Due to some supplier problems (the suppliers of H2O2 didn't want to be liable for having somebody killed with their product. I don't blame them either.) they have moved on to a mixed fuel system. It is still a mono-propellant, as the mixing takes place before it is put onboard the rocket. Kind of like (not exactly) when with cheap 2-cycle engines you mix lubrication oil and gasoline.
Armadillo was able to get the specific impulse high enough that purchasing 50% grade H2O2 was sufficient for their needs, rather than the 90% grade they originally wanted to use. If they are successful, they may build their own manufacturing facilities for H2O2, so this would no longer be a problem, and they can improve the performance of their rocket even more. For now, they just want to get the rocket in the air and what they have is good enough.
I hope you get that waiver and really get a chance to show what you are capable of. Now that you have have an actual vehicle, together with Rutan's launch in a couple of days, the political pressure to grant the waiver might just be there. This is a unique opportunity that you can take advantage of.
I know you are aware of this even more than I am. Still, congradulations and well done.
You also are forgetting that they have been doing captive launch tests for the past several months and have been working with this fuel system for several years, including several spectacular crashes, broken hoses, weld breaks, and just about anything else you could imagine. They knew what they were doing.
BTW, if you want to see something dangerous with Peroxide, check out their material tests video. I would include the link but the site has been slashdotted. Check it out when the/. crowd has a chance to calm down on this story. It shows a strong reaction when mixed with leather. They tried several materials including nylon, cotton, denim (I know, cotton with a tighter weave), and several other fabrics. I guarentee there was absolutly no leather anywhere near the launch that day.
This choice of a propellant is a testament to private enterprise and how manned rocket flight can be made much safer than NASA is willing to admit. Had this been an O2/Kerosene rocket instead (like the Saturn V 1st stage), the original poster would have been correct. Get several miles away from the launch pad, preferably in a concrete bunker that is mostly buried in the ground.
That is exactly the slippery slope that this sort of activity brings.
And the U.S. diplomats are "resisting" this move? Give me a break, if they just don't outright say, "I'm sorry, but this is unconstituional and will never be allowed in the U.S.A." I might think they speak for me and my country. To even suggest that something like this could be compromised upon is missing even the basic principles of which America is founded upon.
Of course, the U.S. constitution has the same value as a roll of toilet paper now, so I'm not surprised either. International diplomats representing America seem to think the constitution is just a set of guidelines that can be compromised whenever they need to for their own self-interest or to achieve some diplomatic score, keeping some political ally happy.
Where the line is between stuff that is blatant political speech and truly graphic and vulgar acts (like the execution of Nick Berg or child pornography) unfortunatly is not as clear as it ought to be. Different cultures obviously have different viewpoints that determine what should and should not be allowed. The internet, unfortunately, follows the lowest common denominator with the idea that if it is allowed anywhere, it is allowed everywhere. I understand how this would be offensive to some people, and a large number of websites are offensive to me.
Who or what would be able to do that sort of policing on the internet? How? What about subsystems (like Freenet) that can bypass locks and controls? (Before you start blocking ports, keep in mind that if anything is available from a server, you can send anything of any sort... it is simply up to the person running the server to determine the content that is being offered, not the government that the data is being sent through.) All of this has been discussed amply before on/., but the technological methods to restricting information of any sort on the internet are impossible. You might throw up roadblock and slow the data down somewhat, but it will still get through, particularly if the two people trying to exchange information are very determined.
The next question to be asked: Why is anybody bothering to restrict this information? It is a futile exercise and the only answer I can honestly give is if government bureaucrats are spinning their wheels trying to resolve issues like this, they are eating up their time on unproductive issues that is keeping them from messing up other things. Maybe that is a good thing.
I don't advocate an immediate disbandment of NASA, but if there were a phase-out period of say 10-15 years where different parts of NASA were handed over to other agencies and some way to preserve the Astronaut corp in some form, I would be totally supportive.
NASA right now, even after decades of anemic funding, is still a monster organization that simply can't be shut down immediately, or at least shouldn't. There is much that can be salvaged from the corpse of NASA, but I don't see anything shy of a total dissolution of NASA that would solve the current bureaucratic nightmares.
A gradual shutdown would also allow different presidential administrations (a problem with this proposal, as anything lasting longer than 4 years usually doesn't happen in D.C.) to put their own $0.02 into the mess, but for me, my political support for NASA is over, and nothing would be a "sacred cow" that I would complain to my congressman over, including local NASA contractor jobs.
The shuttle SRB motors are made in a plant only 50 miles from where I'm writing this, and I've even applied to work there in the past, with a very realistic chance to get a job there. I wish that ATK Thiokol would get into the private launch business, but they don't want to "rock the boat" at the moment. They currently have rockets that are capable of going into orbit with some fairly large payloads, as if the Shuttle itself isn't big enough. With just a little bit of a change in direction on the management level they could be in direct competition with Scaled Composites and Armadillo Aerospace, but they won't change until those upstart companies are making more profit than both they and Boeing are making combined in profits from space launches.
NASA has simply outlived its usefulness as an agency. There are a few projects that by international agreement still need to be continued for a number of years (such as the completion of the ISS), but I would not cry too much if Congress simply pulled the plug altogether.
Some aspects of this proposal are valid, such as spinning off the research agencies. I could see the creation of a "Department of Science" or some other federal bureaucracy that would oversee national research laboratories, including much of the NSF programs (Like the Antarctic research bases), leftover items from NASA such as JPL or Ames, and include other scientific projects that are generally "Big Science" that take so much capital to put together that it really makes sense to fund them with federal dollars due to legitimate return on their value. A restructuring of the NSF would also have value on its own as well. A restructuring like this would even allow other areas of research to be created that currently aren't being done.
When I think of NASA, I think of a bunch of cool looking guys (and a few cool women) dressed up in spacesuits going to places that nobody has ever gone before. For over 30 years NASA has done nothing even resembling this idea, so it is no wonder that a bunch of greying astronauts (no matter how fit they are) with stuck-up elitist attitudes have absolutely no connection with ordinary Americans like myself. I happen to know personnally (I've been in his home and done things with his kids... now raising kids of their own) one of the Apollo astronauts, and boy did he have a bunch of fun stories including his own recollections of Yuri Gregarian, not to mention Neil Armstrong and others I'm sure/. readers would be familiar with. The NASA that exists today is not the same sort of agency that existed back during the Apollo program.
I am a solid supporter of further space exploration. I feel we, as a species, need to get off this rock and move on throughout this universe. NASA, rather than helping out in moving this idea forward like they did in the 1960's, they are now a major obsticle keeping people from going into space. The longer NASA continues to exist as an agency, the longer and harder it will be for my kids and grandkids to get into space themselves. If this is a P.R. perception that NASA needs to change for both myself and within NASA as well, so be it. I wish it would simply go away because we no longer need the agency.
I do think that a civilian-based space exploration agency of some sort should exist, and perhaps something should be done to preserve the Astronaut corp, but there is so much more to NASA than astronauts that this minor part of the agency could be kept running for almost nothing compared to what it is currently taking to run the agency. When the main Astronaut corp office is in LEO rather than in Houston, Texas, I might give those guys a little more respect. Unfortunately I think the USAF will have a military base in space well before NASA gets its act together.
