I've met this type on irc as well. Don't sweat it; for them, empty, profanity-laced insult exchanges serve for (a) masculinity proof; (b) intellectual sparring; and/or (c) ego gratification. It's a common cultural antipattern in a certain (unnamed) country.
It's kind of a pity though, because damburger seems to be at least somewhat well-informed about the technical aspects of spaceflight, and I thought it might be good to get his views minus the trolling. Oh well.
The fuel cost of launching a person to orbit is on the order of few tens of thousands of dollars.
Yup. A misconception I often see is that huge amounts of fuel needed is a big part of the costs of spaceflight, since it composes the majority of the costs for just about any other form of transportation. In reality though, the costs of fuel in spaceflight are around 1% of the total cost.
I'm also curious, but at what point would you consider SpaceX deserving of congratulations? Their first successful Falcon 9 launch? Their first manned launch? Their first launch to a private space station? Their first circumlunar navigation? Their first lunar landing? Their first Mars landing?
Would you consider them deserving of kudos at that point, or would you still find something to gripe about them?
August 1, 2008 - Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX ) conducted the first nine engine firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on July 31st. A second firing on August 1st completed a major NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) milestone almost two months early.
At full power, the nine engines consumed 3,200 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second, and generated almost 850,000 pounds of force - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. This marks the first firing of a Falcon 9 first stage with its full complement of nine Merlin 1C engines . Once a near term Merlin 1C fuel pump upgrade is complete, the sea level thrust will increase to 950,000 lbf, making Falcon 9 the most powerful single core vehicle in the United States.
âoeThis was the most difficult milestone in development of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and it also constitutes a significant achievement in US space vehicle development. Not since the final flight of the Saturn 1B rocket in 1975, has a rocket had the ability to lose any engine or motor and still successfully complete its mission,â said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. âoeMuch like a commercial airliner, our multi-engine design has the potential to provide significantly higher reliability than single engine competitors.â
âoeWe made a major advancement from the previous five engine test by adding four new Merlin engines at once,â said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. âoeAll phases of integration went smoothly and we were elated to see all nine engines working perfectly in concert.â
It's good to see SpaceX provide an alternative means of access to space, but they had to stand on the shoulders of giants to get there.
Sure... governments are very good at developing the initial iterations of certain technologies, but atrociously bad at making it cost-effective and available to the masses. You typically need private industry for that, which is exactly what SpaceX is doing.
Perhaps I should take your lead then. Any articles about the Shenzhou programme (which, btw, is doing pretty well to cost only 20 times as much as Musks effort considering how much more they are doing) are dogged with comments about 'chinks' and how they must be faking it because they couldn't possibly grasp high technology, followed by some comments about Tibet by people who get awfully defensive about Iraq. It gets pretty ugly.
Sure, and as we've just seen, apparently stories about SpaceX's successes are dogged with comments about slashdotters wanting to jump on CEO's cocks. Fortunately both sorts of comments tend to get modded down pretty quickly as ignorant and/or irrelevant.
Clustering 9 engines considering the shit they went through getting one to work. Its going to be some pretty fireworks.
Are there any particular failure modes you have in mind that they might be prone to? Do you believe they'll be unable to replicate the procedures which led to success on this past flight? Why not?
Looking what the Big Nasty State of China just did, private enterprise is looking positively lame. Even with this launch, Musk's rocket still has only a 25% success rate and can only launch a few kilos into orbit.
Uh sure, and to get to this point SpaceX's total expenditures (over 6 years) have been around a half billion dollars. In contrast, China spends around $2 billion every year. China may be ahead of SpaceX for the time being, but it'll be interesting to see where they are a few years from now.
Slashdotters seem more than willing to jump on Elon Musk's "entrepreneurial" cock but at the same time make racist statements when the Chinese government achieves a far more significant space milestone.
Um, what? I didn't see much of that myself, although I usually only read at +3 or higher. Are the people who are congratulating Elon Musk the same folks who were making racist statements about Chinese efforts?
