I don't know what you are refering to here. Life in underwater environments, except for in very shallow waters, is going to be even harder to do than living on the moon. There are a few Seamounts that are in international waters that you might be able to claim, but most shallow areas are already claimed by nationalities, and the trend is for more and more of the ocean to be claimed by current governments. The current range is almost 200 miles of some sort of soverignty claim, which would clearly include underwater settlement. The docking and environmental issues make living underwater almost identical to living in space, except that environment ruptures would be even more disasterous than air leaks in a space station.
If you are talking about building a "Waterworld" environment where you take a slightly used oil tanker and turn it into a floating city? (Also think of the floating city in Snowcrash). While that has some merit, there are still environmental dangers that you are dismissing out of hand, and it would still be difficult to build a society of any reasonable sort in that manner. The closest that I can think of is the "city" of junk ships in the harbor of Hong Kong, and that has natural protection from storms and other environmental problems.
A lush land capable of supporting lifestyles they expected?
Many colonies in America had some absolutely huge disasters. Buena Vista (now Los Angeles) was a small Spanish colonial settlement that died off completely due to a lack of water. The settlers litterally died of starvation. Similar problems happened in Jamestown for the original settlement of Virginia, where the entire settlement of over 100 people completely disappeared. There are some suggestions that the settlers "went native", and adopted the culture of the Native Americans that lived nearby for survival reasons, including marrying into those tribes, but for the purposes of England it was a complete disaster. I could give a dozen or so similar stories about early settlement of the area where I live right now, including mortality rates as high as 50% in one year due to just environmental causes.
The point I'm making is that we know far more about how to live comfortably on Mars or the Moon in a permanent settlement than my great-grandfather did of the area he was going to when he hitched up his constaga wagon and headed over the Rocky Mountains. Unless we start seeing Science Fiction authors becoming incredibly accurate with stories of intelligent alien cultures spread throughout the solar system, we don't even need to worry about "native" peoples to interefere with. This would make settlement of Mars a genuine settlement of totally virgin real estate.
How many early colonists can I name? While not many, I can name my ancestors and on at least 10 different ancestral lines I can tell you who was an immigrant to America and when they arrived. Many of my ancestors where in America before the Revolutionary War (some even fought in that war). The reason you can't name them is because there were so many that except for a few like John Smith and Gov. Radcliff, there is no reason to memorize that many names. It was litterally millions of people who moved to America, often complete familes, and they were very ordinary people, not specialized training or people with titles (like a PhD or Esq. (more common in the 17th & 18th centuries))
Political/Religious reasons to leave Earth? I would like to move somewhere that a nuclear warhead could take more than 1 hour before detonation, simply because of the distance involved. A nuke on the Moon would have almost no impact on Lunar residents simply because they would already be pretty well dug-in and used to dealing with radiation issues anyway. You like MAD as a governmental policy where you are living right now?
I have also (recently) had some run-ins with the Police (I was never arrested, but it did cause a bunch of heartburn dealing with them), and at this point both my wife and I are willing to get the heck out of where I'm living and go anywhere else. The problem is just where do we move to? If the opportunity were available for us to homestead Mars, I would frankly grab it not because of some starry-eyed science fiction dream (which is partially true for me), but because I hate the political persecution that is occuring to me right now while living in America. It is exactly for this sort of BS that my ancestors left Europe. I would leave because I would like to have the freedom to do what I want and not have my neighbors keep putting their noses into my affairs. If I didn't like my neighbors, I could pack my bags and move on to the next place over the next hill (or piece of rock) and get set up without anybody telling me what to do. That freedom is gone from America, and there is no where else in the world that takes the place of that attitude.
I will admit that the reference to Pedro was a random thought. The point here is even on things like war Brazil tends to be much more passive than the USA, and other than the military involvement in political affairs, the Brazilian military has not really had reason to be tested for good or ill like the U.S. military has been. It is another aspect of Brazilian culture that frankly I admire and wish that some part of this could be taken back to America where I live now. The militarization of America that is happening right now concerns me because I see the worst aspects of military occupation that Brazil suffered with during the military dictatorships occuring right here in America. Al-Queida got what they asked for: War with America. I hope they realize what they are getting.
My experience with Papal photos in public offices is admittedly dated (from about 15 years ago), but I assure you that it really was there, and in most public offices I had to deal with, including the Post Office. And it wasn't isolated to just one specific area, although I mainly stayed in the State of Sao Paulo when I was in Brazil. The point here was a tolerance toward religious symbols and concepts in a public setting. That you no longer see those symbols may mean that Brazil is becoming more like America in this aspect.
Another example is most of what happens during Carnival. The closest it gets to that sort of activity is with the Mardi Gras festival in New Orelans, and even that is quite tame in comparison to what happens in Sao Paulo, not to mention Rio. Most American communities would simply arrest most of the participants in a typical Carnival parade for public indecency (because of partial nudity), just to start with. Don't think they wouldn't simply round up everybody in a parade like that and put them in one huge prison holding area. I've seen more from American police officers. Many other Carnival activities would also be hit hard, which is why I mention Mardi Gras as a comparison to what it would be like in the USA. (BTW, they both celebrate the same event.... the week before Lent of the Roman Catholic Church).
Up until the mid-1970s here in the USA, it was considered, culturarlly, that you would not directly criticize a political leader because of his (almost always male) personal behavior. Even Ted Kennedy only superficially was hurt due to Chappaquidick, and that was only to stop him from becomming President of the USA. He is still a Senator from Massachusetts.
Discussions of the sexual habits of JFK, while talked about now to some extent, were never reported or discussed in common public forums in the 1960's. When Nixon was revealed to be a constant swear-word user, it was a shock to ordinary Americans.
Defending the Presidents of Brazil? Frankly it doesn't matter what their personal habits were. It is legitimate in a democracy to be critical of public policies but what they do when they are trying to unwind at the end of a day shouldn't be the topic of a journist, regarless of what they do.
I have my own (different) opinions of what PT has done to Brazil, but that is policy and tactics of that political party, and not the private activities of its leaders. Why a NYT reporter should feel special protection simply because he is a "reporter" is beyond me.
I didn't want this to devolve into a religious freedom argument, but rather point out important differences in attitudes regarding freedom between Brazil and the USA.
In Brazil, Catholcism is a very dominant force, and in just about every public building you will find a picture of the Pope, even police stations and DMV bureaus. I am not talking about one on the desk of one of the employees or officers, but one in a very prominent place in very plain view, with generally nothing else around it. Kinda like having a U.S. flag or a picture of the current President of the USA (or governor of the respective state in state offices), but even more likely to be found than those symbols are in the U.S. Of course the most bizzare was finding a huge picture of JFK where the Pope would normally be found, but that is another story. And that was in the late 1980's.
The Roman Catholic Church isn't quite as dominant as it once was, and if I'm not mistaken, a majority of Sao Paulo (meaning just slightly larger than 50%) is now protestant, primarily a mixture of hard-core evangelical churches (Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Baptists, Penecostal, and a few home-grown Christian-based religions unique to Brazil like the Brazilian Catholic Church (not Roman Catholic). Sao Paulo is also unique in that there is also a rather large minority that is Buddahist, something you normally don't find in the USA or anywhere else in the Americas for that matter. In some ways this Buddahism has entered the culture, together with a history of fighting Portuguese bureaucracy that can only be experienced to be fully appreciated. Rio was the capital of Portugual for about 20 years (no kidding), and that heritage of being a European(???) capital has never left that city either.