And it came with a big huge Red, White, and Blue flag which we were proud to wave saying we did it as well.
The thing that almost everybody forgets right now is that terrorism (especially the state-sponsored terrorism that is being done through Al-Queida and Hezbollah) is really a series of acts of war when you don't have the resources necessary to get involved in a full-fledged military confrontation.
The problem with these terrorist groups is that they hide behind anonitity (like Anonymous Cowards) when they conduct their military campaigns. If they wore a Syrian flag or were otherwise connected with some actual real-estate, that country would have to face the possibility of going to war with whoever is the targe of attack. Pure and simple.
Look, I don't mean to justify war. War is a very ugly thing that should be avoided, but when people insist on going to war it should be sent back to those individuals with all its fury, if for no other reason than to keep others from trying to do it as well.
Nut cases like McVeigh can never be stopped in total, but that was a lone individual. When countries are involved, the only way to deal with them is to send a message that the leaders of that country are vunerable to having the same treatment going back at them.
Using nukes was a clear way that the Japanese leaders knew they couldn't run away from the war, and with that knowledge, they simply had to surrender.
I think you totally miss just who Bigelow Aerospace really is. This is not some fly-by-night company with no experience in the aerospace industry, but a real competitor who has been fighting NASA and FAA bureaucracy for many years. The only reason they aren't competing for the X-Prize is because they simply don't care to at the moment.
They have stayed in the background for some time now, and if they are making a move, it is something that you should pay very strong attention to. It also means that several other commercial launch ventures are going to happen in the next few months, so pay attention to the news and see just what else is going to happen. The next 5-10 years is going to be a very exciting time for the commercial space launch industry.
I've said it before here on/., and I think that commercial spaceflight is going to be the next boom industry on Wall Street. Hold onto your hats, because a huge pile of money is going to get exchanged on Wall Street before the end of this decade and spent on space development.
Most of why other companies didn't succeed was because they really were full of dreamers who didn't really know where to start on a project like this, or be able to pull together the engineers and technicians necessary to build this sort of equipment, or be able to convince the government that it was something that should be allowed.
There is a local photo studio nearby where I live that actually advertises that they do not claim copyright, and give you the negatives when you pick up the prints. They figure that you would be more likely to bring the negatives back to them for reprints if they treat you good in the first place, and enough people have complained about this issue that they decided to make a big deal about it. Since they also do general photo processing and sell photographic equipment, there is more to their business than just portrait photography.
This is a photo chain as well, so they even did a few TV commercials bragging about this. I don't know what local impact it made, but I ended up taking my own family down there and we got a few family portraits done using that policy.
I would imagine that the Mars Rover equipment will last for quite a bit of time like the Viking landers did, but gradually have one system then another die over time. The Viking missions lasted for many years, and JPL eventually did "pull the plug" before the probes actually died on their own. A private research fund was set up that did record some additional days of primarily temperature readings and general telemetry data from the Viking 2 lander.
It will be more likely that NASA funding for the project will end before the vehicles will no longer work, or at least be able to transmit some data back. Even temperature readings would be useful if for no other reason then to be able to chart Martian weather patterns and build long-term temperature variation patterns that would be useful to know if people actually land on Mars.
I would also like to point out that S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure) for hijackings prior to 9/11 was to give the hijacker whatever they asked for and often fly them to whatever destination the plane was capable of going to, with places like Cuba being a typical destination. Indeed, in television programming this became almost a running joke with people getting a convient unexpected "vacation" to exotic places due to some hijacker. There were some exceptions, but it was primarily aimed at Israel, not America (which is why El Al has always taken security much more seriously.)
After 9/11, the S.O.P. for hijackers is to beat the living daylights out of them, if not kill them in the air, and if that fails to crash the plane into sparsly populated areas. IMHO, there will never be another plane attack in the U.S.A. because of this, and I for one will gladly commit "suicide" when flying on a plane if that mean that some idiot won't succeed in using a place as a bomb again. Most other people I talk with have the same attitude. Airport security really is more to comfort the general population of America rather than to really prevent airplane takeovers now (not withstanding the tin-hat crowd that points out abusive domestic militarization of America, which I think is also happening).
Yeah, there was some suspicion that there may be some volcanic activity on IO, and it is also suspected for the rest of the Galleleian moons as well, but on Io they took photographs of volcanoes during the middle of an eruption. That was totally unexpected and wasn't even caught until about two days or so after the event was captured by Voyager during the 2nd round of scientific analysis of the data.
Now that we know that you can have celestial bodies that are much more geologically active than the earth (I can't think of a good term to substitute for geology here, but exogeology just doesn't sound right either) this was something to look for. It was also found on Triton, but that was after the experiences of looking for volcanoes around Io.
My attitude about the TSA is that they simply replaced the private security guards with government security guards. There really wasn't that much difference other than the really awful security companies were gone, together with the very good ones. It averaged out the quality across the entire air traffic system, which by itself really isn't that bad of a thing (the particularly lousy security at Boston Logan airport was largely to blame for the 9/11 events).
I wish that the TSA would have been given more holistic authority for general airport security, included the Air Marshall service, and even given ticketing authority for parking around the airport. The point here is that the baggage screening is indeed rather boring, and it could have been the military equivalent of K.P. duty for the guards that are screwing up, or a place to stick the new recruits before giving them other duties. Also, require everybody in the TSA at the airport (even the managers) to spend at least some time screening baggage.
I'd go on further, but this is alrady gone off-topic enough as it is.
Well, not exactly but the E.S.A. is run much like NASA, bureauacracies and all. France is the major contributor for the agency, and indeed French is a leading language at the agency.
So yes, ESA == Baby NASA (French speaking)
or in other words, NASA scaled down to a European size.
While the Russians are also trying to compete for launch business, it is still largely the official government-sponsored launch sites and designs. They are more responsive to private industry simply because the Russian government can't really pay for these space launches, except for massive subsidies from NASA (this is a part of the NASA budget, and earmarked for foreign aid) and the few launches that they get from usually American companies going into space.
You seemed to miss the Chinese BTW. They are very cautious in their approach to going to space, but they are clearly capable of LEO launches, particularly thanks to the Clinton administration giving them all of the components and technology necessary to get this accomplished. Still, this is a government-run operation as well, so even more like NASA than what a private space launch would be like.
Private space launches are coming though, and this push to privatize the space industry will accellerate this trend.
I've been hearing the Mars-Direct crowd, and while there are some very compelling arguments, it seems as though it turns out to be Mars or the Moon. I say let's have both.
Each world has its own strengths/weaknesses and offers unique resources as well. The Moon has H3 (which Mars does not in substantial quantities), and Lunar mining can provide the raw resources for LEO activities that Mars simply would not find practical.
Besides, I think that Lunar activites would also be useful for eventual waystation development on Phobos and Demos, which would eventually have to be done for any sort of bi-directional communication and transportation activities. Transit between Phobos & the ISS (or some other similar LEO space station) would work well in inter-planetary space, with ship that wouldn't need all of the atmospheric reentry equipment that going directly to the surface of Mars or the Earth would need.
