I've had both close friends who have had problems with this, as well as some personal experiences where I've had to shut down checking accounts to kill the problem.
The worst problems I've had is with banks themselves taking money they weren't authorized to remove from my account, but that is another story. Surprisingly, I usually got the money back when I confronted an officer of that bank about the issue, usually with a sincere apology and something about glitches in their computer software (right!)
Currently, the technology required to make secure authentication ubiquitous is prohibitively expensive. Banks continue to employ a lot of legacy systems the for reliability purposes, because any downtime is simply unacceptable.
I say, B.S.
The "technology" required to securely authenticate financial transactions is hardly expensive.
I've noted that my editorial transactions on Wikipedia are several orders of magnitude more secure and harder to hack into than my financial transactions. If you ever try to become a "check user" or get involved deeper with the Wikimedia political process than being just a project administrator or bureaucrat, you will discover even further authentication including verification of identity that I could only wish my bank would use.
Shared secret codes are used all the time with internet actions. They are called a "password". This isn't something from spy movies, but something that has been used by computers since practically when they were first created. Most database engines like MySQL even have password authentication algorithms that even keep the database administrator from knowing what the password is.
The whole problem here is that identification != identifier. Your bank account number, SSN (or government issued identification number), mother's maiden name, birth date, place of birth, or any other textual information that can be used to clarify that you are a unique individual still doesn't address if you are indeed the person who is asserting the claim to be that person.
When you apply for a U.S. passport, one of the things you have to do in order to get the passport issued is to have a genuine person who is an officer of the government (usually a postmaster at a post office) verify the documents that you are using to agree that you are indeed this individual. If the government wanted to, they could at that point set up some pass phrase or some other identification scheme for further transactions.
The reason for the pass phrases in "spy movies" BTW is also for authentication, as the information being transferred in intelligence operations is usually so important that they don't want to hand it over to any ordinary person... or the wrong person.
There is no reason a bank can't independently establish the identity of a person, or set up a "network" of legally secure identification locations (at any bank that is licensed) where you have to go in and establish your identity with a photo ID, finger prints, DNA test, or some other very difficult to forge process and set up the secure identification number with checksums/random numbers (so you can't just randomly guess the number) and perhaps even a customer-generated password/pass phrase that can then be used for banking transactions from that point on... including network transactions.
This doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive, and at most would be just a couple of dollars of cost per customer. A cost that could even be charged to the customer as a legitimate fee (that most customers would be willing to pay as well!) If you suspect that your "identity" is compromised, you can re-establish your "identity information" at the bank or wherever you did this in the first place, comparing the biometric data (aka signature, finger prints, DNA, etc.) "on file" with who you are. Attempts at "identity theft" by the bankers or "authenticators" would be a stiff felony and subject to a long term in prison... at least on the order of falsification by a notary public (which is currently found in most banks).
BTW, about most transactions being done with cash? I'd like to know where you've been. I've tried to live a cash-only lifestyle, and I've found that at least in the 21st Century it is impossible to be that way completely. The first place I had real problems was with the telephone company, but now all utility companies require at least check transactions, and prefer debit/credit cards (for some that is the only option). Paying on a car or h
OK, you want me to answer this question? Sounds like a classical college physics problem.
You already gave away the answer here, but hidden in the variables.
F = m * v^2
v = sqrt(F/m) = sqrt (100/0.1)
QED, v = ~ 32 m/s
That, BTW, is the minimum exhaust velocity, treating the exhaust as purely linear stream and not accounting for variables like gaseous expansion or other factors. Any more questions? Not college but high school physics here BTW. Calculating the final velocity of the spacecraft does require a bit of calculus, but even that isn't a tricky problem.
So therefore the final velocity of the spacecraft is dependent upon the exhaust velocity of the components thrown out of the back of the vehicle.
The final velocity BTW? About 2300 m/s. The only reason spacecraft don't get going that fast on the earth is that they are also fighting a constant negative 9.8 m/s^2 acceleration. I could show the math here, but/. isn't necessarily the best forum for such types of discussions.
I'll leave it to you, if you care, to derive the actual relationship between treating the exhaust velocity as a variable and the final vehicle velocity, but keep in mind that varying the exhaust velocity will vary the force of the engine, and that is a direct relationship 1:1 with the final velocity. Aka double the exhaust velocity and you double the final spacecraft velocity.
The reason this doesn't go to infinity is because there is a fixed minimum mass to the vehicle (aka a "payload") that limits the problem instead of going with superlatives of an infinitely small spacecraft.
Not true. If I'm expelling gas at ANY speed, then I'm generating thrust. Thrust means acceleration. If I can keep the acceleration going indefinitely then I can accelerate to any speed (short of c).
But you run out of mass more quickly if you throw it away more slowly. You can't keep accelerating indefinitely as eventually you run out of mass to throw away (or having to decide if you want to throw out something in the "payload" instead).
The top speed isn't quite limited to the velocity of the exhaust as there are a number of factors that go into it, and most propulsion systems tend to have a constant force they can apply to ever decreasing mass. That is why toward the end of most conventional rocket burns you have the greatest acceleration... often deliberately cut short to avoid damaging the payload even if there might be fuel left over. It is also why some rockets spend an embarassingly large amount of fuel just trying to clear the launch tower, yet are still considered efficient engines.
If somehow you can throw out the reaction mass at something close to the speed of light, you can keep accelerating for a long period of time... which is what these alternative engines are trying to accomplish by increasing the exhaust velocity to nearly insane levels.
Keep in mind that unless you are doing something like a Bussard ram scoop that is collecting material enroute, the only thing you have to be able toss out the back of your vehicle is reaction mass you have brought with you.
So your top "speed" is limited to exhaust velocity. All of these more exotic propellant systems are about increasing the efficiency of throwing the mass to increase the velocity of the vehicle.
The problem with these propulsion systems is that none of them are strong enough to be able to push against the 9.8 m/s^2 acceleration that we have on the ground here on Earth, so they are only useful once you get into space. They are highly efficient but overall only give relatively low amounts of acceleration.
Their advantage is that they can be operated for long periods of time... days, weeks, months, or even years potentially. Over time, even a modest acceleration adds up to a huge velocity change and can be significant in terms of travel to distant places like the outer planets of the solar system or even Mars. You can even take trajectories other than a modified Hohmann transfer orbit in this case between planets.
If you toss out a huge amount of mass at low velocities, your reaction mass is gone. Tossing that mass out at a significant fraction of the speed of light... well, you don't have to be using all that much reaction mass in order to be getting some real benefit in terms of changes in velocity.