It is also telling how Brazil "fought" their war of indendance: The Prince-Regent (kinda like the Prince of Wales in England, but this was a Portuguese Prince) was called back to Europe and to put his deputy in charge of Brazil. He threw down his coat and proclaimed that Brazil was no longer under the authority of Portugual. Some people around him proclaimed him to be the new "Emperor" of Brazil, a few shots from rifles were fired into the air, and the Revolution was over. Quite a bit different from what Washington had to go through.
Getting back to public discussions of religion: It is indeed sad that religion as a topic can't be discussed publicly. It is a part of life and even if you belive or not, others do have religion as a central part of their lives. If you want to understand what makes people tick, you need to understand at least what viewpoint a religious attitude does to change people's perspectives about many topics. To ignore this or to "compartmentalize" religion to be only discussed in churches doesn't allow this topic to be explored even by people who have other beliefs.
When a candidate for political office who ignores religion suddenly finds him/herself losing and election, they should realize that religion is a big deal.
I could enumerate specific examples of where my speech has been stopped and surpressed due to talking about religion. Not preaching a specific religion but discussing the impact of religious thought in an historical context or even suggesting that people who lived 100-200 years ago had religious motivations to many of the things they did, including religious repression. I was encouraged to pretend that religion never played a part in the history of the USA. That is a hard pill for me to swallow.
In other words, they are technologically incompetent and don't know how to throttle bandwidth to a specific customer or exactly what the internet really is about. They are lazy in regards to trying to monitor individual connections, and have oversold their bandwidth to the point that if you and everybody else really used the bandwidth they claim to be offering to you, they would be unable to actually deliver that amount of data.
Prohibiting a server connection of any sort is prohibiting you from every sending data from your computer. Period. The rest is just semantics from a lawyer who thinks he understands computers but really doesn't.
Of course, they probably think that the only internet protocol is HTTP.
Brazil is a free and democratic society, of that there should be no doubt. There are cultural difference (substantial!) between Brazil and America. In fact, from my own experience, it is sort of a cross between America and Europe, with a unique South American flavor.
The Portuguese, while a major ethnic group, is not the dominant one. I lived in the Italian part of Sao Paulo and some old timers could still speak Italian, but almost none of the kids (under 18 crowd) could speak languages of the Old World other than Portuguese and English, with English being a rather mottled version that was only studied in School like Americans (if you are into it) study French, German, or Spanish. English is not a daily language. Many teachers in Brazil learn British English, but with American cultural twists (which makes some very interesting conversations in English).
What I'm trying to say is that Brazil is not the backward country that you seem to be thinking it is. Freedom is relative, and there are many things you can do in Brazil that if done in America will get you arrested and thrown in jail. I also find the attitude to discuss religion in a public forum to be refreshing compared to almost official atheism in the U.S.A. (the ACLU's attitude about this not withstanding).
That Brazil has more respect for its elected officials than the NYT has for American politicians is totally understandable. If a reporter had done something similar during the JFK administration they probabaly would have been treated in a very similar fashion in the USA. It was just habit for that journalist to forget he was in a different country with a different culture, and not reporting from Texas.
1. Democratization of Technological Knowledge 2. Technological Liberation of Brazil 3. Assisting 2000 Civil Servants (presumably to switch to Linux, or at least helping them with technology) 4. Publication of Diverse Books (in a context indicating that he is the author) 5. Pushing for the end of monopolies through litigation. (Anti-trust lawsuits)
WARNING: This man is dangerous!
Any information about the location of this person should be sent to the Legal Department at Microsoft. This information will be kept confidential.
MICROSOFT
Always wanting the best for Brazil.
(P.S. I spent a couple of years in Sao Paulo, and although I have a hard time being able to translate INTO Portuguges, I can understand it fairly well and turn it into English. Your translation was pretty good though.)
Honestly, I don't see what the problem is for volume measurement, other than distractions like liquid vs. dry vs. Imperial "gallons" and such. English liquid measurement was a binary system instead of decimal, which/. geeks really should appreciate.
2 ounces = 1 gill (or shot for the alcohol drikers out there) 2 gills = 1 cup 2 cups = 1 pint 2 pints = 1 quart 2 quarts = 1 jack (really, a liquid measure) 2 jacks = 1 gallon
with a gallon the most that a typical person had to deal with on a routine basis. Fractional quantities can always be made up of only 1 part of each unit, which is especially useful for illiterate or semi-literate people.
1 nautical mile = 1 arcminute of the circumferance of the earth (Great-circle).
This is one reason why it is often used in navigation, because conversion between knots and changes in lattitude could be easily converted.
A jet going at 700 knots would cover a change in lattitude of 11 1/2 degrees in an hour (presumably if you are only traveling north & south). This is particularly useful for navigation as you can convert map coordinates to range fairly easily, even if you are changing map scales quite a bit.
As an additional side note: Knots back in the times of wooden sail ships (as 1st rate military defense vessels) really were a bunch of knots tied onto a length of rope that was attached to a "log" that was routinely tossed into the sea to determine just how fast the ship was traveling. They would count how many knots would pass the stern of the boat in a specified period of time. This information was kept in a "Log Book", hence "Captain's Log". Occasionally the captain would also put additional information besides the speed of the boat. I am not making this up, honestly.
I knew about the legal definition in the USA as 2.54 inches (the proclimation has been turned into formal legislation), but I didn't know the details about how it was defined.
BTW, here is the exact legal definition of metric to US measurement conversions (BTW, this is a MS-Word document, but I got it to open in OpenOffice). This is as close to an authoritiative source as you can get, since it is just a definition anyway.
Just an FYI, according the U.S. Code, the formal definition of a conversion of meter to U.S. measurements is: 1 yard == 0.9144 meters That converts without error (exact definition) to 25.4 mm == 1 inch
This document is also interesting, because it includes definitions of grains, gills, ounces, townships (a unit of area), bushels, pecks, cords (of firewood), therms (a unit of energy), and other fun units of measure.
It also has detailed metric conversion policy, including the original legislation that "permits" the use of metric measurements in the USA, so they could also be used in legal documents and contracts. Believe it or not, the metric system was at one time illegal to use in the USA.
The nice thing about Nigeria is that they do have a relatively large coast, although they are more suited to polar orbits based on the direction of their coast, dispite being near the equator. Madagascar, on the other hand, has plenty of coastline and it takes quite a bit to hit Australia (or more likely, China if they launch something).
One prime candidate for orbital flight is Brazil, with a true equitorial launch facility, lots of ocean to the east, and a generous government that already has an astronaut corp of their own.
To be honest, I thought that the Y2K elections of Bush vs. Gore had a strong possibility of breaking out into a Civil War. Had Gore claimed to be the legitimate President, and started acting as if he were one, ignoring Bush, and had Bush done the same, it would have been a full-fledged Civil War, with individual military commanders having to decide which "President" they needed to follow.
By having both Bush and Gore letting the SCOTUS be the arbitrator (totally unconstitutional BTW, but both candidates agreed to the forum), it resolved this matter in a peaceful manner and at least allowed our Republic to continue for four more years. I'm not so sure if it got down to a close call like that again this year if it would be nearly so peaceful, particularly if Bush ended up on top again. For Bush to win this election, he needs to win decisively, or lose spectacularly.