This is really a part of a larger vision that says instead of taking a few rock samples and pretty pictures, we are going to be there to stay. Current activities at the South Pole Research Station would be a good comparison to what it would take to support research and exploration bases on the Moon.
The one thing that this report seems to be saying is that private enterprise is going to have to be much more closely involved, simply if we are going to be able to pay for all these fun toys flying through space. If we rely on government spending alone, the government will eventually be bankrupt trying to pay for these actitivities. I support this view as well. Just imagine if Queen Isabela decided that she would sponsor more expidition to the Americas under Christopher Columbus just for anthropologic studies and getting a few trinkets like chocolate and potatoes. Exotic, yes, but Europeans would have stayed in Europe and never ventured further. I'm glad that my ancestors decided they wouldn't stand for that attitude.
While I would have to agree that it seems as though if you've seen one moon, you've seen them all, it still adds value for the Cassini probe (not Phoebe, but I understand what you are hinting at) to explore Phoebe.
And yes, it is very possible that something unexpected will be seen. That would indeed give valuable insite. Even if it is just an ordinary hunk of rock, it will still give insight into the composition of other Saturnian moons and what to expect in that region of the solar system. Even as just a simple data point. It is expected that even more will be found, and frankly I look forward to visually exploring this world in a way that nobody until today has been able to see it like.
When the Voyager probes went by Io, there was no hint that it could possibly be showing active volcanoes, or be hinting at the distinct possibilities of seeing liquid oceans on Europa (admittedly buired under ice, but still there). I don't expect such a revelation with Phoebe, but you don't know. Perhaps a black monolith with proportions 1 x 4 x 9?
While it may be "Old School", it is still a very useful communications option, particularly when other hardware is failing. Serial data communication is very solid, and usually easy to add or even built-in to most CPU modules that you would be use for a project like this. Bluetooth and WiFi is definitely not "built-in" like this. Essentially, for about $0.20 worth of hardware you can throw on a DB-9 port and have an excellent diagnostics access port when almost nothing else is working. I've seen RS-232 serial communication happen when almost no other communication can be taking place, due to RF interference or even fluctuating voltage levels from power supplies.
That said, I don't think this would be used for routine communication, but rather for firmware upgrades and other long-term setup. The DB-9 port can also be used as the power connector, to help recharge the batteries inside the unit (also a part of the RS-232 specification).
Nuclear weapons development was indeed very expensive. The Manhattan Project consumed at one point up to 30% of the GNP of the U.S.A at one point. Not everybody involved was totally aware that they were working on nuclear bomb production (obviously), but there was a huge economic "boom" (figuratively speaking) in uranium mining (more valuable than gold when it was in demand), manufacturing of the various components used for uranium refining and isotopic extraction, security guards for the whole process, logisitics necessary to cloth and feed all of these people, construction of research laboratories, and more things that I'm sure I've missed.
When the U.S.S.R. got into the game, the cost to the Soviet people was even higher even though they had research notes from America that identified mistakes that could be avoided. Still the raw infrastructure necessar to mine & refine fissile materials for the construction of nuclear bombs is far from cheap, which is why only a few countries really have this capability, and they are all noted for their scientific research capabilities and access to resources, particularly human resources.
Some of the techniques have been simplified through refinement of the technologies involved, which is why people like Saddam Hussein thought they had a chance to make nuclear weapons (prior to 1991). Still, it takes somebody with the resources of a nation, or at least that scale of organization, to be able to pull something like a nuclear bomb off. It doesn't hurt if you are a soverign authority and can restrict access to specific pieces of real estate as well, something that mere corporations usually can't do so well without at least somebody getting interested in what you are doing in that piece of territory.
Actually, it consisted of even more than that. If I remember correctly, there were facilities that included wood-powered electric generators, iron foundaries, metal lathes and other tools found in a well-stocked machine shop. Essentially all of the tools, with the microfiche, necessary to restore civilization at least back to 1950's level of technology. Keep in mind that all of these tools can be used to make more copies of themselves, except for the raw ore, and there were even stocks of that in these facilities.
There was a presumption that you could read English, and I would presume that if somebody came across one of these workshops there would be a few missing digits/limbs until they figured out how to use the equipment (assuming a totally unskilled person coming in and discovering and using this equipment).
I would also dare to say that political power in an apocolyptic world would be with raw power as defined by physicists: Hydro-electric dams, geo-thermal generators, & nuclear power plants. Civilization runs on power, and electrical power can always be converted into doing whatever you really need it to do, including help you grow food, smelt metals, power weapons, and foster communication. How any of those things can get accomplished just needs a few highly intelligent people, and it won't necessarily be done in the way we currently do it.
This just goes to show how totally corrupt the whole U.N. is, that one of the most powerful members of the U.N. can have its votes dominated by people who don't care at all about their "constituants", even though they are in theory from a representative democracy.
Most of the stuff done at places like the WIPO are done by career diplomats that are so totally disconnected from the people that they supposedly represent that personal agendas and involvement of large corporations is the rule rather than the exception. They are also quite insulated for the most part even from the one elected official that can make an influence on their activities, the President of the USA. By U.S. law in most cases the President can't even fire the diplomats (unless they are at Ambassador rank, but even this has limits), and unless it is a pet project of the President, he will pretty much go along with what his advisors are telling him to do. It doesn't even really matter who is in the office of the President or what party is in charge.
In essence, a closed-loop process without any supervision until it gets so far out of hand that opposing the results takes a major P.R. effort from civil rights groups (like the E.F.F.) to get it defeated.
I would also dare say that this same process is also true of most other large democracies as well. Totalitarian governments and monarchies would be even worse, and the king/dictator only paying scant attention unless it really pisses him/her off. But that would be true of just about any official in such a goverment, so they would be careful of doing really much of anything.
There is a reason why laws like this need to be developed by directly elected individuals. Having served as an (admittedly very minor) elected representitive myself, this can still get out of hand, but when I got back to my "constituants", I sometimes moderated the things I did and sometimes cast votes based more on what they wanted than my own gut feelings.
That is the big question. Is computing technology going to have special restrictions that is legally required?
Do I need a lawyer while writing my software, and have that lawyer review my code to make sure that it doesn't violate patents, copyright, legal restrictions, etc.?
I dread the day that lawyers outnumber software developers in the typical software company. Some companies (SCO, for instance, but also Dolby Laboratories and a few more successful companies) are already in this situation.
I hope that Open Cores is successful. There already are some interesting developments there, and some of it is already working its way into industry, and this is the best hope that I know of that would allow you to build chips in your own garage. Forcing DRM into the realm of programmable logic chips would, IMHO, be going just a little too far and hamper the efforts of Electrical Engineers for even ordinary devices, but that would be an interesting topic by itself. For just a couple thousand dollars you can "fab" your own chips and at least in theory be able to build your own computer.
One problem that I see with chip design on this level is that the skills needed to do this are not easy to acquire, and there is a very steep learning curve. Still, I think over time you could have some chip manufacturers who are very friendly to open spec computers rather than the current propritary mess in the computer industry at the moment.