BTW, I just don't see huge efficiencies with solar arrays being used to generate the electricity needed to run these exotic motors. The mass of the panels themselves quickly start to become a major issue as you scale up the thrust to make them useful, not to mention that travel beyond the Earth (aka to Mars or the outer solar system) results in significantly reduced amounts of solar energy that would even hit the solar panels.
For satellite station keeping (rather than using hydrazine or other chemical thrusters) this is an option as you need the power anyway for vehicle operations and can temporarily shut down some high energy consumption activities in exchange for maneuvering the vehicle. Typically the on-board fuel is one of the things that limits the lifetime of satellites... particularly things like spy satellites who want to use thrusters to vary their orbital characteristics and make it much more unpredictable about where they might be in the sky at any given moment. Geosync satellites could also take advantage of this as a huge expense is simply getting the satellite from low-earth orbit to a higher altitude, but it doesn't have to be done immediately and can take several months if necessary... or to correct for drift from their position once they get to the correct altitude.
There are some virtual worlds who do use advertising as a means to pay for the server bandwidth, software developers, and equipment used to host the environment. This said, all of this is something that has been on the periphery and not something embedded into the game much.
I can see it now.... you just slew the Mithril Dragon (level 575) with your +127 Vorpal Holy Avenger Sword. Now that you have been reduced to near death (but have survived!), the monster conveniently dropped a six-pack of Coca-Cola, that cool, refreshing beverages, and heals you (of course) for 200 hit points.
Unfortunately I think you will be seeing more of this sort of garbage, and the virtual world "engineers" who put this kind of product placement into the environment should be railed against if/when this happens.
As far as more social virtual worlds like second life are concerned, it is already there. I guess this is a warning that it will intensify and you will be subjected to virtual billboards and virtual advertisements in-game for things that have nothing to do with the game.
As the saying goes.... follow the money. There is also a whole bunch of, well I should say something a little more vulgar but I will leave this PG-rated, bolvine excrement.
There are some amazing things that can be done with virtual worlds, and I've been a part of some of that effort myself (both as a user and as a software designer). Still, there isn't anything really new here nor frankly anything novel that has come around since text-based MUDs, MUSHes, & MOOs other than much more intensive graphical environments.
If there is going to be something different that will be coming along, perhaps it will be some folks with Hollywood-class talent for telling stories to make something much more entertaining than exists at the moment. But how common is that, even in Hollywood (California)?
Otherwise, wake up me up with the holodeck is created. That is the next generation technology.... if it is ever built in the first place.
I think you are hanging around the wrong sorts of people. While I will admit there are people who are all tied up with hatred and vengeance at the top of their mind, from long experience I'll tell you that this is a distinct minority in this world.
Most people just want to go about their daily lives and be left alone, not screw anybody over, but to be simply left alone.
And no, half of all Americans don't hate the other half. This again is a very distinct minority that is unfortunately brought under a microscope by groups that come together in public forums thinking that everybody (not just those in the small group) thinks the same way.
There are some very genuine and honest people who will follow the teachings of the ancient philosophers and try to make this world a better place. They will give of themselves and not expect anything back in return... even an expectation that you might do anything yourself. Or even be willing to get screwed over on the hopes that by having that happen that they are protecting somebody else in the process.
I hope that eventually you will find peace in your life. There are many paths to find that peace, and I could recommend a few that might be worth looking at, but it seems as though you need to be convinced that even looking for this inner peace within your soul is something that is worth your time.
When you get that inner peace, you can also begin to start thinking about how you can do something more for not just yourself but also for your family, community, nation, and world. That takes some incredible maturity, but if you find it it will be something that can be a life-changing event.
There is also a glimmer of hope in you as you are at least responding. You also need to learn to love rather than hate, and try to find what even the worst of your enemies might be doing that is praiseworthy. You might be surprised.
While I would more or less agree with your sentiment here, NASA did build hardware and equipment, although major assemblies and parts came from a great many contractors.
NASA did have a pretty good corp of engineers that were government employees and actively worked in R&D to design these vehicles. It wasn't quite as if Boeing, Northrup, Grumman, Lockheed, Rockwell, or the other companies involved had vehicles sitting "on the shelf" ready for NASA to use them.
As far as if it is cheaper and more efficient to build on contract vs. have a factory of government employees churning out the equipment... I would likely agree with you. The People's Liberation Army (aka the "Chinese Army") has huge factories that produce equipment, weapons, and other things ranging from dog food to computer chips that are operated and maintained by government employees. Indeed, these factories are one of the major sources of funding for the PLA. It is also quite telling that almost all of the economic growth in China is from companies completely unrelated to the PLA.
So are you volunteering yourself to be the first to go?
Seriously, I do think humanity is worth saving, and I find it both mildly amusing to downright fearful that there are politically motivated individuals who are actively working for the extinction of mankind... with of course themselves and a few elite folks saved from the wrath that is to come.
No, global warming and "pollution" is not actively trying to cause human extinction.
That wasn't known at the time he was going into Apollo 1, and it was something that he did dodge his whole life.
It wasn't conclusively proven that he didn't cause the incident until, unfortunately, after he died.
I'm just suggesting one of the motivations behind keeping the astronauts locked into their capsule and a bunch of technicians that think they know better than highly trained test pilots on how to operate spacecraft. There were a whole bunch of things that went wrong with Apollo 1, and the astronaut corp is justifiably holding up this crew for the good that they did while they were alive... and how their deaths likely saved other astronauts down the road by forcing NASA to take safety issues seriously in the Apollo project.
Does it really matter if it doesn't get fired until Q3 2009 or even a little bit later?
That is certainly much closer to going up into space than the Ares is right now.
I think SpaceX would optimistically like to get to fire the thing this year, and it seems as though this is an overall goal. Still, since SpaceX is its own customer on this launch, there aren't external pressures to get it going before it is ready. SpaceX has also showed (thankfully) a tendency to be cautious on actually launching.
I would put more weight on this manifest as this implies that the paperwork is being processed by the FAA to make it happen. The next Falcon 1 flight is certainly going to happen fairly soon.
Flying actual hardware certainly makes SpaceX much more credible.
My main point is that there are alternatives, and the Falcon 9 is but one of them.
That was a full up 9 engine test in precisely the configuration that will be flying on the final vehicle. Not a viewgraph, but a photo of an actual engineering test.
I should also note that they are planning on flying that vehicle sometime before Christmas, this year. Just look on the official manifest if you don't believe me. It will be flying by March/April at the latest assuming they do come across some problems that weren't already uncovered with the Falcon 1, and it is the same engine that flew on the Falcon 1.