I'm not quite as certain if the intrusions of civil liberties is going to be accepted or not. History shows, unfortunately, that even informed citizens in a representative republic will relinquish soverignty to a strong leader who is their champion, particularly during times of war. Names of people who have done this are Ceasar, Hitler, Tojo, Lincoln, and to some extent, Roosevelt (FDR, not Teddy). That Lincoln and Roosevelt both had transitions back to ordinary citizens is true, but in both cases the Federal government was considerably stronger after their presidencies then before, and essentially irreversably stronger as well. Surprisingly, it is the administrations of weak presidents like Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, U.S. Grant, and even Richard Nixon where ordinary people were able to regain control of the government and legislation passed that restricted the powers of government, instead of restricting what ordinary citizens could do and say.
We will never get back to the free, largly agriarian socity dreamed about by Jefferson, but we certainly should strive for maintaining the freedom to choose our own destiny and be able to tell the government to butt out of our lives for 99.9% of everything that we are doing.
You are not very convincing to me with any of these subjects. Without government interferance, all of these things would have happened, just a little bit later, and much cheaper, including the moon flights of NASA.
In the case of Boeing, what exists now is essentially a huge government contractor that on occasion also services a civilian market. And even then the planes like the 747 have a dual government/civian use (Air Forces One not withstanding... that is more of a civilian application simply run by the Air Force).
If I remember history correctly, about the same time that the Wright Bros. were trying to get their plane up in the air, a huge government-sponsored flight projects sponsored by essentially the predecessor to the NSF (connected to the Smithsonian Institution at the time, but today it would be the NSF) tried to launch an aircraft. With lots of media around, the pilot/designer of the aircraft launched it and it crashed in a very miserable fashion (into a lake no less). At the time, it was about $100,000 that was dumped into that program, and it never went anywhere. The principle investigator was begging for some more funding until Orville and Wilbur succeeded and his approach was essentially canned. Sound familiar?
I will admit that flight happened due to substantial improvements in machining technology, due to machining tolerances that compared to things like guns and building construction are incredibly tight. New materials were also being developed, as did development of the internal combustion engine that allowed for strong enough motors that could provide sufficient thrust for flight.
What we have today is miniturization of electronics that the NASA engineers of the 1960's could only dream about (there was a debate wheither the Apollo computer should even use IC's, and at the time NASA represented about 60% of all chip production when the Apollo computers were put together... and they were just simple gate-logic chips for the most part). New advances with composite materials (like Rutan is using with Space Ship One), together with several decades of general space research is what makes this current boom in rocketry take place.
How much of this basic research would have happened with out the government getting involved? While I can't say for certain, I think where we are right now for commercial spaceflight would have been about the same regardless of government programs. Government interferance vs. research reports IMHO just about balance each other out.
I will say that compared to most other government agencies, NASA really is a relatively lean and productive government agency. NASA still has problems, however, with politics getting in the way, and what would have happened without Sen. Proxmire (D-WI) interfereing with NASA, I don't know myself.
There was a local baskeball player (NBA... If you are a sports fan I'm sure you already know this story) who was given a police badge by a local department because he was made an "honorary police officer", in part because he rather popular with the department, and did some community service things that helped out the local department.
The unfortunate thing was that he took that badge and it got a little bit into his head. He went with a couple of legitimate officers for a few nights, in part because he was really interested in law enforcement. (Kinda like the "Cops" TV show, and he was told to simply observe the officers in action.) It got so much to his head that he actually used the badge one day when somebody really pissed this guy (the basketball player) and he pretended to be a police officer. Needless to say, it landed him in jail for impersonating an officer, and radically changed how these "honorary policemen" badges are issued.
I know that in NYC it is customary for "extras" in TV shows and movies portraying police officers to own their own uniforms. There is even a casting agency that just deals with people who want to be a police officer in a movie. I think there are laws that restrict what you can and can't do with that uniform (you can only have it on while on set, or some other similar restriction), but the fact is that it can be bought by "ordinary" people who are not actually representing a law enforcement agency.
This isn't even mentioning private security companies with uniforms that bear a striking resembelance to government agencies either.
While I think the whole John Titor thing is a hoax (a rather elaborate and drawn out one as well), but I would have to agree that it represents an undercurrent of American society that it not being dealt with by the U.S. Government.
Other science fiction authors have also dealt with this topic in the past as well, and I hope that this trend towards a police state here in America gets reversed. I used to brag about the fact that M-16s were never used by law enforcement here in America, like I saw them being used in Brazil by the Military Police (they didn't even hide who they were at that time in Brazil). Then 9/11 happened and I saw National Guardsmen walking through airports here in America...it was the "Policia Militar" all over again, but in my own backyard.
That is a very fine line. Unfortunately, with this court ruling, that is essentially what has just happened, that you are now forced to have identification on your person, and a lack of proper identification can by itself get you arrested for that reason alone.
If there is a reasonable cause to suspect a criminal in a crowd at say some sports event, they can "detain" the crowd and ask for identification of every person who is trying to exit an arena. This is no different than roadblocks, but on a much more personal level. I have been stopped by police for very stupid reasons and asked for identification, including simply walking to a university to attend classes. And that was before this ruling. Police can be very abusive, and waiting for the "courts" to resolve when an officer crosses the line is too late.
With computerized databases, the classic "Soviet Russia" sheaf of papers that you had to carry with you is no longer needed. They can ask for your name and "Taxpayer Identification Number" (SSN in the USA), and get far more information about you then would ever have been possible by the KGB under the Soviet Union. The police can essentially do everything including pull up a picture of your "identification card"/"driver's license" (increasingly the same thing in the USA), so it really isn't necessary to even have that piece of plastic with you anymore.
This ruling is going to be heavily abused, and in this case I think the SCOTUS got it wrong, and very wrong. The only thing I can imagine getting worse is if they start approving manditory RFID labling of my kids in school, or even the hospital before I get to take my kid home for the first time. That closes the loop, and allows 24/7 tracking. From this court ruling I can't see anything preventing an abuse of this nature, because it is basically the same line of thinking.
First of all, there is the Administration for Space Transportation, a branch of the FAA. It already exists, so you don't need to create it. It already exists.
Second, you forget about just how big America really is. With "international" areas beyond both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, just about anything necessary for spaceflight operations can be pretty much done within the borders of the U.S.A. until you are into orbit, and existing treaties already deal with what happens when accidents happen and stuff comes down on a country other than the country of origin, even if it is just the spacecraft accidently landing in say Hong Kong when you were trying for San Francisco.
Space tourism is going to be a bit of a tougher problem because until now all [astronauts,cosmonauts,takinauts] have been commissioned officers (or civilian government equivalent) who had formal diplomatic status if they ended up somewhere by mistake. A tourist, particularly one without a passport, might have considerably more problems if they don't land in the country of origin (at least for the spacecraft).
International law also governs most of LEO and up to Geosync orbit, and there are a large number of precedents regarding what goes on with that activity, including if you take a satellite out of orbit and bring it back to the Earth. What goes on beyond a Geosync orbit is not nearly so well defined, and only the Moon has any real treaty status. Because the U.S.A. has refused to sign the Outer Space Treaty, it does not have effect upon American companies, so that area of international law is totally undefined.
Compared to a Shuttle re-entry, or worse yet the Apollo capsule reentry, it was relatively "care-free". I mean, if the approach doesn't look right, or if there is some sort of emergency, Space Ship One could at least in theory land even on a normal 2-lane highway, and certainly on a typical general aviation airport, as opposed to a commercial airport or even the monster runway that the Shuttle needs to land on (there are only 3 runways of the size and strength necessary for the Shuttle: Edwards AFB, White Sands in New Mexico, and KSC in Florida).