It would also be a sad day if amature computer designers and software developers would have the same problems that amature chemists currently face. Worse yet, amature nuclear engineers (think about that for a while).
This is a comment that is just digging at me, and I need to respond.
Let's talk about the total number of private companies who have any manned spaceflight capability at the moment: 0
Yeah, some of the older aerospace companies (Boeing, Thiokol, or Energia) certainly are capable of manned spaceflight, but only Energia is taking on passengers, and even that is meeting strong resistance from their respective government (in addition to strong pressure from NASA to never again accept another commercial spaceflight.)
Basically, any privately funded venture that even gets to the edge of space gets a huge thumbs up in my book. This is certainly the stuff of dreams, and will inspire other people, a whole new generation of kids, to persue space as a frontier. Indeed, that is the problem. Space really is a frontier and any effort at all going into space will be difficult at best.
In most of your posts, DerekLyons, you have been pessimistic and a nay-sayer. I'm not discounting the huge energies that are required to get into orbit (and more to think about going to Mars, the Moon, or NEO asteroids), but you need to start from somewhere. With your logic why bother even getting out of bed?
Seriously, I don't see the obsticles of getting into orbit nearly as huge as you are putting them at. The raw technologies of getting to orbit have already been proven, and experience at getting up there into space can be drawn from almost 50 years of rocketry and spaceflight.
What is killing me inside when I think about it is that we are losing a whole generation of rocket scientists that gave us the Apollo program, and that knowledge is not being handed to the next generation before Von Braun's "apprentices" simply die of old age. While this is not necessarily the best way to have done space flight, it now appears as though the D. Delos Harriman approach to space is more likely than the J.F.K. approach in terms of long term human occupation of extra-terrestial habitats.
This is but one of many steps that must be taken, and Scaled Composites won't be the last company to send somebody into a sub-orbital flight. In terms of scalability, I think Armadillo Aerospace might have an easier time getting to orbit, but even then there is some significant issues they need to go through before it happens.
By far and away right now the only thing holding back more companies from getting into space is the raw bueraucratic red tape that must be process in order to deal with "explosive munitions" that might potentially be used by a "terrorist". If only the Wright Brothers had to deal with this level of legal B.S., they might never have even left the ground. Even getting which agency, or even what governmental department has juristiction over the regulation of space vehicles is still up in the air, but it appears as though the FAA is going to have a strong voice in the matter (Yes, I have heard of the AST, although this agency has switched back and forth across multiple federal departments already, and I think it may move again, although the FAA does seem to be a more logical place to keep it).
I know that this story is close to being archived, but I thought I'd go ahead and post anyway for some final thoughts.
Are you interested in a totally unique and new OS idea? One thing I've thrown around is a totally object-oriented OS that goes all of the way down to the kernel itself. In a way, this is similar to microkernel, but even more so in the sense that these are actual objects.
Basically, I'd like something like the JVM or dotNet CLR systems, or perhaps more like COM or ORB objects at the kernel level without the ugly overhead. Standard OOP languages like C++, Object Pascal, ect. could be used in this environment. Applications themselves would simply be new objects floating around in the system, and child processes could be easily started and shared between other processes (since they are just simple "pointers" to objects anyway.)
So far, I havn't seen anything but experimental and research OS systems that would exibit this sort of behavior, and usually the OS developers doing something like this get it confused with languages development (like the JVM and Java or dotNet with C#). Also, trying to make a production OS is quite a bit different than a "toy" OS that does a few cool things.
IMHO, this is why creating a whole new OS platform is far from easy. The same can be said about the next generation of AMD CPUs coming out: Can't they come up with a CPU architechture that is not opcode (and even pin-signal in some cases) compatable with the 4004 chip? Do we really need to be backward compatable with 40-year-old CPUs? Unfortunately yes, and the same goes for operating systems. Since so much software was written for Unix systems, it is difficult to ignore what has already been done, and when creating a new OS (like Linux), it is really nice to be able to run existing software (like EMACS or BASH) rather than having to re-invent the whole thing from scratch. In the case of ReactOS, they are trying to leverage existing drivers and developer familiarity with the Win32 API environment. Legacy Windows software is going to be a key component of the success of ReactOS.
This just goes to show how lousy ICANN is in regards to internet governance, and how U.S.-centric the current relationship between ICANN and other governments is.
Had the at-large directors really been given substantial responsibility rather than having ICANN being governed by commercial interests, this would have been a no-brainer and been dealt with as a routine matter. The fact that the "ultimate" arbitrator right now (and the only real claim to "legitimacy" by ICANN and any TLD contracts at all) is a business contract (not even legislation in the usual sense) with the United States Department of Commerce. Yeah, that is real solid legal ground in my book when you are dealing with issues of international diplomacy and regulation of trade.
Mind you, I'm not normally too critical of the U.S. government, but this is a clear-cut case of where the U.S.A. needs to step out of the way and acknowledge that there really is a much bigger world out there. Unfortunately, shy of a U.S. President who has a clue about technology (and I can't think of one since J.F.K.) and/or a major effort to fix this in the U.S. Congress, this situation is not going to change.
Let me see if I understand the nature of your argument. Are you suggesting that the SS1 from Scaled Composites is a dead-end technology? That variants of Rutan's spacecraft (it is clearly more than a mere aircraft like a Cessna) could never achieve orbit, even with additional boosters and/or substantially improved reentry shielding?
While I'm not totally familiar with all of the subtle factors that Rutan is using on his craft, and I'll certainly conceed that SS1 will never be able to achieve orbit, it is an excellent demonstration technology that could be used to start low-cost commercial manned spaceflight. What is stopping the development of something similar to SS1 as the 2nd stage of a truly orbital craft? Sure, it would take more R&D to make that work, but you have a proven technology here (assuming that SS1 works as planned, and I see no reason why it won't succeed for at least the X-Prize requirements).
The whole point of the X-Prize was to put a rather high goal, but get something realisticaly achievable rather than making it litterally impossible on the first try, such as if they set human colonization of Mars as the first stage of the competition. Or IMHO harder yet, the first manned spaceflight to Alpha Centari. While those are noble goals, lets start with something small and can be proven with several legitimate studies will be a commercial success.
I, for one, would love the opportunity to be able to fly in Rutan's ship, even if the cost was $50,000. I am not somebody who is particularly wealthy, but I see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that was never an option for my father or grandfather (both of whom would also have jumped at the chance to do something like this... and gladly spent that kind of money).
With it already proven that wealthier people will pay the $20 million fee the Russians are asking for to make orbit, it can be shown that orbital craft will be even more commercially successful than even sub-orbital craft. And that is just for trill-rides, not to mention more legitimate uses that can only be done in space.
This is why SS1 and the X-Prize are so impressive, not because they may never achieve orbit, but because it opens up a whole new industrial sector that can be tapped that until now has only been in the realms of dreams, and somebody with a will to go to space had to follow the really bizzare restrictions NASA and other government agencies put on people that wanted to go into space.
I also think it is a legitimate concern of NASA that the ISS is going to be overrun with tourists real soon, and all that implies.