Nice One! Although the press release says this time around it carried a "payload mass simulator" which I'm guessing means "nothing we're gonna sweat over getting blowed up" - no satellites or
When I was watching the webcast, Musk kept on joking about a "RatSat" when congratulating his employees after the successful launch. It sounded like they just had a metal cylinder with a drawing of a rat on the side.
Scotty's ashes or such.
You probably already know this, but just in case, the previous SpaceX rocket only carried a symbolic portion (1 gram or so) of "Scotty's" ashes. Assuming the family is still interested, they'll probably just try launching again on a future flight.
A few days ago the Washington Post had a pretty interesting discussion/interview with Elon Musk, the CEO/CTO/founder/funder of SpaceX. Some juicy tidbits, which are even more exciting in the context of today's launch success:
Washington, D.C.: If and when you manage to get all the Falcons and Dragon up and running, what's next? Further incremental improvements on these or something more revolutionary? Also, where do you stand on the value of the various X-prizes (and equivalents)?
Elon Musk: Still a long way to getting *all* the Falcons and Dragons flying. We need to get F1 to orbit for one thing:) Then F9, F9 with Cargo Dragon, F9 with crew Drago and F9 Heavy. My interest is very much in the direction of Mars, so a Mars lander of some kind might be the next step....
Stillwater, Minn.: Mr. Musk, first of all, I've been following SpaceX via your website since before Flight 1, and I hope to join you all someday (I'm an undergrad ChEg at Notre Dame). Talk about the inherent advantages of your rockets over those designed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing (reusability, smaller size = significantly smaller cost, redundancies on the Falcon 9, etc.)
Elon Musk: The full answer for why SpaceX is lower cost is too long for this forum and I don't like to give soundbite answers if they are incorrect. The cost of a single use rocket is:
We are better on every one at SpaceX vs competitors -- by a factor of two vs most international and four vs domestic. That is before reuse is considered, which could ultimately be a 10X or more additional reduction....
Cocoa Beach, Fla.: Congress mistakenly took the first step towards extending the shuttle program. Anyone in the know is aware that this is impossible given the cost of re-certification. Why then is this being supported at any level. Why isn't Congress saying anything about privatizing our space effort?
Marc Kaufman: Congress has put up some money for privatizing the space effort, and SpaceX has indeed been the main beneficiary. I think that Congress and NASA are waiting for a successful launch before going more deeply into expanding the privatizing.
Those initial steps taken by Congress regarding extending the shuttle program are a reflection of just how strongly people feel about the five-year gap, during which there are no current clear alternatives to paying Russia for Soyuz transport. Extending the shuttle could close some of that gap, and could also allow some very expensive and promising equipment--now absent from the rest of the shuttle manifests- to be delivered to the station. One grounded, $1.5 billion piece of equipment in particular has become very controversial because scores of institutioins and national space agencies helped pay for it.....
Urbana, Ill.: Right now you have two rockets based on the same first-stage engine (Merlin). To launch Falcon 9 Heavy, you'll need 27 of those engines to fire simultaneously. Do you have any plans to develop a larger engine in the future so that such clustering is not necessary?
Elon Musk: Yeah, I think there is an argument for a really really big Falcon engine or BFE, as we call it:)
That would be equal or greater to the thrust of 27 Merlin 1C engines. Would be exciting to see that fire!...
Calistoga, Calif.: Elon, Your business plan emphasis low man power as cost savings method, how does NASA documentation requirements impact your man power requirements? In other words, how many of SpaceX staff are on board solely to deal with NASA
I've been waiting for their success for the past 5 years or so, and I'm absolutely ecstatic.
They have a couple more Falcon 1 flights scheduled for this year, with their first Falcon 9 flight next year. The Falcon 9 is considerably larger, and is the vehicle SpaceX plans to use for delivering cargo and crew to the International Space Station.