In the case of a Shuttle landing, the margin of error is extreamly small, and if they are off by even a couple of miles before the final approach, the astronauts pretty much need to abandon ship, because it won't land. Period.
The flight today was off by almost 20 miles (due to what appears to be an engine problem). The pilot was able to correct for it, and even made several passes over the airport at Mojave before it landed.
Back in the days of the Apollo program, they were pretty happy if they happen to hit the Pacific Ocean. Although there was a target spot they were trying to hit, often they missed the landing spot by as much as 200 miles. This was the purpose for having an Aircraft Carrier do the recovery, because they needed chase planes to spot the capsule and a fairly big support team just to hunt down and pull the astronauts out of the ocean. They also tried to put the landing zone in an area away from typical shipping lanes, just in case it landed on a container ship. I don't know what would have happened if it hit the deck of the carrier by random chance, but that was a relatively small amount of area compared to the ocean around it.
What would happen with orbital craft? I don't know, but it seems as though Rutan has been giving it a bit of thought. He certainly hopes to be able to make it to orbit eventually, but is being very guarded with his plans. The composite materials in Spaceship One, if applied to an orbital craft, still wouldn't be nearly as much trouble as the nearly all-iron frame that makes up the shuttle. The big advancements that the Shuttle represented were mainly with the thermal tiles and the propulsion systems. (The Main Shuttle Engines are really an impressive piece of engineering technology.) With a substantially lighter craft due to the composites Rutan is using, his "feathered" reentry technology, and a little bit of wiggle room added from a much harder reentry burn than the Shuttle typical does on reentry (compared to spacecraft mass), most of this could be overcome. If you can increase surface area relative to spacecraft mass, the reentry would be considerably easier to handle.
Apparently there was some sort of aircraft damage after all. It wasn't enough to damage the landing or make a critical failure, but it was bad enough that the re-entry was about 20 miles off course latterally (in other words, it didn't affect the altitude, but wasn't *exactly* as they anticipated.) Spaceship One came "close" to spiraling out of control.
What this means is the X-Prize attempts probabally won't happen right away, and gives a *little bit* more breathing room for the other competitors. More than likely they will do another "test flight" before they go for X-Prize certification, although the next one may not get publicized until after the launch, more like the previous launches.
The evening network TV news did a closeup of the damage, which was comparatively minor. Footage from the chase planes are going to look over everything, and even more is going to go over the telemetry and any internal error logging that happened . Rutan said it was a big enough concern that they weren't going to do a launch again until they can come to the bottom of whatever happened.
Seriously. This topic has been debated so much that I swear that this is some astro turfing by Boeing.
People are clamoring to get into space, and has been pointed out in many areas, even with this limited capability it still even has value for some research programs. This is a bridge builder, not a dead-end technology.
As has been pointed out many times, the flight distance of the original flight of the Wright Flyer was less than the wingspan of a 747. Does that mean it was a dead-end technology? In some ways yes. The flying system of a Wright flyer relied upon wing warping that has not been revisited until very recently, and that only in experimental aircraft. The body shifting a skilled pilot with that aircraft had to do is now really only used with hang-gliders, and even then it is much more refined. Even the later version of the aircraft were really only able to travel about 100 miles, and only under conditions we would call today VFR.
I do believe this is much more than symbolism. This is building infrastructure and bringing back the days of barnstorming, where pilots from WWI wanted to earn a few extra bucks, so they took an airplane (sometimes military surplus as well) and flew it around for "air shows" (usually just a simple demonstration... not the current rather extravagant versions we have now), and occasionally taking on a few passengers. With Spaceship One, this era of flight can be reborn, and it was during that critical era that aircraft technologies matured enough that passenger air service finally occured, ultimately leading to the DC-3 (a fun aircraft that I've actually flown in as a passenger on a regular commercial flight).
Right now, there isn't really anything between the Space Shuttle and the ship currently being built by the "Rocket Guy" Brian Walker And even Mr. Walker, while it may eventually work, still isn't even done.
Finally there is a system in place that can and will approve commercial space flight (as proved by Scaled Composites... they have the permit in hand). Technologies can and will be upgraded, and as just about every participant in the X-prize competition has been proving, you can get to space on less than the most exotic rockets and materials. Let's see where spaceflight can happen when you don't have contractors saying "it doesn't matter what the cost of building it is. Just get it up there." That leads to Shuttle launches that cost 1/2 Billion dollars each. This next flight of the shuttle will cost way over $1 Billion. I know that private companies could do that for considerably cheaper. Indeed, $1 Billion could cover the entire R&D budget, including FAA certification trials, of a whole launch system capable of putting seven astronauts at the ISS with extra cargo room for some expendable supplies. Why wouldn't NASA go that route instead? Just make an x-prize equivalent for the same money, and it will be going well before the shuttle is ready and flight-recertified itself. (Well... maybe, but then you might as well junk the entire shuttle program if an alternative program is close to launching).
If you don't think a $1 billion carrot for orbital characteristics would work, you really havn't been paying attention to the X-prize, have you? And that is money that will more than likely be spend in the the next two years anyway, why not put it to more valuable use?
I know that Iridium had some serious bandwidth issues, and they had a problem where the maximum number of users would never be that big, simply because of the frequency bandwidth they were using and the age of the electronics that they used in the base design. Basically, the economies of scale by providing 1 billion+ people with telephone service could never happen.
On top of that, I think the original investors in Iridium and the other constellations serverly underestimated nationalistic tendancies from various countries in trying to control their telecom service. Essentially, it was only useful in just the U.S.A. or Antarctica, and cell phones work pretty well if you are just staying in the U.S.A. There just aren't that many people in Antarctica to justify Iridium.
Still, there are some users who even these few exceptions proved to make it worth while. From what I understand now, it is primarily used by the U.S. government, with a large portion of its current bandwith for covert operations (CIA & DOD special forces groups). Kinda sad ending for something so promising.
I do know that launch costs were also a driver, but mainly for replacement costs of satellites that fail. Iridium wasn't making enough money to even replace the satellites that were causing problems.
The one constellation that I know has been successful has been the GPS constellation. Of course there already is a competitor that is being built, and it doesn't hurt that the DOD investment alone justifies its existance. Even that is not a cheap group of satellites to maintain.
I have no doubt that the final qualifying flight will include passengers. But for now, they are just trying to test the equipment and make sure that the equipment works. Why endanger three people when the craft is still experimental. They are not even really trying to qualify for the X-Prize at the moment because they are going to take more than the two-week requirement before they fly Space Ship One again.
They already had a problem when it landed where the landing gear failed, but they were able to repair that damage.
BTW, even commercial planes like the 747 or the DC-10 had to be flown with test pilots to be "proven" to the FAA. That was well before passengers were allowed to be on board.
How hard would it be to put up a competitor to Iridium, but using more current electronics and a cheaper system like this? The satellites wouldn't have to be nearly so sophisticated and LEO would be more than sufficient.