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Due to some supplier problems (the suppliers of H2O2 didn't want to be liable for having somebody killed with their product. I don't blame them either.) they have moved on to a mixed fuel system. It is still a mono-propellant, as the mixing takes place before it is put onboard the rocket. Kind of like (not exactly) when with cheap 2-cycle engines you mix lubrication oil and gasoline.
Armadillo was able to get the specific impulse high enough that purchasing 50% grade H2O2 was sufficient for their needs, rather than the 90% grade they originally wanted to use. If they are successful, they may build their own manufacturing facilities for H2O2, so this would no longer be a problem, and they can improve the performance of their rocket even more. For now, they just want to get the rocket in the air and what they have is good enough.
John,
Hang in there! Really!
I hope you get that waiver and really get a chance to show what you are capable of. Now that you have have an actual vehicle, together with Rutan's launch in a couple of days, the political pressure to grant the waiver might just be there. This is a unique opportunity that you can take advantage of.
I know you are aware of this even more than I am. Still, congradulations and well done.
You also are forgetting that they have been doing captive launch tests for the past several months and have been working with this fuel system for several years, including several spectacular crashes, broken hoses, weld breaks, and just about anything else you could imagine. They knew what they were doing.
/. crowd has a chance to calm down on this story. It shows a strong reaction when mixed with leather. They tried several materials including nylon, cotton, denim (I know, cotton with a tighter weave), and several other fabrics. I guarentee there was absolutly no leather anywhere near the launch that day.
BTW, if you want to see something dangerous with Peroxide, check out their material tests video. I would include the link but the site has been slashdotted. Check it out when the
This choice of a propellant is a testament to private enterprise and how manned rocket flight can be made much safer than NASA is willing to admit. Had this been an O2/Kerosene rocket instead (like the Saturn V 1st stage), the original poster would have been correct. Get several miles away from the launch pad, preferably in a concrete bunker that is mostly buried in the ground.
That is exactly the slippery slope that this sort of activity brings.
/., but the technological methods to restricting information of any sort on the internet are impossible. You might throw up roadblock and slow the data down somewhat, but it will still get through, particularly if the two people trying to exchange information are very determined.
And the U.S. diplomats are "resisting" this move? Give me a break, if they just don't outright say, "I'm sorry, but this is unconstituional and will never be allowed in the U.S.A." I might think they speak for me and my country. To even suggest that something like this could be compromised upon is missing even the basic principles of which America is founded upon.
Of course, the U.S. constitution has the same value as a roll of toilet paper now, so I'm not surprised either. International diplomats representing America seem to think the constitution is just a set of guidelines that can be compromised whenever they need to for their own self-interest or to achieve some diplomatic score, keeping some political ally happy.
Where the line is between stuff that is blatant political speech and truly graphic and vulgar acts (like the execution of Nick Berg or child pornography) unfortunatly is not as clear as it ought to be. Different cultures obviously have different viewpoints that determine what should and should not be allowed. The internet, unfortunately, follows the lowest common denominator with the idea that if it is allowed anywhere, it is allowed everywhere. I understand how this would be offensive to some people, and a large number of websites are offensive to me.
Who or what would be able to do that sort of policing on the internet? How? What about subsystems (like Freenet) that can bypass locks and controls? (Before you start blocking ports, keep in mind that if anything is available from a server, you can send anything of any sort... it is simply up to the person running the server to determine the content that is being offered, not the government that the data is being sent through.) All of this has been discussed amply before on
The next question to be asked: Why is anybody bothering to restrict this information? It is a futile exercise and the only answer I can honestly give is if government bureaucrats are spinning their wheels trying to resolve issues like this, they are eating up their time on unproductive issues that is keeping them from messing up other things. Maybe that is a good thing.
I don't advocate an immediate disbandment of NASA, but if there were a phase-out period of say 10-15 years where different parts of NASA were handed over to other agencies and some way to preserve the Astronaut corp in some form, I would be totally supportive.
NASA right now, even after decades of anemic funding, is still a monster organization that simply can't be shut down immediately, or at least shouldn't. There is much that can be salvaged from the corpse of NASA, but I don't see anything shy of a total dissolution of NASA that would solve the current bureaucratic nightmares.
A gradual shutdown would also allow different presidential administrations (a problem with this proposal, as anything lasting longer than 4 years usually doesn't happen in D.C.) to put their own $0.02 into the mess, but for me, my political support for NASA is over, and nothing would be a "sacred cow" that I would complain to my congressman over, including local NASA contractor jobs.
The shuttle SRB motors are made in a plant only 50 miles from where I'm writing this, and I've even applied to work there in the past, with a very realistic chance to get a job there. I wish that ATK Thiokol would get into the private launch business, but they don't want to "rock the boat" at the moment. They currently have rockets that are capable of going into orbit with some fairly large payloads, as if the Shuttle itself isn't big enough. With just a little bit of a change in direction on the management level they could be in direct competition with Scaled Composites and Armadillo Aerospace, but they won't change until those upstart companies are making more profit than both they and Boeing are making combined in profits from space launches.
NASA has simply outlived its usefulness as an agency. There are a few projects that by international agreement still need to be continued for a number of years (such as the completion of the ISS), but I would not cry too much if Congress simply pulled the plug altogether.
/. readers would be familiar with. The NASA that exists today is not the same sort of agency that existed back during the Apollo program.
Some aspects of this proposal are valid, such as spinning off the research agencies. I could see the creation of a "Department of Science" or some other federal bureaucracy that would oversee national research laboratories, including much of the NSF programs (Like the Antarctic research bases), leftover items from NASA such as JPL or Ames, and include other scientific projects that are generally "Big Science" that take so much capital to put together that it really makes sense to fund them with federal dollars due to legitimate return on their value. A restructuring of the NSF would also have value on its own as well. A restructuring like this would even allow other areas of research to be created that currently aren't being done.
When I think of NASA, I think of a bunch of cool looking guys (and a few cool women) dressed up in spacesuits going to places that nobody has ever gone before. For over 30 years NASA has done nothing even resembling this idea, so it is no wonder that a bunch of greying astronauts (no matter how fit they are) with stuck-up elitist attitudes have absolutely no connection with ordinary Americans like myself. I happen to know personnally (I've been in his home and done things with his kids... now raising kids of their own) one of the Apollo astronauts, and boy did he have a bunch of fun stories including his own recollections of Yuri Gregarian, not to mention Neil Armstrong and others I'm sure
I am a solid supporter of further space exploration. I feel we, as a species, need to get off this rock and move on throughout this universe. NASA, rather than helping out in moving this idea forward like they did in the 1960's, they are now a major obsticle keeping people from going into space. The longer NASA continues to exist as an agency, the longer and harder it will be for my kids and grandkids to get into space themselves. If this is a P.R. perception that NASA needs to change for both myself and within NASA as well, so be it. I wish it would simply go away because we no longer need the agency.
I do think that a civilian-based space exploration agency of some sort should exist, and perhaps something should be done to preserve the Astronaut corp, but there is so much more to NASA than astronauts that this minor part of the agency could be kept running for almost nothing compared to what it is currently taking to run the agency. When the main Astronaut corp office is in LEO rather than in Houston, Texas, I might give those guys a little more respect. Unfortunately I think the USAF will have a military base in space well before NASA gets its act together.