I imagine that there's been a number of announcements waiting in the wings for SpaceX's first successful flight. Perhaps we'll be hearing soon about a more formal arrangement between SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace with their private space station plans?
I'm all for learning from my mistakes, but how much do these things cost to build and launch
SpaceX charges $6.7 million for them. They apparently make a profit at that price, so the actual costs are presumably somewhat less than that.
It should be noted though that in general the per-launch costs (fuel, materials, etc.) tend to be quite low compared to the costs of paying the salaries of people in the company. One of the reasons SpaceX's prices are so low compared to the competition is because they designed from the get-go to minimize the number of people required to build and launch their rockets.
They have insisted on relearning the lessons of the past 60 years the hard way.
Actually, it's more that they're starting from scratch, taking advantage of the lessons learned from the past 60 years. When mistakes have occurred, they've fixed the bug and tried again. Nothing that I've seen suggests any problems inherent to what they're doing.
I simply don't think a private corporation can afford the learning curve.
In 1986, in the case of Doe v. Superior Court, the Alaskan Supreme Court ruled that there is a limited "executive" or "deliberative process" privilege that protects communications between the governor and his or her aides about policy matters. This decision related to internal communications about advice, opinions and recommendations. In a 2000 case, Gwich'in Steering Committee v. Office of the Governor, the court said the privilege is intended to "protect the mental processes of governmental decisionmakers from interference."
Also, from what I've seen a lot of what people are describing as "political communications" actually has to do with political campaigning. If I understand correctly, it would actually be unethical to use a government account for that sort of communication.
I respect your opinion on this issue, though I don't agree. Sarah Palin has done the exact same thing that Bush did - hide governing related communications on non-government servers. I believe this is illegal.
That's a federal law. Does Alaskan law have something similar, or is it even Alaskan government policy to restrict communications on non-government servers? (I personally don't know)
He might hit it eventually, but not at a lower cost that state programmes. The idea that private enterprise is better at space is a masturbatory fantasy of libertarians, and nothing more.
Actually, I bet that if NASA ever attempted to create an orbital launcher with the design goal of minimizing long-term costs, they could probably have a cost comparable to SpaceX's. However, the fact is that they haven't, and have no plans (and little incentive) to do so.
Coincidentally, a few days ago I created an entry on the HubDub virtual-money prediction market on the question of who would land the next human on the Moon:
It's currently standing at 41% US, 14% China, 11% Russia, 3% Japan, 3% India, 26% private organization, and a 3% chance that there won't be any humans on the moon between now and 2025.
It might be fun to create similar markets for Lunar and Martian settlements, but it's been already hard enough getting a sufficient number of long-term bids on the lunar landing contract.
In Scott Adams's survey of members of the American Economic Association, he found 48% Democrats, 17% Republicans, 27% Independents, 3% Libertarian, and 5% Other or not registered. However, in this working paper by Gross and Simmons (at Harvard and GMU, respectively), surveying economists working in academia, they find 34.3% Democrats, 37.1% Independents, and 28.6% Republicans.
Anyone have ideas on what's up with the disparities in the statistics? The only explanation I can think of is that the AEA includes economists in the public sector, where (as one might expect) folks tend to favor government intervention in the economy.
(By the way, for anyone curious, the stats for academia as a whole are 45.2% Democrats, 38.9% Independents, and 15.9% Republicans. In English it's 51.0/47.1/2.0, in computer science it's 32.3/58.1/9.7, and in electrical engineering it's 13.2/55.3/31.6)
Have us engineering students, engineers and insane rocket enthusiasts/investors design a mission to mars using live animals to test as many technologies as possible before you even think of sending a human mission. We US engineers are either bored building endless varieties of consumer crap or worrying what are we will be asked to build in a war with Russia and Iran. I vote C, a moused mission to mars. Think of the merchandising!
