It won't be the current path that China is taking for getting into space that will make them pass private businesses.
The Chinese Space Agency, while certainly getting funding now in a big way because China has it, is more of a throwback to how the Soviet Union approached spaceflight. It is a very top-down approach with little if any room for innovation or thinking outside of the box.
China could become competitive, and I bet that eventually China (or chinese businessmen) will begin to form joint-partnerships with many American companies as soon as the Chinese decide to flood Congress with bribes^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions to repeal ITAR for spaceflight programs. Then again that wouldn't be the end of the world if that law was repealed either.
Anyway, to add to the above, the answer to this is simple: send the Marines (this is a Navy ship, right? Navy ships are supposed to have Marines for attacking towns) in, and have them take over the local internet infrastructure by force, and then do what you want with it. You have a military, use it. If you're not going to use it for what militaries are meant to be used for, then send them home and disband it.
If the ultimate goal was the annexation of the local village or country, I'd have to agree.
BTW, the main function of a Marine on a ship is typically security, and on the rare instance that somebody is stupid enough to try and engage in a forced boarding of the ship to repel would-be attackers. I don't think there has been a successful forced boarding of an American warship since the U.S. Civil War, but I might be mistaken on that point.
What is to say that a 15 year old Model S won't be considered a beater? I know this is a new car at the moment, but it won't always be that way and the argument about replacing batteries is a legitimate one so far as ongoing costs are concerned and how its resale value will be 5, 10, and 15 years from now.
I'll also say that comparing a Toyota to a BMW is all relative and subject to whatever whim of personal preference you may think. A 15 year old BMW is just as much of a beater as anything else, sometimes worse and more expensive if parts are harder to come by.
The Roadster will legitimately be considered a collector car and will likely retain value forever even if most of them are well maintained. I don't think that will be the case for the Model S, and certainly not for the Model X. 15 to 20 years from now that car in particular will be considered a beater, or at least that is sort of the hope that Tesla is trying to accomplish in terms of ramping up production and trying to become a significant producer of American automobiles. They certainly don't fit into the niche market of custom electric vehicle refits, kit cars, and experimental vehicle manufacturers.
The funny thing is that the professors who harp about Wikipedia often don't complain about other tertiary sources of information. If they would, such criticism of Wikipedia is completely justified. At best for a research project, an article from Wikipedia should be considered an executive summary of the topic where you should (and can) look at the references in the article for further information, from which you might legitimately write a paper. Not all of those references are URLs either.
Now, the costs of the battery is a none issue. Tesla's are warrentied for 8 years. So, the question becomes, what did batteries look like 8 years ago, and what will they look like 8 years out? Well, 12 years ago the EV-1 had just died, which used Lead Acid and then NiMH. The Gas powered Hybrids came about 6 years ago, and they STILL use NiMH batteries.
Your point of the evolution of battery technology is certainly something of note, where there does seem to be some significant progress in terms of energy density, and several other promising technologies which might be coming down the pike. Battery technology has been fickle though, and new chemistry technologies aren't always assured to be had.
Still, the issue of the battery cost is an issue if you are going beyond the 8-year warranty cycle. Of course I'm a bit frugal so my experience may not be typical but I have a 1989 Toyota Corolla that I own free and clear title (no car payments) where my annual maintenance costs are about $500-$1000 per year (high end estimate... I've usually gone less) and haven't seem to go up so much for me either as I simply stay on top of every issue that comes up and replace parts as needed. The vehicle is also approaching 200k miles of service. Sure it looks ugly, but even including gasoline costs (I'll give another $2k-$3k for that, which is largely an over estimate as well) I can get around just fine and it meets my basic transportation needs. I can't ever imagine a used Tesla Model S ever being that cheap to use and maintain.
To put it bluntly, many people don't want no bloody bicycles or scooters. They like their creature comforts such as air conditioning, a cup holder, and listening to their favorite radio station without having to fight somebody else.
All of the buses in the town I live in have bicycle racks on the front of the bus, put there with the notion that you can ride to the bus stop, travel to your destination stop and then ride the short distance to wherever else you want to travel. Regardless, I find that travel by bus using this bus system (optimized about as best as it can be for the area given its population and other factors) even with bicycles and other similar "short haul" systems takes about 3x-4x longer to get to any destination than if you drove a car, and in some cases nearly as fast as simply walking (assuming good health and other similar factors).
In very high density cities like Manhattan or San Francisco (and I've been to both) you can have some very efficient mass transit systems in place, but even those have some hard limits on what you can do where personal vehicles are still often desirable.
BTW, one real fly in the ointment is also the huge cost of supporting the mass transit infrastructure. While it may not be true everywhere, I sat down once with the budget of the local bus company where I live (including federal, state, and local tax subsidies as well as fare receipts) and a few taxi drivers and the group of us determined that for the same amount of money we could provide free (as in beer) fare door to door on-demand delivery of the same number of passengers with a fleet of taxis and nearly the same number of drivers. This is assuming the tax support continued to be the same for the taxi service as it is for the mass transit service and delivering the same number of passengers. Arguably the road infrastructure is also covered with tax dollars supporting this taxi service, but that could be covered with the same budget so far as the fuel costs paid for by taxi drivers would not necessarily be tax exempt thus they are contributing to the cost of the roads as well. I really question the economic viability of most mass transit systems in their entirety, and especially in areas where the population density is more suburbia rather than very high density housing.
None of that even partially deals with mass transit to genuinely rural areas. Once upon a time, at least in America as well as many other places in the world, there was mass transit to rural areas in the form of passenger rail transit. That largely started to disappear in the 1950's and accelerated with the introduction of AmTrack, where it is now a complete joke... except in very high population centers. There are other problems with passenger train travel that I need not get into, but air travel has taken over most of the role that railroads did once upon a time and is nearly the only significant non-subsidized mass transit system left in America. Air travel to rural areas sucks even worse than rail transport.
I'm not that familiar with UK roads, but you can and often do go from a standing stop (often a controlled intersection like a stop sign or traffic signal) to freeway speeds on a quarter mile stretch of road or less (where it gets real scary about how "less" that can be on older interstate on/off ramps). You asked, and I gave a good answer. Yes, I'd agree that moving from about 40 mph to 70 mph is likely more common, but I am simply stating as an objective fact that this kind of racing to a high velocity in a short period of time from a standing stop is something of American experience. The shortest on-ramp I ever saw was about 200 feet BTW, and that was on a stretch of "rural" interstate where the posted speed limit was 75 mph. Luckily the amount of traffic on that stretch of road was low.