IMHO, Yes, absolutely!
And it came with a big huge Red, White, and Blue flag which we were proud to wave saying we did it as well.
The thing that almost everybody forgets right now is that terrorism (especially the state-sponsored terrorism that is being done through Al-Queida and Hezbollah) is really a series of acts of war when you don't have the resources necessary to get involved in a full-fledged military confrontation.
The problem with these terrorist groups is that they hide behind anonitity (like Anonymous Cowards) when they conduct their military campaigns. If they wore a Syrian flag or were otherwise connected with some actual real-estate, that country would have to face the possibility of going to war with whoever is the targe of attack. Pure and simple.
Look, I don't mean to justify war. War is a very ugly thing that should be avoided, but when people insist on going to war it should be sent back to those individuals with all its fury, if for no other reason than to keep others from trying to do it as well.
Nut cases like McVeigh can never be stopped in total, but that was a lone individual. When countries are involved, the only way to deal with them is to send a message that the leaders of that country are vunerable to having the same treatment going back at them.
Using nukes was a clear way that the Japanese leaders knew they couldn't run away from the war, and with that knowledge, they simply had to surrender.
I think you totally miss just who Bigelow Aerospace really is. This is not some fly-by-night company with no experience in the aerospace industry, but a real competitor who has been fighting NASA and FAA bureaucracy for many years. The only reason they aren't competing for the X-Prize is because they simply don't care to at the moment.
/., and I think that commercial spaceflight is going to be the next boom industry on Wall Street. Hold onto your hats, because a huge pile of money is going to get exchanged on Wall Street before the end of this decade and spent on space development.
They have stayed in the background for some time now, and if they are making a move, it is something that you should pay very strong attention to. It also means that several other commercial launch ventures are going to happen in the next few months, so pay attention to the news and see just what else is going to happen. The next 5-10 years is going to be a very exciting time for the commercial space launch industry.
I've said it before here on
Most of why other companies didn't succeed was because they really were full of dreamers who didn't really know where to start on a project like this, or be able to pull together the engineers and technicians necessary to build this sort of equipment, or be able to convince the government that it was something that should be allowed.
There is a local photo studio nearby where I live that actually advertises that they do not claim copyright, and give you the negatives when you pick up the prints. They figure that you would be more likely to bring the negatives back to them for reprints if they treat you good in the first place, and enough people have complained about this issue that they decided to make a big deal about it. Since they also do general photo processing and sell photographic equipment, there is more to their business than just portrait photography.
This is a photo chain as well, so they even did a few TV commercials bragging about this. I don't know what local impact it made, but I ended up taking my own family down there and we got a few family portraits done using that policy.
I would imagine that the Mars Rover equipment will last for quite a bit of time like the Viking landers did, but gradually have one system then another die over time. The Viking missions lasted for many years, and JPL eventually did "pull the plug" before the probes actually died on their own. A private research fund was set up that did record some additional days of primarily temperature readings and general telemetry data from the Viking 2 lander.
It will be more likely that NASA funding for the project will end before the vehicles will no longer work, or at least be able to transmit some data back. Even temperature readings would be useful if for no other reason then to be able to chart Martian weather patterns and build long-term temperature variation patterns that would be useful to know if people actually land on Mars.
I stand corrected here.
I would also like to point out that S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure) for hijackings prior to 9/11 was to give the hijacker whatever they asked for and often fly them to whatever destination the plane was capable of going to, with places like Cuba being a typical destination. Indeed, in television programming this became almost a running joke with people getting a convient unexpected "vacation" to exotic places due to some hijacker. There were some exceptions, but it was primarily aimed at Israel, not America (which is why El Al has always taken security much more seriously.)
After 9/11, the S.O.P. for hijackers is to beat the living daylights out of them, if not kill them in the air, and if that fails to crash the plane into sparsly populated areas. IMHO, there will never be another plane attack in the U.S.A. because of this, and I for one will gladly commit "suicide" when flying on a plane if that mean that some idiot won't succeed in using a place as a bomb again. Most other people I talk with have the same attitude. Airport security really is more to comfort the general population of America rather than to really prevent airplane takeovers now (not withstanding the tin-hat crowd that points out abusive domestic militarization of America, which I think is also happening).
Talk about an armchair quarterback here.
Yeah, there was some suspicion that there may be some volcanic activity on IO, and it is also suspected for the rest of the Galleleian moons as well, but on Io they took photographs of volcanoes during the middle of an eruption. That was totally unexpected and wasn't even caught until about two days or so after the event was captured by Voyager during the 2nd round of scientific analysis of the data.
Now that we know that you can have celestial bodies that are much more geologically active than the earth (I can't think of a good term to substitute for geology here, but exogeology just doesn't sound right either) this was something to look for. It was also found on Triton, but that was after the experiences of looking for volcanoes around Io.
My attitude about the TSA is that they simply replaced the private security guards with government security guards. There really wasn't that much difference other than the really awful security companies were gone, together with the very good ones. It averaged out the quality across the entire air traffic system, which by itself really isn't that bad of a thing (the particularly lousy security at Boston Logan airport was largely to blame for the 9/11 events).
I wish that the TSA would have been given more holistic authority for general airport security, included the Air Marshall service, and even given ticketing authority for parking around the airport. The point here is that the baggage screening is indeed rather boring, and it could have been the military equivalent of K.P. duty for the guards that are screwing up, or a place to stick the new recruits before giving them other duties. Also, require everybody in the TSA at the airport (even the managers) to spend at least some time screening baggage.
I'd go on further, but this is alrady gone off-topic enough as it is.
Well, not exactly but the E.S.A. is run much like NASA, bureauacracies and all. France is the major contributor for the agency, and indeed French is a leading language at the agency.
So yes, ESA == Baby NASA (French speaking)
or in other words, NASA scaled down to a European size.
While the Russians are also trying to compete for launch business, it is still largely the official government-sponsored launch sites and designs. They are more responsive to private industry simply because the Russian government can't really pay for these space launches, except for massive subsidies from NASA (this is a part of the NASA budget, and earmarked for foreign aid) and the few launches that they get from usually American companies going into space.
You seemed to miss the Chinese BTW. They are very cautious in their approach to going to space, but they are clearly capable of LEO launches, particularly thanks to the Clinton administration giving them all of the components and technology necessary to get this accomplished. Still, this is a government-run operation as well, so even more like NASA than what a private space launch would be like.
Private space launches are coming though, and this push to privatize the space industry will accellerate this trend.
I've been hearing the Mars-Direct crowd, and while there are some very compelling arguments, it seems as though it turns out to be Mars or the Moon. I say let's have both.
Each world has its own strengths/weaknesses and offers unique resources as well. The Moon has H3 (which Mars does not in substantial quantities), and Lunar mining can provide the raw resources for LEO activities that Mars simply would not find practical.
Besides, I think that Lunar activites would also be useful for eventual waystation development on Phobos and Demos, which would eventually have to be done for any sort of bi-directional communication and transportation activities. Transit between Phobos & the ISS (or some other similar LEO space station) would work well in inter-planetary space, with ship that wouldn't need all of the atmospheric reentry equipment that going directly to the surface of Mars or the Earth would need.