Actual hardware has already been built for the Falcon 9, and it is being assembled even now as I'm typing in this response. I'd agree that it needs some actual flight tests to "prove" the design, but it certainly is much further along in its development than the Ares rocket.
As far as NASA engineers doing designs in a fishbowl, I'd have to say so are a number of other groups that do that too. Any publicly traded company should at least be that open to their shareholders, if not prospective shareholders. SpaceX and even more so with companies like Armadillo Aerospace have some remarkable candor with what they are doing and blogs about their progress that we could only wish for from NASA engineers. These aren't the only ones this open either.
I did mention other vehicles like the Delta IV rocket that might also work, but then again is that something imagined and put into a nice viewgraph as well?
I think I'd wait on an Armadillo lander until they can perfect the Space Tourism vehicle.
Still, if you gave Armadillo (and others) the chance to build a real lunar lander in some sort of contest with a $1B prize at the end, I'm sure John Carmack and a dozen others would jump at the chance.
Heck, make it good for 3 places, $500M for 1st place, $350M for second, and $150M for third. I'm sure you would get people crawling out of the woodwork to claim these prizes. Not only that, but I bet that it would cost NASA easily $1B just for the preliminary studies to get a new lander built alone. Set up some qualifying contests such as the LLC just to be able to enter the competition, and you would have a real horse race to be able to get to the Moon. When you are done, you would have at least three competing vehicles from completely different engineering philosophies and backgrounds that have proven themselves with the hardest challenge of all: actually getting there and doing it.
Too bad that NASA will likely avoid doing some contest like this and spend much more money on a lander as a result.
I'm not entirely sure that the crew ejection seats that were originally on the Columbia would have worked with what happened on the Challenger when the SRBs failed.
Basically, the ejection seats were something akin to what you find in military aircraft. It should be noted that these sort of ejection seats are hardly foolproof either, and that they can and do cause damage to those being ejected... sometime fatally. Assuming that they were re-installed back into the Shuttle, it doesn't cover nearly so many contingency plans for escape as the launch escape mechanism did for Apollo.
More to the point, the ESC system was much more reliable and had a greater chance of having crew survival than the marginal help the ejection seats in the Shuttle would provide for... which is precisely why they were removed. It didn't do any good.
As for the Egress Slide.... I would have loved to have seen that being used in an actual emergency. It was an interesting concept and there were a few situations where it could have been used, but it wouldn't have saved the Challenger or Columbia astronauts either. Even so, I love the fact that this slide, together with the "bunker" they drop into, requires astronauts to be certified for driving armored tracked vehicles. I would also LOVE to get the chance to slide down that wire, if only for a demonstration and/or training exercise.
I also don't think the egress slide would have protected the Cosmonauts in the Soyuz explosion where the escape tower was used. The situation came up so fast that I don't think they would have been able to unstrap themselves, open the capsule door, get out, jump into the baskets, fall to the ground, and escape the damage in the short period of time that the explosion took place. The escape tower simply took the cosmonauts and threw them four miles away, deploying the parachutes that they needed anyway for re-entry.
The Apollo system was designed to launch the command module into the Atlantic ocean on an abort in the same circumstances. All the astronauts had to do was turn a single lever inside the capsule to fire the tower, or somebody at ground control at KSC to do the same thing.
One of the reasons why contractors are being used by NASA in this way is because it requires people with very specialized talents that are only needed for a short (comparatively) period of time.
Contractors work out best if you have a huge project that needs some attention for a few months or maybe a couple years, and then you can "dismiss" those workers afterward to move on to other endeavors. If the contractor is being smart and not getting screwed over by the contractee, they are going to be charging a huge premium for this sort of service.
Hiring employees is preferable when you are going to have them around for awhile and are going to have a nearly continuous need for their services. Unfortunately, there are some contractors who have been working for NASA for their entire careers, and that is where you get into the problems.
There are also some legal issues that come up in terms of congressional limits on who can be hired and what the salaries of those folks might be. Often service contracts are set up in such a way to get around those restrictions.
I don't think the average American taxpayer even has a clue for how much (or how little) money is being spent on NASA. Most of the "ordinary" (but perhaps a bit older) folks that I talk to about NASA think that it is getting funded at 1960's levels, and can't for the life of them figure out why we aren't on Mars yet.
Indeed, most of the folks who complain about NASA "waste" are complaining that with the 10% of the federal budget devoted to NASA (it is actually 1/10th of a percent, more or less) that there are much better way to be spending that sort of money.... like on education or to help protect against global warming. Barack Obama is one of these that has proposed just this sort of wild accusation about "wasteful spending" by the government on spaceflight.
"The Space Program" has changed quite a bit from the 1960's, and I just don't see the innovation coming from NASA or the gutsy moves like the Apollo 8 flight that really tried to push technology right to the edge. Put into a more modern context, the Apollo 8 flight was like a manned trip to Jupiter and back would be today.
I have thought a "what if" situation where somehow all of the Science-related programs of the federal government were thrown together into something called the "Department of Science" that would include the NSF, NASA, and NOAA. Then again, I'm not a huge fan of "efficient" government either.
BTW, I'd have to agree with you on something here as well. Leadership in this area (spaceflight) is something that has been significantly lacking from Washington DC for quite some time. There are a bunch of dedicated engineers and research scientists, as well as a huge corp of astronauts, that want nothing better than to "boldly go where nobody has gone before". The Vision for Space Exploration was a good first baby step that has been missing for nearly three decades, but it certainly isn't as stirring as "we choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy but because it is hard."
"We are returning to the Moon" just seem to ring hollow in that sort of context.
Dragon is not a concept... at least any more than Orion. Actual hardware has been built, and some very significant engineering effort has gone into fabrication methods as well as shop floor space devoted to its construction. I'd call that a bit more than a concept drawing.
OK, I'll try to connect the dots here. The BA-330 would provide supplies and berthing areas for a large number of astronauts on a trip to the Moon (as I said, travel in style) with a decent enough booster that could propel the Dragon+BA-330 to circumlunar orbit. The Dragon by itself simply doesn't have the consumable surplus to make the trip.
I'm not necessarily suggesting here this is the optimal solution, but it is taking spacecraft that are currently under development (the BA-330 is already built, but it is awaiting a means and need to get it up into space) and coming up with a solution that would be a whole order of magnitude cheaper than the projected cost of a single Ares mission... assuming that everything gets done on time and under budget with the most wildly optimistic estimates coming from NASA.