The Tesla Roadster has a "traditional" automobile transmission, and indeed it even had a variable speed gearbox (two speed plus reverse). The torque ranges of an electric motor played hell on the transmission and nearly killed Tesla Motors as a company because the company who was developing the transmission failed to deliver a product lasting more than a couple thousand miles. That it was an unusual engineering domain because it involved an AC variable frequency induction motor instead of an internal combustion engine is where the problem came up. In retrospect Tesla should have concentrated on that transmission as a critical development path item and perhaps even moved its development in-house (which eventually did happen anyway). The failure of this transmission is what cost Martin Eberhard his job as CEO, and pushed Elon Musk into a much more active role in the company.
One of the reasons for having multiple speeds is that at extremely high RPM rates you start to get some additional performance issues, where the motor starts to act as a powerful gyroscope, making it difficult to turn the vehicle and impacting the handling of the vehicle as well as pushing limits on the equipment when you get to very high speeds that can result in a mechanical breakdown. There are legitimate reasons to be looking for a multi-speed transmission even for electric vehicle, even though you don't need to have nearly so many gear ratios. As for how many electric vehicle manufacturers are building multi-speed transmissions is another story entirely.
Why the hell do people obsess about 0-60 time? How often do you ever accelerate flat out from 0 to 60?
Two particularly important situations for me are pretty common:
1) When I'm trying to accelerate in the on-ramp of a freeway. While the time isn't a factor so much, the distance of the on-ramp is a big deal where you need to be moving at freeway speeds before you get to the end of the ramp. If you can achieve that velocity sooner, it reduces the problems in trying to match the velocity of the other vehicles on the freeway and allows you merge into the traffic easier.
2) While not as big of a deal, if you are trying to pass somebody on a back country road (one lane each direction, undivided) it really helps to have some reserve power at the accelerator pedal. If you have a quick 0-60 acceleration, it also holds true that there is some extra power available to go from 60-80 as well.
Besides, this is an easy thing to measure and objectively use to compare other vehicles to each other. Traditionally, electric vehicles have usually sucked at the 0-60 performance even though it should appear as a no-brainer as the torque of an electric motor at low RPMs is insane compared to internal combustion engines. What most electric automobile manufacturers have done is try to balance the trade-off of the weight of the car + battery in order to maximize performance and driving range. Smaller engines was one way to increase driving range by simply being lighter, but decreased overall performance.
Tesla instead chose to go after a superior batter technology (Li-ion batteries, not really widely used before Tesla implemented them in the Roadster and now the Model S) and as a result was able to go with higher performance motors as well. It certainly isn't a golf cart motor that has a 0-60 acceleration of never able to make it even going downhill with a tailwind. Such automobiles are sadly still fairly common as well.
Just wondering here, is there any reason why Tesla isn't going for other high-end electric vehicle markets?
Specific markets would include things like Delivery vans (like the local delivery trucks used by UPS, DHL, and FedEx), short haul semi-tractors, and other kinds of larger vehicles that would seem like perfect markets for electric vehicles that have a need for real performance. I realize that other companies are getting into those areas as well and that is just a pure business decision on entering such markets, but it would seem like those are some markets where a company making relatively few editions of a high-priced vehicle could work out better than trying to break into the mass consumer market. Other automobile manufacturers have gone into those markets (for gasoline or even diesel powered vehicles), so it isn't that big of a stretch.
This is a neat idea, so far as I've heard in the past that such a concept was technically impossible to actually do in practice. While there are locations and applications for solar cells where self-sufficiency of the manufacturing facilities isn't needed, that it is something which could be implemented at all speaks volumes about the progress in efficiency that has happened with solar cell development.
Of course it is easier to achieve that sort of self-sufficiency in the Sahara Desert than it is in Detroit or London (for manufacturing solar cells), but that doesn't seem like a bad thing either. Thank you for the link!
I'm glad you are financially stable but you know you're selfish, right?
Why is it such a bad thing being "selfish" in this situation? I highly doubt that the person you were responding to here robbed somebody else at gunpoint or engaged in any sort of unethical or nefarious method of obtaining that wealth other than simply applying their talents in some useful fashion that was seen as desirable by others and compensated for hard work and skill.
I do think there is a way to be ecologically stable and still enjoy the fruits of your labor. The "trend" of various nations and political philosophies isn't necessarily predestined and inevitable either, but then again neither is mass genocide of 99.9% of humanity either.
I have mixed feelings about mass public transportation. My largest complaint is that it is a whole bunch of hurry up and wait, where personal vehicle which do point to point travel is legitimately seen as desirable, where you don't need to worry about making connections or fighting transportation system schedules just to make appointments.
I've seen some public transportation systems that act very much like a Taxi service providing point to point travel at prices approaching bus transit or cheaper, so it is possible. The largest problem with such a system is that it requires a significant build-out of infrastructure before it becomes something useful.
Regardless, while some people like living in ant farms like Manhattan (how it is sort of viewed from outside), there are many who don't as well. It is one thing to say it should become more economical for people to move into a situation of high density urban living, but from a standpoint of basic liberties it shouldn't be something forced on people either. I'm also not convinced that the economics of moving most of the world's population into such high density urban lifestyles is even possible to make work without a larger infrastructure in place elsewhere that also needs a fairly large population of people in medium or low density housing.
There are also maintenance costs for electric vehicles as well, not the least of which is maintaining the lubrication of the chassis (that doesn't change regardless of its being electric of gasoline), tires, and some consumables including stuff like the AC system and other components with movable parts. By far and away the largest expense with maintenance of electric vehicles is the replacement cost of the battery pack though, which Tesla earlier said had about a five year lifetime.
Perhaps you are the type of person who doesn't mind dumping cars every five years for a new model, so that may or may not be a big deal, but it is a part of the cost. I don't know the exact cost for the battery pack on the Model S (or the Roadster for that matter), but I'm pretty sure it is in the 5-digit range (aka about $10k-$30k roughly). When computing costs it is something you definitely need to consider in the equation. The cost of the battery pack may have gone down somewhat, but considering that the standard Li-ion battery that Tesla is using for its battery pack is already at commodity prices (very dependent upon the raw material costs and not so much on manufacturing costs), I don't expect to see a huge cost saving there any time soon.