This is really a part of a larger vision that says instead of taking a few rock samples and pretty pictures, we are going to be there to stay. Current activities at the South Pole Research Station would be a good comparison to what it would take to support research and exploration bases on the Moon.
The one thing that this report seems to be saying is that private enterprise is going to have to be much more closely involved, simply if we are going to be able to pay for all these fun toys flying through space. If we rely on government spending alone, the government will eventually be bankrupt trying to pay for these actitivities. I support this view as well. Just imagine if Queen Isabela decided that she would sponsor more expidition to the Americas under Christopher Columbus just for anthropologic studies and getting a few trinkets like chocolate and potatoes. Exotic, yes, but Europeans would have stayed in Europe and never ventured further. I'm glad that my ancestors decided they wouldn't stand for that attitude.
While I would have to agree that it seems as though if you've seen one moon, you've seen them all, it still adds value for the Cassini probe (not Phoebe, but I understand what you are hinting at) to explore Phoebe.
And yes, it is very possible that something unexpected will be seen. That would indeed give valuable insite. Even if it is just an ordinary hunk of rock, it will still give insight into the composition of other Saturnian moons and what to expect in that region of the solar system. Even as just a simple data point. It is expected that even more will be found, and frankly I look forward to visually exploring this world in a way that nobody until today has been able to see it like.
When the Voyager probes went by Io, there was no hint that it could possibly be showing active volcanoes, or be hinting at the distinct possibilities of seeing liquid oceans on Europa (admittedly buired under ice, but still there). I don't expect such a revelation with Phoebe, but you don't know. Perhaps a black monolith with proportions 1 x 4 x 9?
While it may be "Old School", it is still a very useful communications option, particularly when other hardware is failing. Serial data communication is very solid, and usually easy to add or even built-in to most CPU modules that you would be use for a project like this. Bluetooth and WiFi is definitely not "built-in" like this. Essentially, for about $0.20 worth of hardware you can throw on a DB-9 port and have an excellent diagnostics access port when almost nothing else is working. I've seen RS-232 serial communication happen when almost no other communication can be taking place, due to RF interference or even fluctuating voltage levels from power supplies.
That said, I don't think this would be used for routine communication, but rather for firmware upgrades and other long-term setup. The DB-9 port can also be used as the power connector, to help recharge the batteries inside the unit (also a part of the RS-232 specification).
Nuclear weapons development was indeed very expensive. The Manhattan Project consumed at one point up to 30% of the GNP of the U.S.A at one point. Not everybody involved was totally aware that they were working on nuclear bomb production (obviously), but there was a huge economic "boom" (figuratively speaking) in uranium mining (more valuable than gold when it was in demand), manufacturing of the various components used for uranium refining and isotopic extraction, security guards for the whole process, logisitics necessary to cloth and feed all of these people, construction of research laboratories, and more things that I'm sure I've missed.
When the U.S.S.R. got into the game, the cost to the Soviet people was even higher even though they had research notes from America that identified mistakes that could be avoided. Still the raw infrastructure necessar to mine & refine fissile materials for the construction of nuclear bombs is far from cheap, which is why only a few countries really have this capability, and they are all noted for their scientific research capabilities and access to resources, particularly human resources.
Some of the techniques have been simplified through refinement of the technologies involved, which is why people like Saddam Hussein thought they had a chance to make nuclear weapons (prior to 1991). Still, it takes somebody with the resources of a nation, or at least that scale of organization, to be able to pull something like a nuclear bomb off. It doesn't hurt if you are a soverign authority and can restrict access to specific pieces of real estate as well, something that mere corporations usually can't do so well without at least somebody getting interested in what you are doing in that piece of territory.
Actually, it consisted of even more than that. If I remember correctly, there were facilities that included wood-powered electric generators, iron foundaries, metal lathes and other tools found in a well-stocked machine shop. Essentially all of the tools, with the microfiche, necessary to restore civilization at least back to 1950's level of technology. Keep in mind that all of these tools can be used to make more copies of themselves, except for the raw ore, and there were even stocks of that in these facilities.
There was a presumption that you could read English, and I would presume that if somebody came across one of these workshops there would be a few missing digits/limbs until they figured out how to use the equipment (assuming a totally unskilled person coming in and discovering and using this equipment).
I would also dare to say that political power in an apocolyptic world would be with raw power as defined by physicists: Hydro-electric dams, geo-thermal generators, & nuclear power plants. Civilization runs on power, and electrical power can always be converted into doing whatever you really need it to do, including help you grow food, smelt metals, power weapons, and foster communication. How any of those things can get accomplished just needs a few highly intelligent people, and it won't necessarily be done in the way we currently do it.
This just goes to show how totally corrupt the whole U.N. is, that one of the most powerful members of the U.N. can have its votes dominated by people who don't care at all about their "constituants", even though they are in theory from a representative democracy.
Most of the stuff done at places like the WIPO are done by career diplomats that are so totally disconnected from the people that they supposedly represent that personal agendas and involvement of large corporations is the rule rather than the exception. They are also quite insulated for the most part even from the one elected official that can make an influence on their activities, the President of the USA. By U.S. law in most cases the President can't even fire the diplomats (unless they are at Ambassador rank, but even this has limits), and unless it is a pet project of the President, he will pretty much go along with what his advisors are telling him to do. It doesn't even really matter who is in the office of the President or what party is in charge.
In essence, a closed-loop process without any supervision until it gets so far out of hand that opposing the results takes a major P.R. effort from civil rights groups (like the E.F.F.) to get it defeated.
I would also dare say that this same process is also true of most other large democracies as well. Totalitarian governments and monarchies would be even worse, and the king/dictator only paying scant attention unless it really pisses him/her off. But that would be true of just about any official in such a goverment, so they would be careful of doing really much of anything.
There is a reason why laws like this need to be developed by directly elected individuals. Having served as an (admittedly very minor) elected representitive myself, this can still get out of hand, but when I got back to my "constituants", I sometimes moderated the things I did and sometimes cast votes based more on what they wanted than my own gut feelings.
That is the big question. Is computing technology going to have special restrictions that is legally required?
Do I need a lawyer while writing my software, and have that lawyer review my code to make sure that it doesn't violate patents, copyright, legal restrictions, etc.?
I dread the day that lawyers outnumber software developers in the typical software company. Some companies (SCO, for instance, but also Dolby Laboratories and a few more successful companies) are already in this situation.
I hope that Open Cores is successful. There already are some interesting developments there, and some of it is already working its way into industry, and this is the best hope that I know of that would allow you to build chips in your own garage. Forcing DRM into the realm of programmable logic chips would, IMHO, be going just a little too far and hamper the efforts of Electrical Engineers for even ordinary devices, but that would be an interesting topic by itself. For just a couple thousand dollars you can "fab" your own chips and at least in theory be able to build your own computer.
One problem that I see with chip design on this level is that the skills needed to do this are not easy to acquire, and there is a very steep learning curve. Still, I think over time you could have some chip manufacturers who are very friendly to open spec computers rather than the current propritary mess in the computer industry at the moment.