That is just one of several businesses that currently are locked out of space because of the current government monopoly on spaceflight. Here is a toast to the commercial spaceflight. **Cheers**
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I don't know what you are refering to here. Life in underwater environments, except for in very shallow waters, is going to be even harder to do than living on the moon. There are a few Seamounts that are in international waters that you might be able to claim, but most shallow areas are already claimed by nationalities, and the trend is for more and more of the ocean to be claimed by current governments. The current range is almost 200 miles of some sort of soverignty claim, which would clearly include underwater settlement. The docking and environmental issues make living underwater almost identical to living in space, except that environment ruptures would be even more disasterous than air leaks in a space station.
If you are talking about building a "Waterworld" environment where you take a slightly used oil tanker and turn it into a floating city? (Also think of the floating city in Snowcrash). While that has some merit, there are still environmental dangers that you are dismissing out of hand, and it would still be difficult to build a society of any reasonable sort in that manner. The closest that I can think of is the "city" of junk ships in the harbor of Hong Kong, and that has natural protection from storms and other environmental problems.
A lush land capable of supporting lifestyles they expected?
Many colonies in America had some absolutely huge disasters. Buena Vista (now Los Angeles) was a small Spanish colonial settlement that died off completely due to a lack of water. The settlers litterally died of starvation. Similar problems happened in Jamestown for the original settlement of Virginia, where the entire settlement of over 100 people completely disappeared. There are some suggestions that the settlers "went native", and adopted the culture of the Native Americans that lived nearby for survival reasons, including marrying into those tribes, but for the purposes of England it was a complete disaster. I could give a dozen or so similar stories about early settlement of the area where I live right now, including mortality rates as high as 50% in one year due to just environmental causes.
The point I'm making is that we know far more about how to live comfortably on Mars or the Moon in a permanent settlement than my great-grandfather did of the area he was going to when he hitched up his constaga wagon and headed over the Rocky Mountains. Unless we start seeing Science Fiction authors becoming incredibly accurate with stories of intelligent alien cultures spread throughout the solar system, we don't even need to worry about "native" peoples to interefere with. This would make settlement of Mars a genuine settlement of totally virgin real estate.
How many early colonists can I name? While not many, I can name my ancestors and on at least 10 different ancestral lines I can tell you who was an immigrant to America and when they arrived. Many of my ancestors where in America before the Revolutionary War (some even fought in that war). The reason you can't name them is because there were so many that except for a few like John Smith and Gov. Radcliff, there is no reason to memorize that many names. It was litterally millions of people who moved to America, often complete familes, and they were very ordinary people, not specialized training or people with titles (like a PhD or Esq. (more common in the 17th & 18th centuries))
Political/Religious reasons to leave Earth? I would like to move somewhere that a nuclear warhead could take more than 1 hour before detonation, simply because of the distance involved. A nuke on the Moon would have almost no impact on Lunar residents simply because they would already be pretty well dug-in and used to dealing with radiation issues anyway. You like MAD as a governmental policy where you are living right now?
I have also (recently) had some run-ins with the Police (I was never arrested, but it did cause a bunch of heartburn dealing with them), and at this point both my wife and I are willing to get the heck out of where I'm living and go anywhere else. The problem is just where do we move to? If the opportunity were available for us to homestead Mars, I would frankly grab it not because of some starry-eyed science fiction dream (which is partially true for me), but because I hate the political persecution that is occuring to me right now while living in America. It is exactly for this sort of BS that my ancestors left Europe. I would leave because I would like to have the freedom to do what I want and not have my neighbors keep putting their noses into my affairs. If I didn't like my neighbors, I could pack my bags and move on to the next place over the next hill (or piece of rock) and get set up without anybody telling me what to do. That freedom is gone from America, and there is no where else in the world that takes the place of that attitude.
I will admit that the reference to Pedro was a random thought. The point here is even on things like war Brazil tends to be much more passive than the USA, and other than the military involvement in political affairs, the Brazilian military has not really had reason to be tested for good or ill like the U.S. military has been. It is another aspect of Brazilian culture that frankly I admire and wish that some part of this could be taken back to America where I live now. The militarization of America that is happening right now concerns me because I see the worst aspects of military occupation that Brazil suffered with during the military dictatorships occuring right here in America. Al-Queida got what they asked for: War with America. I hope they realize what they are getting.
My experience with Papal photos in public offices is admittedly dated (from about 15 years ago), but I assure you that it really was there, and in most public offices I had to deal with, including the Post Office. And it wasn't isolated to just one specific area, although I mainly stayed in the State of Sao Paulo when I was in Brazil. The point here was a tolerance toward religious symbols and concepts in a public setting. That you no longer see those symbols may mean that Brazil is becoming more like America in this aspect.
Another example is most of what happens during Carnival. The closest it gets to that sort of activity is with the Mardi Gras festival in New Orelans, and even that is quite tame in comparison to what happens in Sao Paulo, not to mention Rio. Most American communities would simply arrest most of the participants in a typical Carnival parade for public indecency (because of partial nudity), just to start with. Don't think they wouldn't simply round up everybody in a parade like that and put them in one huge prison holding area. I've seen more from American police officers. Many other Carnival activities would also be hit hard, which is why I mention Mardi Gras as a comparison to what it would be like in the USA. (BTW, they both celebrate the same event.... the week before Lent of the Roman Catholic Church).
Up until the mid-1970s here in the USA, it was considered, culturarlly, that you would not directly criticize a political leader because of his (almost always male) personal behavior. Even Ted Kennedy only superficially was hurt due to Chappaquidick, and that was only to stop him from becomming President of the USA. He is still a Senator from Massachusetts.
Discussions of the sexual habits of JFK, while talked about now to some extent, were never reported or discussed in common public forums in the 1960's. When Nixon was revealed to be a constant swear-word user, it was a shock to ordinary Americans.
Defending the Presidents of Brazil? Frankly it doesn't matter what their personal habits were. It is legitimate in a democracy to be critical of public policies but what they do when they are trying to unwind at the end of a day shouldn't be the topic of a journist, regarless of what they do.
I have my own (different) opinions of what PT has done to Brazil, but that is policy and tactics of that political party, and not the private activities of its leaders. Why a NYT reporter should feel special protection simply because he is a "reporter" is beyond me.
I didn't want this to devolve into a religious freedom argument, but rather point out important differences in attitudes regarding freedom between Brazil and the USA.
In Brazil, Catholcism is a very dominant force, and in just about every public building you will find a picture of the Pope, even police stations and DMV bureaus. I am not talking about one on the desk of one of the employees or officers, but one in a very prominent place in very plain view, with generally nothing else around it. Kinda like having a U.S. flag or a picture of the current President of the USA (or governor of the respective state in state offices), but even more likely to be found than those symbols are in the U.S. Of course the most bizzare was finding a huge picture of JFK where the Pope would normally be found, but that is another story. And that was in the late 1980's.
The Roman Catholic Church isn't quite as dominant as it once was, and if I'm not mistaken, a majority of Sao Paulo (meaning just slightly larger than 50%) is now protestant, primarily a mixture of hard-core evangelical churches (Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Baptists, Penecostal, and a few home-grown Christian-based religions unique to Brazil like the Brazilian Catholic Church (not Roman Catholic). Sao Paulo is also unique in that there is also a rather large minority that is Buddahist, something you normally don't find in the USA or anywhere else in the Americas for that matter. In some ways this Buddahism has entered the culture, together with a history of fighting Portuguese bureaucracy that can only be experienced to be fully appreciated. Rio was the capital of Portugual for about 20 years (no kidding), and that heritage of being a European(???) capital has never left that city either.