For myself, I think electric automobiles are cool by themselves and have a number of advantages over gasoline vehicles that more than make up for the difference in price even if everything else stays the same. That electric vehicle manufacturing makes reducing highway noise levels a matter of civil engineers rather than mechanical is a huge bonus.
My largest complaint about the Chinese space program is the lack of operational tempo. Simply put, they aren't really in the habit of sending stuff into space and they are waiting too long between flights if they want to gain institutional knowledge about how to perform tasks in space.
And what''s your standing to complain? Unless you're up there in their political elite, they aren't beholden to you in any way.
I didn't say that they owe me anything. I was merely implying that China doesn't appear to be interested in really establishing anything other than a flag waving presence in space and doesn't seem to want to learn how to do much once they get up there. People forget stuff over time and really complex things like going into space requires practice and experimentation.
My point is that China is going to hit a brick wall technologically if they don't start to ramp up their flight rate and do something more than simply saying "we've done that".
There is a group of folks, particularly in America, that seem to feel that China making all of this "progress" in space is somehow justification to do stuff like doubling the budget for NASA so America can supposedly "compete" against China in a new space race. While I could care less about what China does or doesn't do in space and certainly my voice is irrelevant so far as the political elite there say, as an American citizen I do give a damn about how my own tax dollars are being spent in regards to this "threat" to America. It impacts how I vote, including in my involvement in the over all political process in advocating points of view for space policy.
Or more to the point, I think this is just a facade on the part of China for which America doesn't really need to worry. The real space race is between Boeing, SpaceX, and possibly either Blue Origin and Stratolaunch with Arianespace and RKK Energia as worthy competitors. China shouldn't even really be treated realistically as a competitor and certainly isn't in a position to be a place for Boeing and other American companies to outsource rocket development (not that China would mind).
In the meantime, China is trying to fight the Cold War space race that is long since over, even though they may end up planing the Chinese flag at Tranquility Base next to the one put up by Armstrong and Aldrin. That may piss off a whole bunch of American politicians and may even be a wet dream for hardcore NASA supporters in terms of getting stuff like the SLS built, but I'm trying to suggest that even if China gets to that point it will be largely irrelevant.
You mean "borrowed" in the sense like the USA did when using the techniques developed in Nazi Germany?
The US didn't just used techniques developed in Nazi Germany. They had Nazis from Nazi Germany built the rockets for them. Basically, americans just provided the money and sat back while the Nazis built their freedom rockets.
This is so patently false that I simply must say you are full of it.
Yes, there were many of the rocket engineers who worked on the V-2 rockets of Nazi Germany which were hired by the U.S. Army Ordinance Command at the conclusion of World War II (through something called Operational Paperclip). Their contribution and experience was vital for developing the early ICBMs and rockets that later were developed by NASA as well as the U.S. Air Force.
All this said, it is ignoring the contribution and hard work by thousands of engineers and aerospace workers who helped to contribute to the development of American spaceflight. There is no way that the "Nazis" could have built all of this stuff without the insight and extremely hard work by ordinary Americans. Yes, they learned a whole lot from the German scientists, but this is gross oversimplification of what actually happened and is frankly insulting too.
The experiments that you are talking about were done in "simulated microgravity" using magnetic fields to try and neutralize gravitational influences and other techniques, and not actually flying to experiments in space. The sad fact is that in spite of the fact that there have been several mice sent into space including a couple long-term studies done on the ISS, procreation has not been one of the aspects studied nor has any multi-generational studies been done or even attempted in terms of what might happen in space among placental mammals.
There was a pregnant rat which gave birth successfully to very healthy babies on board the Space Shuttle, but she conceived on the ground and that was a relatively short term study with that flight lasting only two weeks.
I'm sure that a bunch of horny mice could likely figure out how to get their equipment to work in space. I'm just disappointed that nobody has bothered to let them try in the first place. Even worse, I think it will need to be human experiments that will be tried before somebody gets smart and thinks it should be something seriously investigated.
In the end, the only thing you can really conclude is that nobody knows what will happen if you attempt to conceive a baby in space, and that anything you have read on the topic is pure conjecture and speculation not based upon any actual science on the topic. That is the reason some long term space mission planning such as sending people to Mars includes ideas like sterilization of the spaceflight participants, because of sheer ignorance about the topic and the mission planners simply don't want to even think about the potential of astronauts creating additional passengers that will show up on the manifest for the return flight.
A huge difference between Gemini 8 and Shenzhou 9 is that Armstrong and Scott were actually piloting their spacecraft where instead the pilots of the Shenzhou spacecraft are sitting at mission control.
I am fairly certain that if remote control technology has been sophisticated enough at the time, then NASA would also have done it by remote control.
Not really. This is basically a difference in attitude towards those who are inside of the spacecraft, where an American philosophy is that those inside of the spacecraft ought to be much more directly in charge of what is going on, while the Chinese/Soviet philosophy was one of paranoia that the spaceflight participants might do something politically embarrassing so that authority was taken away.
The original plan for the Mercury spaceflights was to be largely automated, with the astronauts being largely "spam in a can" and really not doing anything other than being a passenger and enjoying the ride. Considering the Mercury astronauts were all test pilot instructors (qualified not just as test pilots but to teach people how to become those as well), there was a minor revolt within the astronaut corps that insisted some level of actual piloting should take place inside of the spacecraft, where key decisions about the progress of the spacecraft such as abort decisions and proceeding through various milestones rested upon the mission commander... in some cases with the mission commander alone.
Note also that much of the early NASA technology for launching astronauts into space came from the ICBM missile development, where significant automation already took place. The first spaceflights for the Mercury program used Chimpanzees, who obviously weren't rated as pilots or expected to do much other than take in the ride.
I'll note that the attitude of allowing manual control has made a difference in several missions and allowed a successful conclusion to those missions that otherwise might have gone badly. Gemini 8 was one of those situations BTW, where the astronauts weren't able to explain their situation to ground control due to a loss of telemetry and garbled communications until after they had finally resolved the situation. Another was the ability of the astronauts to rework Apollo 13 in order to get them to come home. I'm sure other situations could be brought up where real piloting skill was applied, including John Glenn's decision to not jettison his retro-rockets on the Friendship 7 flight. John Glenn also switched to a manual flight mode due to problems he noticed during the flight, not trusting the automated system that was in place.