I'm also strongly suggesting that NASA can and do much better than what they are doing at the moment, and that Ares doesn't have to be the only game in town to do everything for everybody and fill all of NASA potential manned spaceflight needs. The Space Shuttle was similarly built to do everything possible with a monolithic solution to all of NASA's potential projects, and became a disaster of its own making.
There were mistakes made with Apollo 1 that should never have happened, and the fixes to the Apollo spacecraft did substantially improve astronaut safety for future missions.
One of the most insane mistakes made on the Apollo 1 vehicle: There was no method for astronauts, once mounted inside of the spacecraft, to be able to get themselves out (shy of grabbing a hammer and pounding through the side of the vehicle). It was anticipated that even on landing that the recovery vehicles would open the door for the astronauts (so as to not repeat Virgil Grissom's perceived mistake on Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury flight).
There were many others, including the 100% pure oxygen environment @ sealevel pressure that also caused some huge problems.
While I would have to agree that it was a huge mistake to abandon the Saturn family of rockets in the 1970's, any attempt to revive the project would simply be starting all over again with a whole new rocket design.
More importantly, all of the talent that went into building the Saturn V, including much of the undocumented "fixes" and the folks who were on the line actually putting the thing together have long since retired or simply died. Also, none of the suppliers for the Saturn V even exist.
Heck, I'm not even sure you could find the manufacturing capabilities for many of the Saturn V components in America any more. Most of that capability has been shipped overseas to places like China, India, and Taiwan. And you wonder why those countries are getting rockets of their own going?
But will it get us to the moon? That is the whole point of Ares.
That isn't the whole point of the Ares. One of its first (early) missions is simply resupply to the ISS. Furthermore, you could build a spacecraft from Dragon + BA330 (Bigelow Aerospace) that would at least get you to circumlunar orbit, and in style. I'm sure Armadillo Aerospace wouldn't mind a contract for a lander:)
Once you get up to low-earth orbit, the possibilities open up tremendously. Besides, even NASA isn't planning on the full disintegrating stack like the Apollo spacecraft for lunar travel any more. And yes, I'm advocating the earth-orbit rendezvous plans that were proposed back in the early days of Apollo.
So yeah, I think something could be worked out to get us back to the Moon on the Dragon spaceship. Not by itself, but for a couple billion dollars that NASA plans on spending for each lunar mission, there are many ways to get it accomplished for a price far cheaper than what the Ares architecture will allow for.
One huge difference between the Apollo/Saturn design and the Space Shuttle was multiple methods of abort that would separate the manned portion from the rest of the rocket. Things like the launch escape rocket (the little pointy thing on the top of the command module) and the ability to fire subsequent stages to at least get the astronauts way the hell away from a problem stage would have saved the astronauts in the event that the Saturn V had problems.
The Saturn V got a little more dicey once you decided to move out of low earth orbit on the 3rd stage and head for the Moon.... such as what Apollo 13 found out the hard way. But even that had redundancies that simply haven't existed for the Space Shuttle.
I certainly would trust the Saturn V and its safety record over the Shuttle. Had we been using the Saturn V for the past 40 years with the same level of upgrades and technical improvements that have gone into the Shuttle, including proposed "Apollo II" vehicles that would have carried seven astronauts at once, I have no doubt that we would have a vehicle right now that would be considerably more reliable than even the Soyuz spacecraft (currently the best "proven" manned spacecraft design for safety).
We might have even saved a whole bunch of money compared to what it has cost us to run the whole Shuttle program. Wernher von Braun certainly was anticipating production runs on the Saturn V on the order of hundreds of rockets, not the dozen or so that actually were built.
The DIRECT launcher is one that has been worked on by a number of years by some of the very same engineers who are working on the Ares vehicle. In fact, it meets the requirements of re-using existing shuttle components much better than the Ares, and doesn't even modify the SRBs (the solid rocket boosters) at all. Those are treated as commodities and used nearly in an identical fashion as they have been used on the Shuttle.
Another alternative: Falcon 9 Heavy This is being deliberately built with the goal in mind to become man-rated eventually, and will be making trips to the ISS on unmanned resupply missions. The first flight of this rocket (not the heavy variant but at least the Falcon 9) is going to be later on this year. The manned version will be using a completely new spacecraft as well, which SpaceX is calling the Dragon.
You also have suggestions of using a man-rated Delta IV-Heavy rocket that certainly has the firepower necessary for launching a manned vehicle, and one unusual suggestion was to use a Falcon 1 as the 2nd stage on top of an Atlas booster.
There are also dozens of projects that NASA has worked on since the Space Shuttle was originally laid down that you really just need to dig on both the official NASA website and onto space-related websites (or even "encyclopedia" websites) to find these plans. In spite of some actual hardware being built and billions of dollars into these programs, there is a huge graveyard of earlier attempts to build a successor to the Space Shuttle. Ares is just the latest example, unfortunately.
Will government manned spaceflight capabilities end in the next couple of years? Yeah, I think it will. This is something akin to the U.S. Navy being unable to send a ship out to sea because the ships fall apart before they can clear the harbor.
Private manned spaceflight in the USA looks considerably more promising, with about a dozen companies all at various stages of development that are all chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action. In other words, CNN and the rest of the news media will be on hand in space to greet future NASA astronauts in a congratulatory party when NASA actually gets it act together.
BTW, I've also suggested that CNN is going to cover the first NASA landings on Mars with their own camera crews that got there through other means. The more I read about things like Ares, the more I'm convinced this will really happen.
In some ways, I'm glad that NASA is throwing its surplus money into Ares even though it is a huge black hole sucking up any money you can throw at it. At the very least when these private spacecraft go on line, congress might just force NASA into buying tickets side by side with tourists. What an accomplishment from the agency that supposedly is on the leading edge of spacecraft development.
It seems as though NASA hasn't learned about what went wrong with the development of the Space Shuttle and are bound and determined to repeat those mistakes of the past and make new ones on top of that. This is a rocket being designed by committee, with some of the top management folks who don't want to compromise on the basic premise: to "reuse" as many of the Shuttle parts as possible.
I hate to break the word to anybody still ignorant on this, but so little is being re-used from the Shuttle design that they might as well have gone back to the Saturn V design instead, or even made something completely from a blank piece of paper and rebuilt the supply chains from scratch.
There are also so many engineers who are working for NASA that are complaining about this design that at the very least somebody in political leadership (aka congressmen & senators) ought to be starting to listen to the grumblings going on here. The lines of communication between Griffin and the engineers doing the actual number crunching and the basic design of this vehicle are completely broken.
Of course, NASA has a wonderful reputation for listenting to its engineers that you can put full confidence in the NASA administration being able to listen to what needs to be fixed.