It is also telling how Brazil "fought" their war of indendance: The Prince-Regent (kinda like the Prince of Wales in England, but this was a Portuguese Prince) was called back to Europe and to put his deputy in charge of Brazil. He threw down his coat and proclaimed that Brazil was no longer under the authority of Portugual. Some people around him proclaimed him to be the new "Emperor" of Brazil, a few shots from rifles were fired into the air, and the Revolution was over. Quite a bit different from what Washington had to go through.
Getting back to public discussions of religion: It is indeed sad that religion as a topic can't be discussed publicly. It is a part of life and even if you belive or not, others do have religion as a central part of their lives. If you want to understand what makes people tick, you need to understand at least what viewpoint a religious attitude does to change people's perspectives about many topics. To ignore this or to "compartmentalize" religion to be only discussed in churches doesn't allow this topic to be explored even by people who have other beliefs.
When a candidate for political office who ignores religion suddenly finds him/herself losing and election, they should realize that religion is a big deal.
I could enumerate specific examples of where my speech has been stopped and surpressed due to talking about religion. Not preaching a specific religion but discussing the impact of religious thought in an historical context or even suggesting that people who lived 100-200 years ago had religious motivations to many of the things they did, including religious repression. I was encouraged to pretend that religion never played a part in the history of the USA. That is a hard pill for me to swallow.
In other words, they are technologically incompetent and don't know how to throttle bandwidth to a specific customer or exactly what the internet really is about. They are lazy in regards to trying to monitor individual connections, and have oversold their bandwidth to the point that if you and everybody else really used the bandwidth they claim to be offering to you, they would be unable to actually deliver that amount of data.
Prohibiting a server connection of any sort is prohibiting you from every sending data from your computer. Period. The rest is just semantics from a lawyer who thinks he understands computers but really doesn't.
Of course, they probably think that the only internet protocol is HTTP.
Brazil is a free and democratic society, of that there should be no doubt. There are cultural difference (substantial!) between Brazil and America. In fact, from my own experience, it is sort of a cross between America and Europe, with a unique South American flavor.
The Portuguese, while a major ethnic group, is not the dominant one. I lived in the Italian part of Sao Paulo and some old timers could still speak Italian, but almost none of the kids (under 18 crowd) could speak languages of the Old World other than Portuguese and English, with English being a rather mottled version that was only studied in School like Americans (if you are into it) study French, German, or Spanish. English is not a daily language. Many teachers in Brazil learn British English, but with American cultural twists (which makes some very interesting conversations in English).
What I'm trying to say is that Brazil is not the backward country that you seem to be thinking it is. Freedom is relative, and there are many things you can do in Brazil that if done in America will get you arrested and thrown in jail. I also find the attitude to discuss religion in a public forum to be refreshing compared to almost official atheism in the U.S.A. (the ACLU's attitude about this not withstanding).
That Brazil has more respect for its elected officials than the NYT has for American politicians is totally understandable. If a reporter had done something similar during the JFK administration they probabaly would have been treated in a very similar fashion in the USA. It was just habit for that journalist to forget he was in a different country with a different culture, and not reporting from Texas.
I'll try my hand at this:
Wanted
Sergio Amadeu da Silveria
Criminal Record
1. Democratization of Technological Knowledge
2. Technological Liberation of Brazil
3. Assisting 2000 Civil Servants (presumably to switch to Linux, or at least helping them with technology)
4. Publication of Diverse Books (in a context indicating that he is the author)
5. Pushing for the end of monopolies through litigation. (Anti-trust lawsuits)
WARNING:
This man is dangerous!
Any information about the location of this person should be sent to the Legal Department at Microsoft. This information will be kept confidential.
MICROSOFT
Always wanting the best for Brazil.
(P.S. I spent a couple of years in Sao Paulo, and although I have a hard time being able to translate INTO Portuguges, I can understand it fairly well and turn it into English. Your translation was pretty good though.)
Honestly, I don't see what the problem is for volume measurement, other than distractions like liquid vs. dry vs. Imperial "gallons" and such. English liquid measurement was a binary system instead of decimal, which /. geeks really should appreciate.
2 ounces = 1 gill (or shot for the alcohol drikers out there)
2 gills = 1 cup
2 cups = 1 pint
2 pints = 1 quart
2 quarts = 1 jack (really, a liquid measure)
2 jacks = 1 gallon
with a gallon the most that a typical person had to deal with on a routine basis. Fractional quantities can always be made up of only 1 part of each unit, which is especially useful for illiterate or semi-literate people.
One interesting fact that should be noted:
1 nautical mile = 1 arcminute of the circumferance of the earth (Great-circle).
This is one reason why it is often used in navigation, because conversion between knots and changes in lattitude could be easily converted.
A jet going at 700 knots would cover a change in lattitude of 11 1/2 degrees in an hour (presumably if you are only traveling north & south). This is particularly useful for navigation as you can convert map coordinates to range fairly easily, even if you are changing map scales quite a bit.
As an additional side note: Knots back in the times of wooden sail ships (as 1st rate military defense vessels) really were a bunch of knots tied onto a length of rope that was attached to a "log" that was routinely tossed into the sea to determine just how fast the ship was traveling. They would count how many knots would pass the stern of the boat in a specified period of time. This information was kept in a "Log Book", hence "Captain's Log". Occasionally the captain would also put additional information besides the speed of the boat. I am not making this up, honestly.
I knew about the legal definition in the USA as 2.54 inches (the proclimation has been turned into formal legislation), but I didn't know the details about how it was defined.
BTW, here is the exact legal definition of metric to US measurement conversions (BTW, this is a MS-Word document, but I got it to open in OpenOffice). This is as close to an authoritiative source as you can get, since it is just a definition anyway.
Just an FYI, according the U.S. Code, the formal definition of a conversion of meter to U.S. measurements is: 1 yard == 0.9144 meters
That converts without error (exact definition) to 25.4 mm == 1 inch
This document is also interesting, because it includes definitions of grains, gills, ounces, townships (a unit of area), bushels, pecks, cords (of firewood), therms (a unit of energy), and other fun units of measure.
It also has detailed metric conversion policy, including the original legislation that "permits" the use of metric measurements in the USA, so they could also be used in legal documents and contracts. Believe it or not, the metric system was at one time illegal to use in the USA.
Long live the Nigerian Space Agency!
Of course, we can still send somebody up to help that poor Nigerian astronaut to come back to Earth.
The nice thing about Nigeria is that they do have a relatively large coast, although they are more suited to polar orbits based on the direction of their coast, dispite being near the equator. Madagascar, on the other hand, has plenty of coastline and it takes quite a bit to hit Australia (or more likely, China if they launch something).
One prime candidate for orbital flight is Brazil, with a true equitorial launch facility, lots of ocean to the east, and a generous government that already has an astronaut corp of their own.
To be honest, I thought that the Y2K elections of Bush vs. Gore had a strong possibility of breaking out into a Civil War. Had Gore claimed to be the legitimate President, and started acting as if he were one, ignoring Bush, and had Bush done the same, it would have been a full-fledged Civil War, with individual military commanders having to decide which "President" they needed to follow.
By having both Bush and Gore letting the SCOTUS be the arbitrator (totally unconstitutional BTW, but both candidates agreed to the forum), it resolved this matter in a peaceful manner and at least allowed our Republic to continue for four more years. I'm not so sure if it got down to a close call like that again this year if it would be nearly so peaceful, particularly if Bush ended up on top again. For Bush to win this election, he needs to win decisively, or lose spectacularly.