I think the total size of the economy is more important in attempting to measure a country's ability to maintain a national space program. Otherwise some small but rich European or oil-producing country would have also launched humans into space a long time ago. The Soviet Union was clearly poorer than the US in per capita terms, but managed to beat the US to several early space milestones.
I suppose that is where these crazy nerds come along and try to prove your notion could work all along. I'll admit their goal is more to duplicate Alan Shepard's flight rather than John Glenn's, but it is none the less showing that more countries and people are coming together and trying to get into space.
Russia might get a little nervous if Denmark starts to attempt orbital spaceflight though. These guys are using a launch site in the Baltic Sea, and extra nerd points are earned because the "ground crew" for the launch site works out of a submarine on launch day.
My largest complaint about the Chinese space program is the lack of operational tempo. Simply put, they aren't really in the habit of sending stuff into space and they are waiting too long between flights if they want to gain institutional knowledge about how to perform tasks in space. The last previous flight for Chinese astronauts was in 2008, although there was an "unmanned" spaceflight last year which acted as a dress rehearsal for this flight.
All this said, I will admit that this is a significant accomplishment and something which speaks volumes about the technical accomplishments of China. The organizations which have been able to achieve this milestone are rather small, and for manned spaceflight is only NASA, Roscosmos, and now CNSA (Chinese National Space Agency), with just JAXA, ESA, and SpaceX as the only other organizations to perform this task using unmanned spacecraft.
Still, all China has done so far is more or less replicate Gemini 8, avoiding the problems that nearly killed Neil Armstrong and David Scott. They have a long way to go if they want to turn this into any sort of useful experience to get them anywhere else, but they can start to have their astronauts do stuff more elaborate than simply being potty-trained monkeys who know how to wave flags. A huge difference between Gemini 8 and Shenzhou 9 is that Armstrong and Scott were actually piloting their spacecraft where instead the pilots of the Shenzhou spacecraft are sitting at mission control.
There are also many underwater cities yet to be... discovered.
For example?
I think the GP is talking about the Alterans in this historical documentary including a discussion of this city located a few miles to the west of San Francisco.
One of the goals for building the ISS was also to transfer knowledge (at a price) from Russia to the USA over how they were able to build MIR and to get access to the engineering history of MIR and the Almaz and Salyut programs. While in theory Skylab could have had two crews docked at the same time, such a task was never actually performed, nor were any "resupply" flights like Russia did with the Salyut program and subsequently done with MIR and the ISS. That whole process started with the Shuttle-MIR missions where engineering technology and knowledge was shared between the two countries on an extensive basis where Russia certainly had a whole lot to bring to the table.
What China brings certainly is doubtful. Japan at least had a pile of money, and while they did build the Kibo, Japan used American and European launchers for putting up most of the pieces.
To be fair, there is the Dragon Lab that is going to be conducting microgravity experiments being done by both European and American companies and a few governments.
The problem is that at the moment (besides a few companies who are getting into the experiment aggregator business and offering much smaller prices for small experiments) any research laboratory who wants to conduct this kind of research must pay for the whole launch and build things to fit into the time scales and process of traditional orbital spaceflight systems. Those are extremely expensive, requiring all of the testing and environmental conditioning that you need for operating as an independent spacecraft.
NanoRacks has a business model that seems to be making them a whole bunch of money to provide this "hole in our knowledge", particularly for commercial research that may end up making a profit in the future. Their manifest seems to indicate at least some people are interested in that kind of research and they have a backlog of customers waiting for the next flight.
Both Russia and Japan (ISS partners) were very cold to the idea as well. It wasn't just the "North American country" that was the problem. About the only ISS partner that didn't have a problem with China joining was Brazil... a real power-house among the ISS partners.
Another problem China faced is that they wanted to put up their own modules and wanted to do the docking on their own. A very real concern is that China, with their vast experience at in-orbit rendezvous and orbital construction being brought to the table, would likely end up taking out a portion of the ISS in any attempt to dock with it. The ISS was not envisioned to be a toy for inexperienced aerospace engineers trying to prove how their equipment works as a test article, and simply put didn't trust any of the equipment China was proposing to be used on the ISS including the capsules that would hold Chinese astronauts.
China wouldn't put up with the high level reviews by the ISS partners like SpaceX had to go through in order to meet up with the ISS. Having to humble themselves down to that level is something that also just doesn't sit well with the Chinese psyche and worldview.
It is interesting that you are talking about a Saturn V competitor from SpaceX, as Elon Musk is working on an engine design called the Merlin 2, which is claimed to have a similar thrust rating as the F1 engine built for the Saturn V 1st stage. The idea behind the engine is to build something where the Falcon 9 only needs a single engine, yet these engines could be clustered for a much larger rocket.
The problem that SpaceX is facing for building such a vehicle is that Elon Musk (in an interview that I've long since lost the link to, but you can dig it up) estimated that it would somewhere between $1-2 billion to develop, which is a bit more than the company can afford with their current revenue stream. If Elon says it is going to cost about $2 billion, I can't even imagine what NASA says such a thing would cost. NASA isn't even developing a new engine for the SLS, where they are simply reusing the SSMEs from the Space Shuttle (with apparently a slight "upgrade" for some future flights once they burn through all of the engines left over from the Shuttle program).
It should noted that besides the Merlin engine, the last engine built for orbital spaceflight in America was the engine used on the Delta IV, and the USAF (with its contractors) had to pull engineers out of retirement in order to get that one built. Big engines aren't easy to be built, where a whole lot of things that can go wrong and where lessons learned on much smaller engines don't easily translate to the larger scale size.
Even Russia had a problem building the huge engines like the F1, where instead they chose to cluster 30 engines in what I think is the most amazing plumbing job ever in the history of mankind with the N1 rocket. The business end of that rocket is a sight to behold. Even that was something that the Soviet era engineers could never really resolve either, and is the primary reason that the Soviet Union never made the trip to the Moon.
Regardless, there isn't a market for rockets that size. If space tourism takes off in a big way and telecommunication satellites start to be built to be human serviceable so crewed flights are needed for upgrades and repairs (something of a possibility I might add), there might be an ongoing need for a larger rocket. In the meantime almost everything needed in space including a trip to Mars can be built with smaller rockets more along the line of the Falcon Heavy or even launchers like the Atlas V and Delta IV. Something like the NAUTLUS-X can easily be built with vehicles in that size, where the task of mating pieces up together in orbit is an already proven technology, thanks to MIR and the ISS (with a little help from "Dr. Rendezvous" Buzz Aldrin).