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I've had both close friends who have had problems with this, as well as some personal experiences where I've had to shut down checking accounts to kill the problem.
The worst problems I've had is with banks themselves taking money they weren't authorized to remove from my account, but that is another story. Surprisingly, I usually got the money back when I confronted an officer of that bank about the issue, usually with a sincere apology and something about glitches in their computer software (right!)
I say, B.S.
The "technology" required to securely authenticate financial transactions is hardly expensive.
I've noted that my editorial transactions on Wikipedia are several orders of magnitude more secure and harder to hack into than my financial transactions. If you ever try to become a "check user" or get involved deeper with the Wikimedia political process than being just a project administrator or bureaucrat, you will discover even further authentication including verification of identity that I could only wish my bank would use.
Shared secret codes are used all the time with internet actions. They are called a "password". This isn't something from spy movies, but something that has been used by computers since practically when they were first created. Most database engines like MySQL even have password authentication algorithms that even keep the database administrator from knowing what the password is.
The whole problem here is that identification != identifier. Your bank account number, SSN (or government issued identification number), mother's maiden name, birth date, place of birth, or any other textual information that can be used to clarify that you are a unique individual still doesn't address if you are indeed the person who is asserting the claim to be that person.
When you apply for a U.S. passport, one of the things you have to do in order to get the passport issued is to have a genuine person who is an officer of the government (usually a postmaster at a post office) verify the documents that you are using to agree that you are indeed this individual. If the government wanted to, they could at that point set up some pass phrase or some other identification scheme for further transactions.
The reason for the pass phrases in "spy movies" BTW is also for authentication, as the information being transferred in intelligence operations is usually so important that they don't want to hand it over to any ordinary person... or the wrong person.
There is no reason a bank can't independently establish the identity of a person, or set up a "network" of legally secure identification locations (at any bank that is licensed) where you have to go in and establish your identity with a photo ID, finger prints, DNA test, or some other very difficult to forge process and set up the secure identification number with checksums/random numbers (so you can't just randomly guess the number) and perhaps even a customer-generated password/pass phrase that can then be used for banking transactions from that point on... including network transactions.
This doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive, and at most would be just a couple of dollars of cost per customer. A cost that could even be charged to the customer as a legitimate fee (that most customers would be willing to pay as well!) If you suspect that your "identity" is compromised, you can re-establish your "identity information" at the bank or wherever you did this in the first place, comparing the biometric data (aka signature, finger prints, DNA, etc.) "on file" with who you are. Attempts at "identity theft" by the bankers or "authenticators" would be a stiff felony and subject to a long term in prison... at least on the order of falsification by a notary public (which is currently found in most banks).
BTW, about most transactions being done with cash? I'd like to know where you've been. I've tried to live a cash-only lifestyle, and I've found that at least in the 21st Century it is impossible to be that way completely. The first place I had real problems was with the telephone company, but now all utility companies require at least check transactions, and prefer debit/credit cards (for some that is the only option). Paying on a car or h
OK, you want me to answer this question? Sounds like a classical college physics problem.
You already gave away the answer here, but hidden in the variables.
F = m * v^2
v = sqrt(F/m) = sqrt (100/0.1)
QED, v = ~ 32 m/s
That, BTW, is the minimum exhaust velocity, treating the exhaust as purely linear stream and not accounting for variables like gaseous expansion or other factors. Any more questions? Not college but high school physics here BTW. Calculating the final velocity of the spacecraft does require a bit of calculus, but even that isn't a tricky problem.
So therefore the final velocity of the spacecraft is dependent upon the exhaust velocity of the components thrown out of the back of the vehicle.
The final velocity BTW? About 2300 m/s. The only reason spacecraft don't get going that fast on the earth is that they are also fighting a constant negative 9.8 m/s^2 acceleration. I could show the math here, but /. isn't necessarily the best forum for such types of discussions.
I'll leave it to you, if you care, to derive the actual relationship between treating the exhaust velocity as a variable and the final vehicle velocity, but keep in mind that varying the exhaust velocity will vary the force of the engine, and that is a direct relationship 1:1 with the final velocity. Aka double the exhaust velocity and you double the final spacecraft velocity.
The reason this doesn't go to infinity is because there is a fixed minimum mass to the vehicle (aka a "payload") that limits the problem instead of going with superlatives of an infinitely small spacecraft.
But you run out of mass more quickly if you throw it away more slowly. You can't keep accelerating indefinitely as eventually you run out of mass to throw away (or having to decide if you want to throw out something in the "payload" instead).
The top speed isn't quite limited to the velocity of the exhaust as there are a number of factors that go into it, and most propulsion systems tend to have a constant force they can apply to ever decreasing mass. That is why toward the end of most conventional rocket burns you have the greatest acceleration... often deliberately cut short to avoid damaging the payload even if there might be fuel left over. It is also why some rockets spend an embarassingly large amount of fuel just trying to clear the launch tower, yet are still considered efficient engines.
If somehow you can throw out the reaction mass at something close to the speed of light, you can keep accelerating for a long period of time... which is what these alternative engines are trying to accomplish by increasing the exhaust velocity to nearly insane levels.
Keep in mind that unless you are doing something like a Bussard ram scoop that is collecting material enroute, the only thing you have to be able toss out the back of your vehicle is reaction mass you have brought with you.
So your top "speed" is limited to exhaust velocity. All of these more exotic propellant systems are about increasing the efficiency of throwing the mass to increase the velocity of the vehicle.
The problem with these propulsion systems is that none of them are strong enough to be able to push against the 9.8 m/s^2 acceleration that we have on the ground here on Earth, so they are only useful once you get into space. They are highly efficient but overall only give relatively low amounts of acceleration.
Their advantage is that they can be operated for long periods of time... days, weeks, months, or even years potentially. Over time, even a modest acceleration adds up to a huge velocity change and can be significant in terms of travel to distant places like the outer planets of the solar system or even Mars. You can even take trajectories other than a modified Hohmann transfer orbit in this case between planets.
If you toss out a huge amount of mass at low velocities, your reaction mass is gone. Tossing that mass out at a significant fraction of the speed of light... well, you don't have to be using all that much reaction mass in order to be getting some real benefit in terms of changes in velocity.
BTW, I just don't see huge efficiencies with solar arrays being used to generate the electricity needed to run these exotic motors. The mass of the panels themselves quickly start to become a major issue as you scale up the thrust to make them useful, not to mention that travel beyond the Earth (aka to Mars or the outer solar system) results in significantly reduced amounts of solar energy that would even hit the solar panels.
