed to overcome as they kept sinking into increasingly larger deficits.
The notion that robots are always cheaper than people is also a mistake. The Japanese, which have advanced the state of the art in robotics probably more than any other nation, figured that out a long time ago. In the middle term one of two things will happen: either new industries will show up which will make use of the available workforce, or there will be an economic reversal. There is plenty do to which is not make work. In the US at least much of the infrastructure was done before the 1970s and is in need of major repairs or replacement. This ranges from transportation to power transmission and generation, telecommunications, and more. One example is nuclear reactors which were supposed to be decommissioned once they reached 20 years of operation which are now planned to run for twice that long. A disaster in the making when there are newer and safer Generation III+ designs which aren't getting built. Even in the much vaunted defense sector you have pieces of hardware like the M1 Abrams tank which was originally designed in the late 1970s and most of the USAF still uses F-16s and F-15s which were also designed in the late 1970s. In the commercial aviation sector any airframe 20 years old is considered too unsafe to fly. Yet the military still fly B-52Hs and other platforms like that regularly simply because they never had any viable replacement.
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These sorts of corporations have their own in-house people working on maintenance.
The question is why were they having issues. Was it due to the business network getting clogged up during working hours?
Yeah, that's about it. Just turn off the power of your gadgets and ignore everything outside business hours. Only way to remain sane.
Yeah, it is like some people just willingly traded US dollars for Reichmarks in 1943 or something.
Only an idiot would buy the stock at that price. I wouldn't buy it at any price. Even if it was $1/share.
Who is to say the seed didn't independently get glyphosate resistance? It would be interesting to find out if the genetic difference among all these seeds is due to Monsanto or not.
Probably used for animal feed.
If they can blow up all ten of your fingers they can certainly also erase a tattoo by burning your flesh or removing an implanted chip.
Are you talking about Delta IV Heavy? Falcon 9 Heavy will also have more payload.
Not to mention a waste of time and moronic. You can already use fingerprints to identify someone. It's not like adding a barcode would help.
Nah, they will just build another couple of cables with GW capacity to France, then buy the nuclear power from there. NIMBY problem solved.
Sure. The Hubble isn't that different from a spy sat. The main difference is it is pointing to space rather than the Earth. The mirror for example was made by the same contractors usually used for the spy sats. Another thing that it enabled was assembling large ISS components. However it is arguable it if couldn't have been done cheaper with expendables anyway. The main point of the RLV was putting astronauts into orbit to begin with.
I think the private sector could build a large gridded ion engine quite easily. If they use commercial solar panels as the source of electricity they don't even need to do much additional R&D to get the thing working.
NASA should be spending money on propulsion, ISRU, and life support R&D right now instead of trying to design another Saturn V with Shuttle components.
They could fund lots of asteroid prospecting missions using current vehicles without needing the large launcher. Arguably it would also be better to have propellant depots along the way to Mars or the Moon rather than trying to launch everything in one go. Unless they use nuclear propulsion or whatever it doesn't make sense to do frequent to the Moon or Mars using a single launch IMO.
The French already did Soyuz launches via Starsem. The difference now is they have a Soyuz launch at French Guiana which is nearer the equator and hence the payload to GTO has increased a lot.
Actually SpaceX seems to prefer keeping everything in-house as trade secrets rather than filing patents on anything.
The fairing is split in two halves IIRC.
They just carry the Falcon 9 to the pad by pieces on trucks: http://www.spacex.com/assets/img/122908-oversized.jpg
The Falcon 9 pieces are built in California, tested at Texas, then sent to Florida for final integration and launch.
IIRC JPL is run by Caltech so it is not your average NASA facility to begin with.
Just try asking Shelby how many delays and cost increases Ares I had before it was (rightly IMO) cut. Now congress added Ares V back to the program renaming it SLS. It is as expensive and useless as it was back when it had another name. Worse they aren't even intending to reuse work they did which was actually useful like the J-2X (which is like half complete) and instead plan to use the RS-68 for the second stage. RS-68 was originally meant as a first stage engine and I wouldn't be surprised if it cost as much to make the necessary changes than to complete J-2X. Then there are the discardable SSME engines in the base... the rocket is certainly not going to be cheap. The SSME was only cost effective in Shuttle because it could be reused like 10x without major maintenance between flights.
The thing is NASA can't do today what it could do in 1964. Shelby is pork barreling hot air buffoon.
Titanium isn't that great either. It doesn't melt at as low a temperature as aluminum, but it gets plastic and starts deforming at a much lower temperature than the melting point temperature, contrary to aluminum. The main issue was the USAF requirements. Large cross range (which meant it had to have wings), large payload to launch their spy sats (which meant the whole vehicle was incredibly more costly than the original Max Faget proposal).
Can you buy USPS stock? You can buy EADS stock if you wanted to.
Just because you outsourced most of the work to China it doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done by someone as this news tidbit clearly shows. Just because it is across the ocean it doesn't mean there aren't people actually doing a significant part of the job. In a different society if there was less work to do and there was a superabundance of resources and goods the number of working hours would be reduced (some corporations like Google actually do this by giving their employees time to do their own activities) and people could use that time in all sorts of ways that would enhance growth or their own personal well being. Instead everyone is being convinced by the people holding the money that they need to work as much as Chinese laborer, which is something which will never happen, even Chinese laborers aren't happy working like that anymore and are increasingly demanding changes to their situation. There is also a massive wealth transfer in progress towards Asia. Despite some people only looking at the short term balance on their own accounts, in the long run one thing that makes or breaks a society is its own capacity to produce and maintain a healthy import/export balance. This was one of the causes of the fall of the Roman empire which had endemic economic problems due to their trade inbalance with China. This was something they never managed to overcome as they kept sinking into increasingly larger deficits.
The notion that robots are always cheaper than people is also a mistake. The Japanese, which have advanced the state of the art in robotics probably more than any other nation, figured that out a long time ago. In the middle term one of two things will happen: either new industries will show up which will make use of the available workforce, or there will be an economic reversal. There is plenty do to which is not make work. In the US at least much of the infrastructure was done before the 1970s and is in need of major repairs or replacement. This ranges from transportation to power transmission and generation, telecommunications, and more. One example is nuclear reactors which were supposed to be decommissioned once they reached 20 years of operation which are now planned to run for twice that long. A disaster in the making when there are newer and safer Generation III+ designs which aren't getting built. Even in the much vaunted defense sector you have pieces of hardware like the M1 Abrams tank which was originally designed in the late 1970s and most of the USAF still uses F-16s and F-15s which were also designed in the late 1970s. In the commercial aviation sector any airframe 20 years old is considered too unsafe to fly. Yet the military still fly B-52Hs and other platforms like that regularly simply because they never had any viable replacement.
Nah, it just means if they can save a buck by moving to China they will.