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It won't be the current path that China is taking for getting into space that will make them pass private businesses.
The Chinese Space Agency, while certainly getting funding now in a big way because China has it, is more of a throwback to how the Soviet Union approached spaceflight. It is a very top-down approach with little if any room for innovation or thinking outside of the box.
China could become competitive, and I bet that eventually China (or chinese businessmen) will begin to form joint-partnerships with many American companies as soon as the Chinese decide to flood Congress with bribes^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions to repeal ITAR for spaceflight programs. Then again that wouldn't be the end of the world if that law was repealed either.
Anyway, to add to the above, the answer to this is simple: send the Marines (this is a Navy ship, right? Navy ships are supposed to have Marines for attacking towns) in, and have them take over the local internet infrastructure by force, and then do what you want with it. You have a military, use it. If you're not going to use it for what militaries are meant to be used for, then send them home and disband it.
If the ultimate goal was the annexation of the local village or country, I'd have to agree.
BTW, the main function of a Marine on a ship is typically security, and on the rare instance that somebody is stupid enough to try and engage in a forced boarding of the ship to repel would-be attackers. I don't think there has been a successful forced boarding of an American warship since the U.S. Civil War, but I might be mistaken on that point.
What is to say that a 15 year old Model S won't be considered a beater? I know this is a new car at the moment, but it won't always be that way and the argument about replacing batteries is a legitimate one so far as ongoing costs are concerned and how its resale value will be 5, 10, and 15 years from now.
I'll also say that comparing a Toyota to a BMW is all relative and subject to whatever whim of personal preference you may think. A 15 year old BMW is just as much of a beater as anything else, sometimes worse and more expensive if parts are harder to come by.
The Roadster will legitimately be considered a collector car and will likely retain value forever even if most of them are well maintained. I don't think that will be the case for the Model S, and certainly not for the Model X. 15 to 20 years from now that car in particular will be considered a beater, or at least that is sort of the hope that Tesla is trying to accomplish in terms of ramping up production and trying to become a significant producer of American automobiles. They certainly don't fit into the niche market of custom electric vehicle refits, kit cars, and experimental vehicle manufacturers.
The funny thing is that the professors who harp about Wikipedia often don't complain about other tertiary sources of information. If they would, such criticism of Wikipedia is completely justified. At best for a research project, an article from Wikipedia should be considered an executive summary of the topic where you should (and can) look at the references in the article for further information, from which you might legitimately write a paper. Not all of those references are URLs either.
Now, the costs of the battery is a none issue. Tesla's are warrentied for 8 years. So, the question becomes, what did batteries look like 8 years ago, and what will they look like 8 years out? Well, 12 years ago the EV-1 had just died, which used Lead Acid and then NiMH. The Gas powered Hybrids came about 6 years ago, and they STILL use NiMH batteries.
Your point of the evolution of battery technology is certainly something of note, where there does seem to be some significant progress in terms of energy density, and several other promising technologies which might be coming down the pike. Battery technology has been fickle though, and new chemistry technologies aren't always assured to be had.
Still, the issue of the battery cost is an issue if you are going beyond the 8-year warranty cycle. Of course I'm a bit frugal so my experience may not be typical but I have a 1989 Toyota Corolla that I own free and clear title (no car payments) where my annual maintenance costs are about $500-$1000 per year (high end estimate... I've usually gone less) and haven't seem to go up so much for me either as I simply stay on top of every issue that comes up and replace parts as needed. The vehicle is also approaching 200k miles of service. Sure it looks ugly, but even including gasoline costs (I'll give another $2k-$3k for that, which is largely an over estimate as well) I can get around just fine and it meets my basic transportation needs. I can't ever imagine a used Tesla Model S ever being that cheap to use and maintain.
To put it bluntly, many people don't want no bloody bicycles or scooters. They like their creature comforts such as air conditioning, a cup holder, and listening to their favorite radio station without having to fight somebody else.
All of the buses in the town I live in have bicycle racks on the front of the bus, put there with the notion that you can ride to the bus stop, travel to your destination stop and then ride the short distance to wherever else you want to travel. Regardless, I find that travel by bus using this bus system (optimized about as best as it can be for the area given its population and other factors) even with bicycles and other similar "short haul" systems takes about 3x-4x longer to get to any destination than if you drove a car, and in some cases nearly as fast as simply walking (assuming good health and other similar factors).
In very high density cities like Manhattan or San Francisco (and I've been to both) you can have some very efficient mass transit systems in place, but even those have some hard limits on what you can do where personal vehicles are still often desirable.
BTW, one real fly in the ointment is also the huge cost of supporting the mass transit infrastructure. While it may not be true everywhere, I sat down once with the budget of the local bus company where I live (including federal, state, and local tax subsidies as well as fare receipts) and a few taxi drivers and the group of us determined that for the same amount of money we could provide free (as in beer) fare door to door on-demand delivery of the same number of passengers with a fleet of taxis and nearly the same number of drivers. This is assuming the tax support continued to be the same for the taxi service as it is for the mass transit service and delivering the same number of passengers. Arguably the road infrastructure is also covered with tax dollars supporting this taxi service, but that could be covered with the same budget so far as the fuel costs paid for by taxi drivers would not necessarily be tax exempt thus they are contributing to the cost of the roads as well. I really question the economic viability of most mass transit systems in their entirety, and especially in areas where the population density is more suburbia rather than very high density housing.
None of that even partially deals with mass transit to genuinely rural areas. Once upon a time, at least in America as well as many other places in the world, there was mass transit to rural areas in the form of passenger rail transit. That largely started to disappear in the 1950's and accelerated with the introduction of AmTrack, where it is now a complete joke... except in very high population centers. There are other problems with passenger train travel that I need not get into, but air travel has taken over most of the role that railroads did once upon a time and is nearly the only significant non-subsidized mass transit system left in America. Air travel to rural areas sucks even worse than rail transport.