Actually, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, a collaboration between MIT and Georgia Tech, is working on something analogous to what you describe. They aren't planning on actually sending it to Mars though, just Earth orbit:
The Mars Gravity Biosatellite will carry a small population of mice to low Earth orbit aboard a spinning spacecraft creating "artificial gravity" equivalent to that on the Martian surface. The five-week mission will conduct the first in-depth study of how mammals adapt to a reduced-gravity environment. Groundbreaking data from this mission and its successors will be essential in determining future possibilities for human space exploration.
One of the areas where Pakistani support is most needed is in Waziristan. This is a region which borders Afghanistan and is technically part of Pakistan, but is effectively controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda -- it's generally regarded that if Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri are still alive, this is where they are operating from. I imagine that if India were to attempt to engage in military activities there, even though it isn't really controlled by Pakistan, Pakistan would still see it as an act of war against them. Plus they'd need to fly over a decent chunk of Pakistan to get there.
Slashdot Mirror
I've met this type on irc as well. Don't sweat it; for them, empty, profanity-laced insult exchanges serve for (a) masculinity proof; (b) intellectual sparring; and/or (c) ego gratification. It's a common cultural antipattern in a certain (unnamed) country.
It's kind of a pity though, because damburger seems to be at least somewhat well-informed about the technical aspects of spaceflight, and I thought it might be good to get his views minus the trolling. Oh well.
The fuel cost of launching a person to orbit is on the order of few tens of thousands of dollars.
Yup. A misconception I often see is that huge amounts of fuel needed is a big part of the costs of spaceflight, since it composes the majority of the costs for just about any other form of transportation. In reality though, the costs of fuel in spaceflight are around 1% of the total cost.
I'm also curious, but at what point would you consider SpaceX deserving of congratulations? Their first successful Falcon 9 launch? Their first manned launch? Their first launch to a private space station? Their first circumlunar navigation? Their first lunar landing? Their first Mars landing?
Would you consider them deserving of kudos at that point, or would you still find something to gripe about them?
Check your facts before you call someone and idiot next time you cocksucker.
When did I call you an idiot? I've just been trying to understand your reasoning. Why are you so hostile?
Also, in case other readers aren't sure what I'm referring to:
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/spacex_9enginefire.html
August 1, 2008 - Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX ) conducted the first nine engine firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on July 31st. A second firing on August 1st completed a major NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) milestone almost two months early.
At full power, the nine engines consumed 3,200 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second, and generated almost 850,000 pounds of force - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. This marks the first firing of a Falcon 9 first stage with its full complement of nine Merlin 1C engines . Once a near term Merlin 1C fuel pump upgrade is complete, the sea level thrust will increase to 950,000 lbf, making Falcon 9 the most powerful single core vehicle in the United States.
âoeThis was the most difficult milestone in development of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and it also constitutes a significant achievement in US space vehicle development. Not since the final flight of the Saturn 1B rocket in 1975, has a rocket had the ability to lose any engine or motor and still successfully complete its mission,â said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. âoeMuch like a commercial airliner, our multi-engine design has the potential to provide significantly higher reliability than single engine competitors.â
âoeWe made a major advancement from the previous five engine test by adding four new Merlin engines at once,â said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. âoeAll phases of integration went smoothly and we were elated to see all nine engines working perfectly in concert.â
If they just replicate the procedures of the past flight the thing WILL blow up. Clustering is not a trivial problem at all.
Do you still believe it'll blow up even if they incorporate what they've learned from their clustered-engine test stand firings over the past year?
It's good to see SpaceX provide an alternative means of access to space, but they had to stand on the shoulders of giants to get there.
Sure... governments are very good at developing the initial iterations of certain technologies, but atrociously bad at making it cost-effective and available to the masses. You typically need private industry for that, which is exactly what SpaceX is doing.
Perhaps I should take your lead then. Any articles about the Shenzhou programme (which, btw, is doing pretty well to cost only 20 times as much as Musks effort considering how much more they are doing) are dogged with comments about 'chinks' and how they must be faking it because they couldn't possibly grasp high technology, followed by some comments about Tibet by people who get awfully defensive about Iraq. It gets pretty ugly.