I'm not quite as certain if the intrusions of civil liberties is going to be accepted or not. History shows, unfortunately, that even informed citizens in a representative republic will relinquish soverignty to a strong leader who is their champion, particularly during times of war. Names of people who have done this are Ceasar, Hitler, Tojo, Lincoln, and to some extent, Roosevelt (FDR, not Teddy). That Lincoln and Roosevelt both had transitions back to ordinary citizens is true, but in both cases the Federal government was considerably stronger after their presidencies then before, and essentially irreversably stronger as well. Surprisingly, it is the administrations of weak presidents like Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, U.S. Grant, and even Richard Nixon where ordinary people were able to regain control of the government and legislation passed that restricted the powers of government, instead of restricting what ordinary citizens could do and say.
We will never get back to the free, largly agriarian socity dreamed about by Jefferson, but we certainly should strive for maintaining the freedom to choose our own destiny and be able to tell the government to butt out of our lives for 99.9% of everything that we are doing.
You are not very convincing to me with any of these subjects. Without government interferance, all of these things would have happened, just a little bit later, and much cheaper, including the moon flights of NASA.
In the case of Boeing, what exists now is essentially a huge government contractor that on occasion also services a civilian market. And even then the planes like the 747 have a dual government/civian use (Air Forces One not withstanding... that is more of a civilian application simply run by the Air Force).
If I remember history correctly, about the same time that the Wright Bros. were trying to get their plane up in the air, a huge government-sponsored flight projects sponsored by essentially the predecessor to the NSF (connected to the Smithsonian Institution at the time, but today it would be the NSF) tried to launch an aircraft. With lots of media around, the pilot/designer of the aircraft launched it and it crashed in a very miserable fashion (into a lake no less). At the time, it was about $100,000 that was dumped into that program, and it never went anywhere. The principle investigator was begging for some more funding until Orville and Wilbur succeeded and his approach was essentially canned. Sound familiar?
I will admit that flight happened due to substantial improvements in machining technology, due to machining tolerances that compared to things like guns and building construction are incredibly tight. New materials were also being developed, as did development of the internal combustion engine that allowed for strong enough motors that could provide sufficient thrust for flight.
What we have today is miniturization of electronics that the NASA engineers of the 1960's could only dream about (there was a debate wheither the Apollo computer should even use IC's, and at the time NASA represented about 60% of all chip production when the Apollo computers were put together... and they were just simple gate-logic chips for the most part). New advances with composite materials (like Rutan is using with Space Ship One), together with several decades of general space research is what makes this current boom in rocketry take place.
How much of this basic research would have happened with out the government getting involved? While I can't say for certain, I think where we are right now for commercial spaceflight would have been about the same regardless of government programs. Government interferance vs. research reports IMHO just about balance each other out.
I will say that compared to most other government agencies, NASA really is a relatively lean and productive government agency. NASA still has problems, however, with politics getting in the way, and what would have happened without Sen. Proxmire (D-WI) interfereing with NASA, I don't know myself.
There was a local baskeball player (NBA... If you are a sports fan I'm sure you already know this story) who was given a police badge by a local department because he was made an "honorary police officer", in part because he rather popular with the department, and did some community service things that helped out the local department.
The unfortunate thing was that he took that badge and it got a little bit into his head. He went with a couple of legitimate officers for a few nights, in part because he was really interested in law enforcement. (Kinda like the "Cops" TV show, and he was told to simply observe the officers in action.) It got so much to his head that he actually used the badge one day when somebody really pissed this guy (the basketball player) and he pretended to be a police officer. Needless to say, it landed him in jail for impersonating an officer, and radically changed how these "honorary policemen" badges are issued.
I know that in NYC it is customary for "extras" in TV shows and movies portraying police officers to own their own uniforms. There is even a casting agency that just deals with people who want to be a police officer in a movie. I think there are laws that restrict what you can and can't do with that uniform (you can only have it on while on set, or some other similar restriction), but the fact is that it can be bought by "ordinary" people who are not actually representing a law enforcement agency.
This isn't even mentioning private security companies with uniforms that bear a striking resembelance to government agencies either.
While I think the whole John Titor thing is a hoax (a rather elaborate and drawn out one as well), but I would have to agree that it represents an undercurrent of American society that it not being dealt with by the U.S. Government.
Other science fiction authors have also dealt with this topic in the past as well, and I hope that this trend towards a police state here in America gets reversed. I used to brag about the fact that M-16s were never used by law enforcement here in America, like I saw them being used in Brazil by the Military Police (they didn't even hide who they were at that time in Brazil). Then 9/11 happened and I saw National Guardsmen walking through airports here in America...it was the "Policia Militar" all over again, but in my own backyard.
That is a very fine line. Unfortunately, with this court ruling, that is essentially what has just happened, that you are now forced to have identification on your person, and a lack of proper identification can by itself get you arrested for that reason alone.
If there is a reasonable cause to suspect a criminal in a crowd at say some sports event, they can "detain" the crowd and ask for identification of every person who is trying to exit an arena. This is no different than roadblocks, but on a much more personal level. I have been stopped by police for very stupid reasons and asked for identification, including simply walking to a university to attend classes. And that was before this ruling. Police can be very abusive, and waiting for the "courts" to resolve when an officer crosses the line is too late.
With computerized databases, the classic "Soviet Russia" sheaf of papers that you had to carry with you is no longer needed. They can ask for your name and "Taxpayer Identification Number" (SSN in the USA), and get far more information about you then would ever have been possible by the KGB under the Soviet Union. The police can essentially do everything including pull up a picture of your "identification card"/"driver's license" (increasingly the same thing in the USA), so it really isn't necessary to even have that piece of plastic with you anymore.
This ruling is going to be heavily abused, and in this case I think the SCOTUS got it wrong, and very wrong. The only thing I can imagine getting worse is if they start approving manditory RFID labling of my kids in school, or even the hospital before I get to take my kid home for the first time. That closes the loop, and allows 24/7 tracking. From this court ruling I can't see anything preventing an abuse of this nature, because it is basically the same line of thinking.
First of all, there is the Administration for Space Transportation, a branch of the FAA. It already exists, so you don't need to create it. It already exists.
Second, you forget about just how big America really is. With "international" areas beyond both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, just about anything necessary for spaceflight operations can be pretty much done within the borders of the U.S.A. until you are into orbit, and existing treaties already deal with what happens when accidents happen and stuff comes down on a country other than the country of origin, even if it is just the spacecraft accidently landing in say Hong Kong when you were trying for San Francisco.
Space tourism is going to be a bit of a tougher problem because until now all [astronauts,cosmonauts,takinauts] have been commissioned officers (or civilian government equivalent) who had formal diplomatic status if they ended up somewhere by mistake. A tourist, particularly one without a passport, might have considerably more problems if they don't land in the country of origin (at least for the spacecraft).
International law also governs most of LEO and up to Geosync orbit, and there are a large number of precedents regarding what goes on with that activity, including if you take a satellite out of orbit and bring it back to the Earth. What goes on beyond a Geosync orbit is not nearly so well defined, and only the Moon has any real treaty status. Because the U.S.A. has refused to sign the Outer Space Treaty, it does not have effect upon American companies, so that area of international law is totally undefined.