I'm not that familiar with UK roads, but you can and often do go from a standing stop (often a controlled intersection like a stop sign or traffic signal) to freeway speeds on a quarter mile stretch of road or less (where it gets real scary about how "less" that can be on older interstate on/off ramps). You asked, and I gave a good answer. Yes, I'd agree that moving from about 40 mph to 70 mph is likely more common, but I am simply stating as an objective fact that this kind of racing to a high velocity in a short period of time from a standing stop is something of American experience. The shortest on-ramp I ever saw was about 200 feet BTW, and that was on a stretch of "rural" interstate where the posted speed limit was 75 mph. Luckily the amount of traffic on that stretch of road was low.
The Tesla Roadster has a "traditional" automobile transmission, and indeed it even had a variable speed gearbox (two speed plus reverse). The torque ranges of an electric motor played hell on the transmission and nearly killed Tesla Motors as a company because the company who was developing the transmission failed to deliver a product lasting more than a couple thousand miles. That it was an unusual engineering domain because it involved an AC variable frequency induction motor instead of an internal combustion engine is where the problem came up. In retrospect Tesla should have concentrated on that transmission as a critical development path item and perhaps even moved its development in-house (which eventually did happen anyway). The failure of this transmission is what cost Martin Eberhard his job as CEO, and pushed Elon Musk into a much more active role in the company.
One of the reasons for having multiple speeds is that at extremely high RPM rates you start to get some additional performance issues, where the motor starts to act as a powerful gyroscope, making it difficult to turn the vehicle and impacting the handling of the vehicle as well as pushing limits on the equipment when you get to very high speeds that can result in a mechanical breakdown. There are legitimate reasons to be looking for a multi-speed transmission even for electric vehicle, even though you don't need to have nearly so many gear ratios. As for how many electric vehicle manufacturers are building multi-speed transmissions is another story entirely.
Why the hell do people obsess about 0-60 time? How often do you ever accelerate flat out from 0 to 60?
Two particularly important situations for me are pretty common:
1) When I'm trying to accelerate in the on-ramp of a freeway. While the time isn't a factor so much, the distance of the on-ramp is a big deal where you need to be moving at freeway speeds before you get to the end of the ramp. If you can achieve that velocity sooner, it reduces the problems in trying to match the velocity of the other vehicles on the freeway and allows you merge into the traffic easier.
2) While not as big of a deal, if you are trying to pass somebody on a back country road (one lane each direction, undivided) it really helps to have some reserve power at the accelerator pedal. If you have a quick 0-60 acceleration, it also holds true that there is some extra power available to go from 60-80 as well.
Besides, this is an easy thing to measure and objectively use to compare other vehicles to each other. Traditionally, electric vehicles have usually sucked at the 0-60 performance even though it should appear as a no-brainer as the torque of an electric motor at low RPMs is insane compared to internal combustion engines. What most electric automobile manufacturers have done is try to balance the trade-off of the weight of the car + battery in order to maximize performance and driving range. Smaller engines was one way to increase driving range by simply being lighter, but decreased overall performance.
Tesla instead chose to go after a superior batter technology (Li-ion batteries, not really widely used before Tesla implemented them in the Roadster and now the Model S) and as a result was able to go with higher performance motors as well. It certainly isn't a golf cart motor that has a 0-60 acceleration of never able to make it even going downhill with a tailwind. Such automobiles are sadly still fairly common as well.
Just wondering here, is there any reason why Tesla isn't going for other high-end electric vehicle markets?
Specific markets would include things like Delivery vans (like the local delivery trucks used by UPS, DHL, and FedEx), short haul semi-tractors, and other kinds of larger vehicles that would seem like perfect markets for electric vehicles that have a need for real performance. I realize that other companies are getting into those areas as well and that is just a pure business decision on entering such markets, but it would seem like those are some markets where a company making relatively few editions of a high-priced vehicle could work out better than trying to break into the mass consumer market. Other automobile manufacturers have gone into those markets (for gasoline or even diesel powered vehicles), so it isn't that big of a stretch.
This is a neat idea, so far as I've heard in the past that such a concept was technically impossible to actually do in practice. While there are locations and applications for solar cells where self-sufficiency of the manufacturing facilities isn't needed, that it is something which could be implemented at all speaks volumes about the progress in efficiency that has happened with solar cell development.
Of course it is easier to achieve that sort of self-sufficiency in the Sahara Desert than it is in Detroit or London (for manufacturing solar cells), but that doesn't seem like a bad thing either. Thank you for the link!
I'm glad you are financially stable but you know you're selfish, right?
Why is it such a bad thing being "selfish" in this situation? I highly doubt that the person you were responding to here robbed somebody else at gunpoint or engaged in any sort of unethical or nefarious method of obtaining that wealth other than simply applying their talents in some useful fashion that was seen as desirable by others and compensated for hard work and skill.
I do think there is a way to be ecologically stable and still enjoy the fruits of your labor. The "trend" of various nations and political philosophies isn't necessarily predestined and inevitable either, but then again neither is mass genocide of 99.9% of humanity either.
I have mixed feelings about mass public transportation. My largest complaint is that it is a whole bunch of hurry up and wait, where personal vehicle which do point to point travel is legitimately seen as desirable, where you don't need to worry about making connections or fighting transportation system schedules just to make appointments.
I've seen some public transportation systems that act very much like a Taxi service providing point to point travel at prices approaching bus transit or cheaper, so it is possible. The largest problem with such a system is that it requires a significant build-out of infrastructure before it becomes something useful.
Regardless, while some people like living in ant farms like Manhattan (how it is sort of viewed from outside), there are many who don't as well. It is one thing to say it should become more economical for people to move into a situation of high density urban living, but from a standpoint of basic liberties it shouldn't be something forced on people either. I'm also not convinced that the economics of moving most of the world's population into such high density urban lifestyles is even possible to make work without a larger infrastructure in place elsewhere that also needs a fairly large population of people in medium or low density housing.
There are also maintenance costs for electric vehicles as well, not the least of which is maintaining the lubrication of the chassis (that doesn't change regardless of its being electric of gasoline), tires, and some consumables including stuff like the AC system and other components with movable parts. By far and away the largest expense with maintenance of electric vehicles is the replacement cost of the battery pack though, which Tesla earlier said had about a five year lifetime.
Perhaps you are the type of person who doesn't mind dumping cars every five years for a new model, so that may or may not be a big deal, but it is a part of the cost. I don't know the exact cost for the battery pack on the Model S (or the Roadster for that matter), but I'm pretty sure it is in the 5-digit range (aka about $10k-$30k roughly). When computing costs it is something you definitely need to consider in the equation. The cost of the battery pack may have gone down somewhat, but considering that the standard Li-ion battery that Tesla is using for its battery pack is already at commodity prices (very dependent upon the raw material costs and not so much on manufacturing costs), I don't expect to see a huge cost saving there any time soon.