For satellite station keeping (rather than using hydrazine or other chemical thrusters) this is an option as you need the power anyway for vehicle operations and can temporarily shut down some high energy consumption activities in exchange for maneuvering the vehicle. Typically the on-board fuel is one of the things that limits the lifetime of satellites... particularly things like spy satellites who want to use thrusters to vary their orbital characteristics and make it much more unpredictable about where they might be in the sky at any given moment. Geosync satellites could also take advantage of this as a huge expense is simply getting the satellite from low-earth orbit to a higher altitude, but it doesn't have to be done immediately and can take several months if necessary... or to correct for drift from their position once they get to the correct altitude.
There are some virtual worlds who do use advertising as a means to pay for the server bandwidth, software developers, and equipment used to host the environment. This said, all of this is something that has been on the periphery and not something embedded into the game much.
I can see it now.... you just slew the Mithril Dragon (level 575) with your +127 Vorpal Holy Avenger Sword. Now that you have been reduced to near death (but have survived!), the monster conveniently dropped a six-pack of Coca-Cola, that cool, refreshing beverages, and heals you (of course) for 200 hit points.
Unfortunately I think you will be seeing more of this sort of garbage, and the virtual world "engineers" who put this kind of product placement into the environment should be railed against if/when this happens.
As far as more social virtual worlds like second life are concerned, it is already there. I guess this is a warning that it will intensify and you will be subjected to virtual billboards and virtual advertisements in-game for things that have nothing to do with the game.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
As the saying goes.... follow the money. There is also a whole bunch of, well I should say something a little more vulgar but I will leave this PG-rated, bolvine excrement.
There are some amazing things that can be done with virtual worlds, and I've been a part of some of that effort myself (both as a user and as a software designer). Still, there isn't anything really new here nor frankly anything novel that has come around since text-based MUDs, MUSHes, & MOOs other than much more intensive graphical environments.
If there is going to be something different that will be coming along, perhaps it will be some folks with Hollywood-class talent for telling stories to make something much more entertaining than exists at the moment. But how common is that, even in Hollywood (California)?
Otherwise, wake up me up with the holodeck is created. That is the next generation technology.... if it is ever built in the first place.
I think you are hanging around the wrong sorts of people. While I will admit there are people who are all tied up with hatred and vengeance at the top of their mind, from long experience I'll tell you that this is a distinct minority in this world.
Most people just want to go about their daily lives and be left alone, not screw anybody over, but to be simply left alone.
And no, half of all Americans don't hate the other half. This again is a very distinct minority that is unfortunately brought under a microscope by groups that come together in public forums thinking that everybody (not just those in the small group) thinks the same way.
There are some very genuine and honest people who will follow the teachings of the ancient philosophers and try to make this world a better place. They will give of themselves and not expect anything back in return... even an expectation that you might do anything yourself. Or even be willing to get screwed over on the hopes that by having that happen that they are protecting somebody else in the process.
I hope that eventually you will find peace in your life. There are many paths to find that peace, and I could recommend a few that might be worth looking at, but it seems as though you need to be convinced that even looking for this inner peace within your soul is something that is worth your time.
When you get that inner peace, you can also begin to start thinking about how you can do something more for not just yourself but also for your family, community, nation, and world. That takes some incredible maturity, but if you find it it will be something that can be a life-changing event.
There is also a glimmer of hope in you as you are at least responding. You also need to learn to love rather than hate, and try to find what even the worst of your enemies might be doing that is praiseworthy. You might be surprised.
While I would more or less agree with your sentiment here, NASA did build hardware and equipment, although major assemblies and parts came from a great many contractors.
NASA did have a pretty good corp of engineers that were government employees and actively worked in R&D to design these vehicles. It wasn't quite as if Boeing, Northrup, Grumman, Lockheed, Rockwell, or the other companies involved had vehicles sitting "on the shelf" ready for NASA to use them.
As far as if it is cheaper and more efficient to build on contract vs. have a factory of government employees churning out the equipment... I would likely agree with you. The People's Liberation Army (aka the "Chinese Army") has huge factories that produce equipment, weapons, and other things ranging from dog food to computer chips that are operated and maintained by government employees. Indeed, these factories are one of the major sources of funding for the PLA. It is also quite telling that almost all of the economic growth in China is from companies completely unrelated to the PLA.
So are you volunteering yourself to be the first to go?
Seriously, I do think humanity is worth saving, and I find it both mildly amusing to downright fearful that there are politically motivated individuals who are actively working for the extinction of mankind... with of course themselves and a few elite folks saved from the wrath that is to come.
No, global warming and "pollution" is not actively trying to cause human extinction.
That wasn't known at the time he was going into Apollo 1, and it was something that he did dodge his whole life.
It wasn't conclusively proven that he didn't cause the incident until, unfortunately, after he died.
I'm just suggesting one of the motivations behind keeping the astronauts locked into their capsule and a bunch of technicians that think they know better than highly trained test pilots on how to operate spacecraft. There were a whole bunch of things that went wrong with Apollo 1, and the astronaut corp is justifiably holding up this crew for the good that they did while they were alive... and how their deaths likely saved other astronauts down the road by forcing NASA to take safety issues seriously in the Apollo project.
Does it really matter if it doesn't get fired until Q3 2009 or even a little bit later?
That is certainly much closer to going up into space than the Ares is right now.
I think SpaceX would optimistically like to get to fire the thing this year, and it seems as though this is an overall goal. Still, since SpaceX is its own customer on this launch, there aren't external pressures to get it going before it is ready. SpaceX has also showed (thankfully) a tendency to be cautious on actually launching.
I would put more weight on this manifest as this implies that the paperwork is being processed by the FAA to make it happen. The next Falcon 1 flight is certainly going to happen fairly soon.
Flying actual hardware certainly makes SpaceX much more credible.
My main point is that there are alternatives, and the Falcon 9 is but one of them.
Continue with the Shuttle. End of story.
Oh, I guess that isn't an option?
Does this look like a pretty viewgraph and amazing estimates of low cost?
http://spacex.com/galleryimages/9engine_vts3018_large.jpg
That was a full up 9 engine test in precisely the configuration that will be flying on the final vehicle. Not a viewgraph, but a photo of an actual engineering test.
I should also note that they are planning on flying that vehicle sometime before Christmas, this year. Just look on the official manifest if you don't believe me. It will be flying by March/April at the latest assuming they do come across some problems that weren't already uncovered with the Falcon 1, and it is the same engine that flew on the Falcon 1.
Actual hardware has already been built for the Falcon 9, and it is being assembled even now as I'm typing in this response. I'd agree that it needs some actual flight tests to "prove" the design, but it certainly is much further along in its development than the Ares rocket.