It would also be a sad day if amature computer designers and software developers would have the same problems that amature chemists currently face. Worse yet, amature nuclear engineers (think about that for a while).
This is a comment that is just digging at me, and I need to respond.
Let's talk about the total number of private companies who have any manned spaceflight capability at the moment: 0
Yeah, some of the older aerospace companies (Boeing, Thiokol, or Energia) certainly are capable of manned spaceflight, but only Energia is taking on passengers, and even that is meeting strong resistance from their respective government (in addition to strong pressure from NASA to never again accept another commercial spaceflight.)
Basically, any privately funded venture that even gets to the edge of space gets a huge thumbs up in my book. This is certainly the stuff of dreams, and will inspire other people, a whole new generation of kids, to persue space as a frontier. Indeed, that is the problem. Space really is a frontier and any effort at all going into space will be difficult at best.
In most of your posts, DerekLyons, you have been pessimistic and a nay-sayer. I'm not discounting the huge energies that are required to get into orbit (and more to think about going to Mars, the Moon, or NEO asteroids), but you need to start from somewhere. With your logic why bother even getting out of bed?
Seriously, I don't see the obsticles of getting into orbit nearly as huge as you are putting them at. The raw technologies of getting to orbit have already been proven, and experience at getting up there into space can be drawn from almost 50 years of rocketry and spaceflight.
What is killing me inside when I think about it is that we are losing a whole generation of rocket scientists that gave us the Apollo program, and that knowledge is not being handed to the next generation before Von Braun's "apprentices" simply die of old age. While this is not necessarily the best way to have done space flight, it now appears as though the D. Delos Harriman approach to space is more likely than the J.F.K. approach in terms of long term human occupation of extra-terrestial habitats.
This is but one of many steps that must be taken, and Scaled Composites won't be the last company to send somebody into a sub-orbital flight. In terms of scalability, I think Armadillo Aerospace might have an easier time getting to orbit, but even then there is some significant issues they need to go through before it happens.
By far and away right now the only thing holding back more companies from getting into space is the raw bueraucratic red tape that must be process in order to deal with "explosive munitions" that might potentially be used by a "terrorist". If only the Wright Brothers had to deal with this level of legal B.S., they might never have even left the ground. Even getting which agency, or even what governmental department has juristiction over the regulation of space vehicles is still up in the air, but it appears as though the FAA is going to have a strong voice in the matter (Yes, I have heard of the AST, although this agency has switched back and forth across multiple federal departments already, and I think it may move again, although the FAA does seem to be a more logical place to keep it).
I know that this story is close to being archived, but I thought I'd go ahead and post anyway for some final thoughts.
Are you interested in a totally unique and new OS idea? One thing I've thrown around is a totally object-oriented OS that goes all of the way down to the kernel itself. In a way, this is similar to microkernel, but even more so in the sense that these are actual objects.
Basically, I'd like something like the JVM or dotNet CLR systems, or perhaps more like COM or ORB objects at the kernel level without the ugly overhead. Standard OOP languages like C++, Object Pascal, ect. could be used in this environment. Applications themselves would simply be new objects floating around in the system, and child processes could be easily started and shared between other processes (since they are just simple "pointers" to objects anyway.)
So far, I havn't seen anything but experimental and research OS systems that would exibit this sort of behavior, and usually the OS developers doing something like this get it confused with languages development (like the JVM and Java or dotNet with C#). Also, trying to make a production OS is quite a bit different than a "toy" OS that does a few cool things.
IMHO, this is why creating a whole new OS platform is far from easy. The same can be said about the next generation of AMD CPUs coming out: Can't they come up with a CPU architechture that is not opcode (and even pin-signal in some cases) compatable with the 4004 chip? Do we really need to be backward compatable with 40-year-old CPUs? Unfortunately yes, and the same goes for operating systems. Since so much software was written for Unix systems, it is difficult to ignore what has already been done, and when creating a new OS (like Linux), it is really nice to be able to run existing software (like EMACS or BASH) rather than having to re-invent the whole thing from scratch. In the case of ReactOS, they are trying to leverage existing drivers and developer familiarity with the Win32 API environment. Legacy Windows software is going to be a key component of the success of ReactOS.
This just goes to show how lousy ICANN is in regards to internet governance, and how U.S.-centric the current relationship between ICANN and other governments is.
Had the at-large directors really been given substantial responsibility rather than having ICANN being governed by commercial interests, this would have been a no-brainer and been dealt with as a routine matter. The fact that the "ultimate" arbitrator right now (and the only real claim to "legitimacy" by ICANN and any TLD contracts at all) is a business contract (not even legislation in the usual sense) with the United States Department of Commerce. Yeah, that is real solid legal ground in my book when you are dealing with issues of international diplomacy and regulation of trade.
Mind you, I'm not normally too critical of the U.S. government, but this is a clear-cut case of where the U.S.A. needs to step out of the way and acknowledge that there really is a much bigger world out there. Unfortunately, shy of a U.S. President who has a clue about technology (and I can't think of one since J.F.K.) and/or a major effort to fix this in the U.S. Congress, this situation is not going to change.
Let me see if I understand the nature of your argument. Are you suggesting that the SS1 from Scaled Composites is a dead-end technology? That variants of Rutan's spacecraft (it is clearly more than a mere aircraft like a Cessna) could never achieve orbit, even with additional boosters and/or substantially improved reentry shielding?
While I'm not totally familiar with all of the subtle factors that Rutan is using on his craft, and I'll certainly conceed that SS1 will never be able to achieve orbit, it is an excellent demonstration technology that could be used to start low-cost commercial manned spaceflight. What is stopping the development of something similar to SS1 as the 2nd stage of a truly orbital craft? Sure, it would take more R&D to make that work, but you have a proven technology here (assuming that SS1 works as planned, and I see no reason why it won't succeed for at least the X-Prize requirements).
The whole point of the X-Prize was to put a rather high goal, but get something realisticaly achievable rather than making it litterally impossible on the first try, such as if they set human colonization of Mars as the first stage of the competition. Or IMHO harder yet, the first manned spaceflight to Alpha Centari. While those are noble goals, lets start with something small and can be proven with several legitimate studies will be a commercial success.
I, for one, would love the opportunity to be able to fly in Rutan's ship, even if the cost was $50,000. I am not somebody who is particularly wealthy, but I see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that was never an option for my father or grandfather (both of whom would also have jumped at the chance to do something like this... and gladly spent that kind of money).
With it already proven that wealthier people will pay the $20 million fee the Russians are asking for to make orbit, it can be shown that orbital craft will be even more commercially successful than even sub-orbital craft. And that is just for trill-rides, not to mention more legitimate uses that can only be done in space.
This is why SS1 and the X-Prize are so impressive, not because they may never achieve orbit, but because it opens up a whole new industrial sector that can be tapped that until now has only been in the realms of dreams, and somebody with a will to go to space had to follow the really bizzare restrictions NASA and other government agencies put on people that wanted to go into space.
I also think it is a legitimate concern of NASA that the ISS is going to be overrun with tourists real soon, and all that implies.