For myself, I think electric automobiles are cool by themselves and have a number of advantages over gasoline vehicles that more than make up for the difference in price even if everything else stays the same. That electric vehicle manufacturing makes reducing highway noise levels a matter of civil engineers rather than mechanical is a huge bonus.
And what''s your standing to complain? Unless you're up there in their political elite, they aren't beholden to you in any way.
I didn't say that they owe me anything. I was merely implying that China doesn't appear to be interested in really establishing anything other than a flag waving presence in space and doesn't seem to want to learn how to do much once they get up there. People forget stuff over time and really complex things like going into space requires practice and experimentation.
My point is that China is going to hit a brick wall technologically if they don't start to ramp up their flight rate and do something more than simply saying "we've done that".
There is a group of folks, particularly in America, that seem to feel that China making all of this "progress" in space is somehow justification to do stuff like doubling the budget for NASA so America can supposedly "compete" against China in a new space race. While I could care less about what China does or doesn't do in space and certainly my voice is irrelevant so far as the political elite there say, as an American citizen I do give a damn about how my own tax dollars are being spent in regards to this "threat" to America. It impacts how I vote, including in my involvement in the over all political process in advocating points of view for space policy.
Or more to the point, I think this is just a facade on the part of China for which America doesn't really need to worry. The real space race is between Boeing, SpaceX, and possibly either Blue Origin and Stratolaunch with Arianespace and RKK Energia as worthy competitors. China shouldn't even really be treated realistically as a competitor and certainly isn't in a position to be a place for Boeing and other American companies to outsource rocket development (not that China would mind).
In the meantime, China is trying to fight the Cold War space race that is long since over, even though they may end up planing the Chinese flag at Tranquility Base next to the one put up by Armstrong and Aldrin. That may piss off a whole bunch of American politicians and may even be a wet dream for hardcore NASA supporters in terms of getting stuff like the SLS built, but I'm trying to suggest that even if China gets to that point it will be largely irrelevant.
The US didn't just used techniques developed in Nazi Germany. They had Nazis from Nazi Germany built the rockets for them. Basically, americans just provided the money and sat back while the Nazis built their freedom rockets.
This is so patently false that I simply must say you are full of it.
Yes, there were many of the rocket engineers who worked on the V-2 rockets of Nazi Germany which were hired by the U.S. Army Ordinance Command at the conclusion of World War II (through something called Operational Paperclip). Their contribution and experience was vital for developing the early ICBMs and rockets that later were developed by NASA as well as the U.S. Air Force.
All this said, it is ignoring the contribution and hard work by thousands of engineers and aerospace workers who helped to contribute to the development of American spaceflight. There is no way that the "Nazis" could have built all of this stuff without the insight and extremely hard work by ordinary Americans. Yes, they learned a whole lot from the German scientists, but this is gross oversimplification of what actually happened and is frankly insulting too.
The experiments that you are talking about were done in "simulated microgravity" using magnetic fields to try and neutralize gravitational influences and other techniques, and not actually flying to experiments in space. The sad fact is that in spite of the fact that there have been several mice sent into space including a couple long-term studies done on the ISS, procreation has not been one of the aspects studied nor has any multi-generational studies been done or even attempted in terms of what might happen in space among placental mammals.
There was a pregnant rat which gave birth successfully to very healthy babies on board the Space Shuttle, but she conceived on the ground and that was a relatively short term study with that flight lasting only two weeks.
I'm sure that a bunch of horny mice could likely figure out how to get their equipment to work in space. I'm just disappointed that nobody has bothered to let them try in the first place. Even worse, I think it will need to be human experiments that will be tried before somebody gets smart and thinks it should be something seriously investigated.
In the end, the only thing you can really conclude is that nobody knows what will happen if you attempt to conceive a baby in space, and that anything you have read on the topic is pure conjecture and speculation not based upon any actual science on the topic. That is the reason some long term space mission planning such as sending people to Mars includes ideas like sterilization of the spaceflight participants, because of sheer ignorance about the topic and the mission planners simply don't want to even think about the potential of astronauts creating additional passengers that will show up on the manifest for the return flight.
A huge difference between Gemini 8 and Shenzhou 9 is that Armstrong and Scott were actually piloting their spacecraft where instead the pilots of the Shenzhou spacecraft are sitting at mission control.
I am fairly certain that if remote control technology has been sophisticated enough at the time, then NASA would also have done it by remote control.
Not really. This is basically a difference in attitude towards those who are inside of the spacecraft, where an American philosophy is that those inside of the spacecraft ought to be much more directly in charge of what is going on, while the Chinese/Soviet philosophy was one of paranoia that the spaceflight participants might do something politically embarrassing so that authority was taken away.
The original plan for the Mercury spaceflights was to be largely automated, with the astronauts being largely "spam in a can" and really not doing anything other than being a passenger and enjoying the ride. Considering the Mercury astronauts were all test pilot instructors (qualified not just as test pilots but to teach people how to become those as well), there was a minor revolt within the astronaut corps that insisted some level of actual piloting should take place inside of the spacecraft, where key decisions about the progress of the spacecraft such as abort decisions and proceeding through various milestones rested upon the mission commander... in some cases with the mission commander alone.
Note also that much of the early NASA technology for launching astronauts into space came from the ICBM missile development, where significant automation already took place. The first spaceflights for the Mercury program used Chimpanzees, who obviously weren't rated as pilots or expected to do much other than take in the ride.
I'll note that the attitude of allowing manual control has made a difference in several missions and allowed a successful conclusion to those missions that otherwise might have gone badly. Gemini 8 was one of those situations BTW, where the astronauts weren't able to explain their situation to ground control due to a loss of telemetry and garbled communications until after they had finally resolved the situation. Another was the ability of the astronauts to rework Apollo 13 in order to get them to come home. I'm sure other situations could be brought up where real piloting skill was applied, including John Glenn's decision to not jettison his retro-rockets on the Friendship 7 flight. John Glenn also switched to a manual flight mode due to problems he noticed during the flight, not trusting the automated system that was in place.