As far as NASA engineers doing designs in a fishbowl, I'd have to say so are a number of other groups that do that too. Any publicly traded company should at least be that open to their shareholders, if not prospective shareholders. SpaceX and even more so with companies like Armadillo Aerospace have some remarkable candor with what they are doing and blogs about their progress that we could only wish for from NASA engineers. These aren't the only ones this open either.
I did mention other vehicles like the Delta IV rocket that might also work, but then again is that something imagined and put into a nice viewgraph as well?
I think I'd wait on an Armadillo lander until they can perfect the Space Tourism vehicle.
Still, if you gave Armadillo (and others) the chance to build a real lunar lander in some sort of contest with a $1B prize at the end, I'm sure John Carmack and a dozen others would jump at the chance.
Heck, make it good for 3 places, $500M for 1st place, $350M for second, and $150M for third. I'm sure you would get people crawling out of the woodwork to claim these prizes. Not only that, but I bet that it would cost NASA easily $1B just for the preliminary studies to get a new lander built alone. Set up some qualifying contests such as the LLC just to be able to enter the competition, and you would have a real horse race to be able to get to the Moon. When you are done, you would have at least three competing vehicles from completely different engineering philosophies and backgrounds that have proven themselves with the hardest challenge of all: actually getting there and doing it.
Too bad that NASA will likely avoid doing some contest like this and spend much more money on a lander as a result.
I'm not entirely sure that the crew ejection seats that were originally on the Columbia would have worked with what happened on the Challenger when the SRBs failed.
Basically, the ejection seats were something akin to what you find in military aircraft. It should be noted that these sort of ejection seats are hardly foolproof either, and that they can and do cause damage to those being ejected... sometime fatally. Assuming that they were re-installed back into the Shuttle, it doesn't cover nearly so many contingency plans for escape as the launch escape mechanism did for Apollo.
More to the point, the ESC system was much more reliable and had a greater chance of having crew survival than the marginal help the ejection seats in the Shuttle would provide for... which is precisely why they were removed. It didn't do any good.
As for the Egress Slide.... I would have loved to have seen that being used in an actual emergency. It was an interesting concept and there were a few situations where it could have been used, but it wouldn't have saved the Challenger or Columbia astronauts either. Even so, I love the fact that this slide, together with the "bunker" they drop into, requires astronauts to be certified for driving armored tracked vehicles. I would also LOVE to get the chance to slide down that wire, if only for a demonstration and/or training exercise.
I also don't think the egress slide would have protected the Cosmonauts in the Soyuz explosion where the escape tower was used. The situation came up so fast that I don't think they would have been able to unstrap themselves, open the capsule door, get out, jump into the baskets, fall to the ground, and escape the damage in the short period of time that the explosion took place. The escape tower simply took the cosmonauts and threw them four miles away, deploying the parachutes that they needed anyway for re-entry.
The Apollo system was designed to launch the command module into the Atlantic ocean on an abort in the same circumstances. All the astronauts had to do was turn a single lever inside the capsule to fire the tower, or somebody at ground control at KSC to do the same thing.
One of the reasons why contractors are being used by NASA in this way is because it requires people with very specialized talents that are only needed for a short (comparatively) period of time.
Contractors work out best if you have a huge project that needs some attention for a few months or maybe a couple years, and then you can "dismiss" those workers afterward to move on to other endeavors. If the contractor is being smart and not getting screwed over by the contractee, they are going to be charging a huge premium for this sort of service.
Hiring employees is preferable when you are going to have them around for awhile and are going to have a nearly continuous need for their services. Unfortunately, there are some contractors who have been working for NASA for their entire careers, and that is where you get into the problems.
There are also some legal issues that come up in terms of congressional limits on who can be hired and what the salaries of those folks might be. Often service contracts are set up in such a way to get around those restrictions.
I don't think the average American taxpayer even has a clue for how much (or how little) money is being spent on NASA. Most of the "ordinary" (but perhaps a bit older) folks that I talk to about NASA think that it is getting funded at 1960's levels, and can't for the life of them figure out why we aren't on Mars yet.
Indeed, most of the folks who complain about NASA "waste" are complaining that with the 10% of the federal budget devoted to NASA (it is actually 1/10th of a percent, more or less) that there are much better way to be spending that sort of money.... like on education or to help protect against global warming. Barack Obama is one of these that has proposed just this sort of wild accusation about "wasteful spending" by the government on spaceflight.
"The Space Program" has changed quite a bit from the 1960's, and I just don't see the innovation coming from NASA or the gutsy moves like the Apollo 8 flight that really tried to push technology right to the edge. Put into a more modern context, the Apollo 8 flight was like a manned trip to Jupiter and back would be today.
I have thought a "what if" situation where somehow all of the Science-related programs of the federal government were thrown together into something called the "Department of Science" that would include the NSF, NASA, and NOAA. Then again, I'm not a huge fan of "efficient" government either.
BTW, I'd have to agree with you on something here as well. Leadership in this area (spaceflight) is something that has been significantly lacking from Washington DC for quite some time. There are a bunch of dedicated engineers and research scientists, as well as a huge corp of astronauts, that want nothing better than to "boldly go where nobody has gone before". The Vision for Space Exploration was a good first baby step that has been missing for nearly three decades, but it certainly isn't as stirring as "we choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy but because it is hard."
"We are returning to the Moon" just seem to ring hollow in that sort of context.
Dragon is not a concept... at least any more than Orion. Actual hardware has been built, and some very significant engineering effort has gone into fabrication methods as well as shop floor space devoted to its construction. I'd call that a bit more than a concept drawing.
OK, I'll try to connect the dots here. The BA-330 would provide supplies and berthing areas for a large number of astronauts on a trip to the Moon (as I said, travel in style) with a decent enough booster that could propel the Dragon+BA-330 to circumlunar orbit. The Dragon by itself simply doesn't have the consumable surplus to make the trip.
I'm not necessarily suggesting here this is the optimal solution, but it is taking spacecraft that are currently under development (the BA-330 is already built, but it is awaiting a means and need to get it up into space) and coming up with a solution that would be a whole order of magnitude cheaper than the projected cost of a single Ares mission... assuming that everything gets done on time and under budget with the most wildly optimistic estimates coming from NASA.
I'm also strongly suggesting that NASA can and do much better than what they are doing at the moment, and that Ares doesn't have to be the only game in town to do everything for everybody and fill all of NASA potential manned spaceflight needs. The Space Shuttle was similarly built to do everything possible with a monolithic solution to all of NASA's potential projects, and became a disaster of its own making.