Sure, and as we've just seen, apparently stories about SpaceX's successes are dogged with comments about slashdotters wanting to jump on CEO's cocks. Fortunately both sorts of comments tend to get modded down pretty quickly as ignorant and/or irrelevant.
Ok... which do you think is more likely to make it?
Coincidentally, I created a market over on HubDub for this a couple weeks ago: http://www.hubdub.com/m15450/What_will_be_the_next_US_launch_vehicle_to_send_humans_into_orbit
Clustering 9 engines considering the shit they went through getting one to work. Its going to be some pretty fireworks.
Are there any particular failure modes you have in mind that they might be prone to? Do you believe they'll be unable to replicate the procedures which led to success on this past flight? Why not?
And it would of course depend on Musk being able to make Falcon 9 work; far from certain.
What do you think are the show-stoppers?
I'm curious, but between SpaceX and the Ares I, which do you think will be transporting crew to orbit first?
Looking what the Big Nasty State of China just did, private enterprise is looking positively lame. Even with this launch, Musk's rocket still has only a 25% success rate and can only launch a few kilos into orbit.
Uh sure, and to get to this point SpaceX's total expenditures (over 6 years) have been around a half billion dollars. In contrast, China spends around $2 billion every year. China may be ahead of SpaceX for the time being, but it'll be interesting to see where they are a few years from now.
Slashdotters seem more than willing to jump on Elon Musk's "entrepreneurial" cock but at the same time make racist statements when the Chinese government achieves a far more significant space milestone.
Um, what? I didn't see much of that myself, although I usually only read at +3 or higher. Are the people who are congratulating Elon Musk the same folks who were making racist statements about Chinese efforts?
Nice One! Although the press release says this time around it carried a "payload mass simulator" which I'm guessing means "nothing we're gonna sweat over getting blowed up" - no satellites or
When I was watching the webcast, Musk kept on joking about a "RatSat" when congratulating his employees after the successful launch. It sounded like they just had a metal cylinder with a drawing of a rat on the side.
Scotty's ashes or such.
You probably already know this, but just in case, the previous SpaceX rocket only carried a symbolic portion (1 gram or so) of "Scotty's" ashes. Assuming the family is still interested, they'll probably just try launching again on a future flight.
A few days ago the Washington Post had a pretty interesting discussion/interview with Elon Musk, the CEO/CTO/founder/funder of SpaceX. Some juicy tidbits, which are even more exciting in the context of today's launch success:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/09/24/DI2008092402502.html
Washington, D.C.: If and when you manage to get all the Falcons and Dragon up and running, what's next? Further incremental improvements on these or something more revolutionary? Also, where do you stand on the value of the various X-prizes (and equivalents)?
Elon Musk: Still a long way to getting *all* the Falcons and Dragons flying. We need to get F1 to orbit for one thing :) Then F9, F9 with Cargo Dragon, F9 with crew Drago and F9 Heavy. My interest is very much in the direction of Mars, so a Mars lander of some kind might be the next step. ...
Stillwater, Minn.: Mr. Musk, first of all, I've been following SpaceX via your website since before Flight 1, and I hope to join you all someday (I'm an undergrad ChEg at Notre Dame). Talk about the inherent advantages of your rockets over those designed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing (reusability, smaller size = significantly smaller cost, redundancies on the Falcon 9, etc.)
Elon Musk: The full answer for why SpaceX is lower cost is too long for this forum and I don't like to give soundbite answers if they are incorrect. The cost of a single use rocket is:
* Engines
* Structures
* Avionics
* Launch operation
* Overhead
We are better on every one at SpaceX vs competitors -- by a factor of two vs most international and four vs domestic. That is before reuse is considered, which could ultimately be a 10X or more additional reduction. ...