Compared to a Shuttle re-entry, or worse yet the Apollo capsule reentry, it was relatively "care-free". I mean, if the approach doesn't look right, or if there is some sort of emergency, Space Ship One could at least in theory land even on a normal 2-lane highway, and certainly on a typical general aviation airport, as opposed to a commercial airport or even the monster runway that the Shuttle needs to land on (there are only 3 runways of the size and strength necessary for the Shuttle: Edwards AFB, White Sands in New Mexico, and KSC in Florida).
In the case of a Shuttle landing, the margin of error is extreamly small, and if they are off by even a couple of miles before the final approach, the astronauts pretty much need to abandon ship, because it won't land. Period.
The flight today was off by almost 20 miles (due to what appears to be an engine problem). The pilot was able to correct for it, and even made several passes over the airport at Mojave before it landed.
Back in the days of the Apollo program, they were pretty happy if they happen to hit the Pacific Ocean. Although there was a target spot they were trying to hit, often they missed the landing spot by as much as 200 miles. This was the purpose for having an Aircraft Carrier do the recovery, because they needed chase planes to spot the capsule and a fairly big support team just to hunt down and pull the astronauts out of the ocean. They also tried to put the landing zone in an area away from typical shipping lanes, just in case it landed on a container ship. I don't know what would have happened if it hit the deck of the carrier by random chance, but that was a relatively small amount of area compared to the ocean around it.
What would happen with orbital craft? I don't know, but it seems as though Rutan has been giving it a bit of thought. He certainly hopes to be able to make it to orbit eventually, but is being very guarded with his plans. The composite materials in Spaceship One, if applied to an orbital craft, still wouldn't be nearly as much trouble as the nearly all-iron frame that makes up the shuttle. The big advancements that the Shuttle represented were mainly with the thermal tiles and the propulsion systems. (The Main Shuttle Engines are really an impressive piece of engineering technology.) With a substantially lighter craft due to the composites Rutan is using, his "feathered" reentry technology, and a little bit of wiggle room added from a much harder reentry burn than the Shuttle typical does on reentry (compared to spacecraft mass), most of this could be overcome. If you can increase surface area relative to spacecraft mass, the reentry would be considerably easier to handle.
Apparently there was some sort of aircraft damage after all. It wasn't enough to damage the landing or make a critical failure, but it was bad enough that the re-entry was about 20 miles off course latterally (in other words, it didn't affect the altitude, but wasn't *exactly* as they anticipated.) Spaceship One came "close" to spiraling out of control.
What this means is the X-Prize attempts probabally won't happen right away, and gives a *little bit* more breathing room for the other competitors. More than likely they will do another "test flight" before they go for X-Prize certification, although the next one may not get publicized until after the launch, more like the previous launches.
The evening network TV news did a closeup of the damage, which was comparatively minor. Footage from the chase planes are going to look over everything, and even more is going to go over the telemetry and any internal error logging that happened . Rutan said it was a big enough concern that they weren't going to do a launch again until they can come to the bottom of whatever happened.
and comparitively speaking a troll.
Seriously. This topic has been debated so much that I swear that this is some astro turfing by Boeing.
People are clamoring to get into space, and has been pointed out in many areas, even with this limited capability it still even has value for some research programs. This is a bridge builder, not a dead-end technology.
As has been pointed out many times, the flight distance of the original flight of the Wright Flyer was less than the wingspan of a 747. Does that mean it was a dead-end technology? In some ways yes. The flying system of a Wright flyer relied upon wing warping that has not been revisited until very recently, and that only in experimental aircraft. The body shifting a skilled pilot with that aircraft had to do is now really only used with hang-gliders, and even then it is much more refined. Even the later version of the aircraft were really only able to travel about 100 miles, and only under conditions we would call today VFR.
I do believe this is much more than symbolism. This is building infrastructure and bringing back the days of barnstorming, where pilots from WWI wanted to earn a few extra bucks, so they took an airplane (sometimes military surplus as well) and flew it around for "air shows" (usually just a simple demonstration... not the current rather extravagant versions we have now), and occasionally taking on a few passengers. With Spaceship One, this era of flight can be reborn, and it was during that critical era that aircraft technologies matured enough that passenger air service finally occured, ultimately leading to the DC-3 (a fun aircraft that I've actually flown in as a passenger on a regular commercial flight).
Right now, there isn't really anything between the Space Shuttle and the ship currently being built by the "Rocket Guy" Brian Walker And even Mr. Walker, while it may eventually work, still isn't even done.
Finally there is a system in place that can and will approve commercial space flight (as proved by Scaled Composites... they have the permit in hand). Technologies can and will be upgraded, and as just about every participant in the X-prize competition has been proving, you can get to space on less than the most exotic rockets and materials. Let's see where spaceflight can happen when you don't have contractors saying "it doesn't matter what the cost of building it is. Just get it up there." That leads to Shuttle launches that cost 1/2 Billion dollars each. This next flight of the shuttle will cost way over $1 Billion. I know that private companies could do that for considerably cheaper. Indeed, $1 Billion could cover the entire R&D budget, including FAA certification trials, of a whole launch system capable of putting seven astronauts at the ISS with extra cargo room for some expendable supplies. Why wouldn't NASA go that route instead? Just make an x-prize equivalent for the same money, and it will be going well before the shuttle is ready and flight-recertified itself. (Well... maybe, but then you might as well junk the entire shuttle program if an alternative program is close to launching).
If you don't think a $1 billion carrot for orbital characteristics would work, you really havn't been paying attention to the X-prize, have you? And that is money that will more than likely be spend in the the next two years anyway, why not put it to more valuable use?
I know that Iridium had some serious bandwidth issues, and they had a problem where the maximum number of users would never be that big, simply because of the frequency bandwidth they were using and the age of the electronics that they used in the base design. Basically, the economies of scale by providing 1 billion+ people with telephone service could never happen.
On top of that, I think the original investors in Iridium and the other constellations serverly underestimated nationalistic tendancies from various countries in trying to control their telecom service. Essentially, it was only useful in just the U.S.A. or Antarctica, and cell phones work pretty well if you are just staying in the U.S.A. There just aren't that many people in Antarctica to justify Iridium.
Still, there are some users who even these few exceptions proved to make it worth while. From what I understand now, it is primarily used by the U.S. government, with a large portion of its current bandwith for covert operations (CIA & DOD special forces groups). Kinda sad ending for something so promising.
I do know that launch costs were also a driver, but mainly for replacement costs of satellites that fail. Iridium wasn't making enough money to even replace the satellites that were causing problems.
The one constellation that I know has been successful has been the GPS constellation. Of course there already is a competitor that is being built, and it doesn't hurt that the DOD investment alone justifies its existance. Even that is not a cheap group of satellites to maintain.
I have no doubt that the final qualifying flight will include passengers. But for now, they are just trying to test the equipment and make sure that the equipment works. Why endanger three people when the craft is still experimental. They are not even really trying to qualify for the X-Prize at the moment because they are going to take more than the two-week requirement before they fly Space Ship One again.
They already had a problem when it landed where the landing gear failed, but they were able to repair that damage.
BTW, even commercial planes like the 747 or the DC-10 had to be flown with test pilots to be "proven" to the FAA. That was well before passengers were allowed to be on board.
How hard would it be to put up a competitor to Iridium, but using more current electronics and a cheaper system like this? The satellites wouldn't have to be nearly so sophisticated and LEO would be more than sufficient.
That is just one of several businesses that currently are locked out of space because of the current government monopoly on spaceflight. Here is a toast to the commercial spaceflight. **Cheers**