There were mistakes made with Apollo 1 that should never have happened, and the fixes to the Apollo spacecraft did substantially improve astronaut safety for future missions.
One of the most insane mistakes made on the Apollo 1 vehicle: There was no method for astronauts, once mounted inside of the spacecraft, to be able to get themselves out (shy of grabbing a hammer and pounding through the side of the vehicle). It was anticipated that even on landing that the recovery vehicles would open the door for the astronauts (so as to not repeat Virgil Grissom's perceived mistake on Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury flight).
There were many others, including the 100% pure oxygen environment @ sealevel pressure that also caused some huge problems.
While I would have to agree that it was a huge mistake to abandon the Saturn family of rockets in the 1970's, any attempt to revive the project would simply be starting all over again with a whole new rocket design.
More importantly, all of the talent that went into building the Saturn V, including much of the undocumented "fixes" and the folks who were on the line actually putting the thing together have long since retired or simply died. Also, none of the suppliers for the Saturn V even exist.
Heck, I'm not even sure you could find the manufacturing capabilities for many of the Saturn V components in America any more. Most of that capability has been shipped overseas to places like China, India, and Taiwan. And you wonder why those countries are getting rockets of their own going?
That isn't the whole point of the Ares. One of its first (early) missions is simply resupply to the ISS. Furthermore, you could build a spacecraft from Dragon + BA330 (Bigelow Aerospace) that would at least get you to circumlunar orbit, and in style. I'm sure Armadillo Aerospace wouldn't mind a contract for a lander :)
Once you get up to low-earth orbit, the possibilities open up tremendously. Besides, even NASA isn't planning on the full disintegrating stack like the Apollo spacecraft for lunar travel any more. And yes, I'm advocating the earth-orbit rendezvous plans that were proposed back in the early days of Apollo.
So yeah, I think something could be worked out to get us back to the Moon on the Dragon spaceship. Not by itself, but for a couple billion dollars that NASA plans on spending for each lunar mission, there are many ways to get it accomplished for a price far cheaper than what the Ares architecture will allow for.
One huge difference between the Apollo/Saturn design and the Space Shuttle was multiple methods of abort that would separate the manned portion from the rest of the rocket. Things like the launch escape rocket (the little pointy thing on the top of the command module) and the ability to fire subsequent stages to at least get the astronauts way the hell away from a problem stage would have saved the astronauts in the event that the Saturn V had problems.
The Saturn V got a little more dicey once you decided to move out of low earth orbit on the 3rd stage and head for the Moon.... such as what Apollo 13 found out the hard way. But even that had redundancies that simply haven't existed for the Space Shuttle.
I certainly would trust the Saturn V and its safety record over the Shuttle. Had we been using the Saturn V for the past 40 years with the same level of upgrades and technical improvements that have gone into the Shuttle, including proposed "Apollo II" vehicles that would have carried seven astronauts at once, I have no doubt that we would have a vehicle right now that would be considerably more reliable than even the Soyuz spacecraft (currently the best "proven" manned spacecraft design for safety).
We might have even saved a whole bunch of money compared to what it has cost us to run the whole Shuttle program. Wernher von Braun certainly was anticipating production runs on the Saturn V on the order of hundreds of rockets, not the dozen or so that actually were built.
Alternatives? Well, there is one huge one for starters:
http://www.directlauncher.com/
The DIRECT launcher is one that has been worked on by a number of years by some of the very same engineers who are working on the Ares vehicle. In fact, it meets the requirements of re-using existing shuttle components much better than the Ares, and doesn't even modify the SRBs (the solid rocket boosters) at all. Those are treated as commodities and used nearly in an identical fashion as they have been used on the Shuttle.
Another alternative: Falcon 9 Heavy This is being deliberately built with the goal in mind to become man-rated eventually, and will be making trips to the ISS on unmanned resupply missions. The first flight of this rocket (not the heavy variant but at least the Falcon 9) is going to be later on this year. The manned version will be using a completely new spacecraft as well, which SpaceX is calling the Dragon.
You also have suggestions of using a man-rated Delta IV-Heavy rocket that certainly has the firepower necessary for launching a manned vehicle, and one unusual suggestion was to use a Falcon 1 as the 2nd stage on top of an Atlas booster.
There are also dozens of projects that NASA has worked on since the Space Shuttle was originally laid down that you really just need to dig on both the official NASA website and onto space-related websites (or even "encyclopedia" websites) to find these plans. In spite of some actual hardware being built and billions of dollars into these programs, there is a huge graveyard of earlier attempts to build a successor to the Space Shuttle. Ares is just the latest example, unfortunately.
Will government manned spaceflight capabilities end in the next couple of years? Yeah, I think it will. This is something akin to the U.S. Navy being unable to send a ship out to sea because the ships fall apart before they can clear the harbor.
Private manned spaceflight in the USA looks considerably more promising, with about a dozen companies all at various stages of development that are all chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action. In other words, CNN and the rest of the news media will be on hand in space to greet future NASA astronauts in a congratulatory party when NASA actually gets it act together.
BTW, I've also suggested that CNN is going to cover the first NASA landings on Mars with their own camera crews that got there through other means. The more I read about things like Ares, the more I'm convinced this will really happen.
In some ways, I'm glad that NASA is throwing its surplus money into Ares even though it is a huge black hole sucking up any money you can throw at it. At the very least when these private spacecraft go on line, congress might just force NASA into buying tickets side by side with tourists. What an accomplishment from the agency that supposedly is on the leading edge of spacecraft development.
An even more bleak picture comes from this blog/editorial:
http://rocketsandsuch.blogspot.com/2008/10/getting-specific.html
It seems as though NASA hasn't learned about what went wrong with the development of the Space Shuttle and are bound and determined to repeat those mistakes of the past and make new ones on top of that. This is a rocket being designed by committee, with some of the top management folks who don't want to compromise on the basic premise: to "reuse" as many of the Shuttle parts as possible.
I hate to break the word to anybody still ignorant on this, but so little is being re-used from the Shuttle design that they might as well have gone back to the Saturn V design instead, or even made something completely from a blank piece of paper and rebuilt the supply chains from scratch.
There are also so many engineers who are working for NASA that are complaining about this design that at the very least somebody in political leadership (aka congressmen & senators) ought to be starting to listen to the grumblings going on here. The lines of communication between Griffin and the engineers doing the actual number crunching and the basic design of this vehicle are completely broken.
Of course, NASA has a wonderful reputation for listenting to its engineers that you can put full confidence in the NASA administration being able to listen to what needs to be fixed.