I think the total size of the economy is more important in attempting to measure a country's ability to maintain a national space program. Otherwise some small but rich European or oil-producing country would have also launched humans into space a long time ago. The Soviet Union was clearly poorer than the US in per capita terms, but managed to beat the US to several early space milestones.
I suppose that is where these crazy nerds come along and try to prove your notion could work all along. I'll admit their goal is more to duplicate Alan Shepard's flight rather than John Glenn's, but it is none the less showing that more countries and people are coming together and trying to get into space.
Russia might get a little nervous if Denmark starts to attempt orbital spaceflight though. These guys are using a launch site in the Baltic Sea, and extra nerd points are earned because the "ground crew" for the launch site works out of a submarine on launch day.
My largest complaint about the Chinese space program is the lack of operational tempo. Simply put, they aren't really in the habit of sending stuff into space and they are waiting too long between flights if they want to gain institutional knowledge about how to perform tasks in space. The last previous flight for Chinese astronauts was in 2008, although there was an "unmanned" spaceflight last year which acted as a dress rehearsal for this flight.
All this said, I will admit that this is a significant accomplishment and something which speaks volumes about the technical accomplishments of China. The organizations which have been able to achieve this milestone are rather small, and for manned spaceflight is only NASA, Roscosmos, and now CNSA (Chinese National Space Agency), with just JAXA, ESA, and SpaceX as the only other organizations to perform this task using unmanned spacecraft.
Still, all China has done so far is more or less replicate Gemini 8, avoiding the problems that nearly killed Neil Armstrong and David Scott. They have a long way to go if they want to turn this into any sort of useful experience to get them anywhere else, but they can start to have their astronauts do stuff more elaborate than simply being potty-trained monkeys who know how to wave flags. A huge difference between Gemini 8 and Shenzhou 9 is that Armstrong and Scott were actually piloting their spacecraft where instead the pilots of the Shenzhou spacecraft are sitting at mission control.
For example?
I think the GP is talking about the Alterans in this historical documentary including a discussion of this city located a few miles to the west of San Francisco.
One of the goals for building the ISS was also to transfer knowledge (at a price) from Russia to the USA over how they were able to build MIR and to get access to the engineering history of MIR and the Almaz and Salyut programs. While in theory Skylab could have had two crews docked at the same time, such a task was never actually performed, nor were any "resupply" flights like Russia did with the Salyut program and subsequently done with MIR and the ISS. That whole process started with the Shuttle-MIR missions where engineering technology and knowledge was shared between the two countries on an extensive basis where Russia certainly had a whole lot to bring to the table.
What China brings certainly is doubtful. Japan at least had a pile of money, and while they did build the Kibo, Japan used American and European launchers for putting up most of the pieces.
To be fair, there is the Dragon Lab that is going to be conducting microgravity experiments being done by both European and American companies and a few governments.
The problem is that at the moment (besides a few companies who are getting into the experiment aggregator business and offering much smaller prices for small experiments) any research laboratory who wants to conduct this kind of research must pay for the whole launch and build things to fit into the time scales and process of traditional orbital spaceflight systems. Those are extremely expensive, requiring all of the testing and environmental conditioning that you need for operating as an independent spacecraft.
NanoRacks has a business model that seems to be making them a whole bunch of money to provide this "hole in our knowledge", particularly for commercial research that may end up making a profit in the future. Their manifest seems to indicate at least some people are interested in that kind of research and they have a backlog of customers waiting for the next flight.
Both Russia and Japan (ISS partners) were very cold to the idea as well. It wasn't just the "North American country" that was the problem. About the only ISS partner that didn't have a problem with China joining was Brazil... a real power-house among the ISS partners.
Another problem China faced is that they wanted to put up their own modules and wanted to do the docking on their own. A very real concern is that China, with their vast experience at in-orbit rendezvous and orbital construction being brought to the table, would likely end up taking out a portion of the ISS in any attempt to dock with it. The ISS was not envisioned to be a toy for inexperienced aerospace engineers trying to prove how their equipment works as a test article, and simply put didn't trust any of the equipment China was proposing to be used on the ISS including the capsules that would hold Chinese astronauts.
China wouldn't put up with the high level reviews by the ISS partners like SpaceX had to go through in order to meet up with the ISS. Having to humble themselves down to that level is something that also just doesn't sit well with the Chinese psyche and worldview.
It is interesting that you are talking about a Saturn V competitor from SpaceX, as Elon Musk is working on an engine design called the Merlin 2, which is claimed to have a similar thrust rating as the F1 engine built for the Saturn V 1st stage. The idea behind the engine is to build something where the Falcon 9 only needs a single engine, yet these engines could be clustered for a much larger rocket.
The problem that SpaceX is facing for building such a vehicle is that Elon Musk (in an interview that I've long since lost the link to, but you can dig it up) estimated that it would somewhere between $1-2 billion to develop, which is a bit more than the company can afford with their current revenue stream. If Elon says it is going to cost about $2 billion, I can't even imagine what NASA says such a thing would cost. NASA isn't even developing a new engine for the SLS, where they are simply reusing the SSMEs from the Space Shuttle (with apparently a slight "upgrade" for some future flights once they burn through all of the engines left over from the Shuttle program).
It should noted that besides the Merlin engine, the last engine built for orbital spaceflight in America was the engine used on the Delta IV, and the USAF (with its contractors) had to pull engineers out of retirement in order to get that one built. Big engines aren't easy to be built, where a whole lot of things that can go wrong and where lessons learned on much smaller engines don't easily translate to the larger scale size.
Even Russia had a problem building the huge engines like the F1, where instead they chose to cluster 30 engines in what I think is the most amazing plumbing job ever in the history of mankind with the N1 rocket. The business end of that rocket is a sight to behold. Even that was something that the Soviet era engineers could never really resolve either, and is the primary reason that the Soviet Union never made the trip to the Moon.
Regardless, there isn't a market for rockets that size. If space tourism takes off in a big way and telecommunication satellites start to be built to be human serviceable so crewed flights are needed for upgrades and repairs (something of a possibility I might add), there might be an ongoing need for a larger rocket. In the meantime almost everything needed in space including a trip to Mars can be built with smaller rockets more along the line of the Falcon Heavy or even launchers like the Atlas V and Delta IV. Something like the NAUTLUS-X can easily be built with vehicles in that size, where the task of mating pieces up together in orbit is an already proven technology, thanks to MIR and the ISS (with a little help from "Dr. Rendezvous" Buzz Aldrin).