Cocoa Beach, Fla.: Congress mistakenly took the first step towards extending the shuttle program. Anyone in the know is aware that this is impossible given the cost of re-certification. Why then is this being supported at any level. Why isn't Congress saying anything about privatizing our space effort?
Marc Kaufman: Congress has put up some money for privatizing the space effort, and SpaceX has indeed been the main beneficiary. I think that Congress and NASA are waiting for a successful launch before going more deeply into expanding the privatizing.
Those initial steps taken by Congress regarding extending the shuttle program are a reflection of just how strongly people feel about the five-year gap, during which there are no current clear alternatives to paying Russia for Soyuz transport. Extending the shuttle could close some of that gap, and could also allow some very expensive and promising equipment--now absent from the rest of the shuttle manifests- to be delivered to the station. One grounded, $1.5 billion piece of equipment in particular has become very controversial because scores of institutioins and national space agencies helped pay for it. ....
Urbana, Ill.: Right now you have two rockets based on the same first-stage engine (Merlin). To launch Falcon 9 Heavy, you'll need 27 of those engines to fire simultaneously. Do you have any plans to develop a larger engine in the future so that such clustering is not necessary?
Elon Musk: Yeah, I think there is an argument for a really really big Falcon engine or BFE, as we call it :)
That would be equal or greater to the thrust of 27 Merlin 1C engines. Would be exciting to see that fire! ...
Calistoga, Calif.: Elon, Your business plan emphasis low man power as cost savings method, how does NASA documentation requirements impact your man power requirements? In other words, how many of SpaceX staff are on board solely to deal with NASA
I've been waiting for their success for the past 5 years or so, and I'm absolutely ecstatic.
They have a couple more Falcon 1 flights scheduled for this year, with their first Falcon 9 flight next year. The Falcon 9 is considerably larger, and is the vehicle SpaceX plans to use for delivering cargo and crew to the International Space Station.
I imagine that there's been a number of announcements waiting in the wings for SpaceX's first successful flight. Perhaps we'll be hearing soon about a more formal arrangement between SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace with their private space station plans?
I'm all for learning from my mistakes, but how much do these things cost to build and launch
SpaceX charges $6.7 million for them. They apparently make a profit at that price, so the actual costs are presumably somewhat less than that.
It should be noted though that in general the per-launch costs (fuel, materials, etc.) tend to be quite low compared to the costs of paying the salaries of people in the company. One of the reasons SpaceX's prices are so low compared to the competition is because they designed from the get-go to minimize the number of people required to build and launch their rockets.
They have insisted on relearning the lessons of the past 60 years the hard way.
Actually, it's more that they're starting from scratch, taking advantage of the lessons learned from the past 60 years. When mistakes have occurred, they've fixed the bug and tried again. Nothing that I've seen suggests any problems inherent to what they're doing.
I simply don't think a private corporation can afford the learning curve.
What is your reason for this belief?
Yes, its the Alaska Public Records Act.
Thanks. I did a bit of googling, and I'm not sure but I think advisory communications between the governor and her advisors may be exempted:
http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Alaska_Public_Records_Act
In 1986, in the case of Doe v. Superior Court, the Alaskan Supreme Court ruled that there is a limited "executive" or "deliberative process" privilege that protects communications between the governor and his or her aides about policy matters. This decision related to internal communications about advice, opinions and recommendations. In a 2000 case, Gwich'in Steering Committee v. Office of the Governor, the court said the privilege is intended to "protect the mental processes of governmental decisionmakers from interference."
Also, from what I've seen a lot of what people are describing as "political communications" actually has to do with political campaigning. If I understand correctly, it would actually be unethical to use a government account for that sort of communication.
I respect your opinion on this issue, though I don't agree. Sarah Palin has done the exact same thing that Bush did - hide governing related communications on non-government servers. I believe this is illegal.
That's a federal law. Does Alaskan law have something similar, or is it even Alaskan government policy to restrict communications on non-government servers? (I personally don't know)
He might hit it eventually, but not at a lower cost that state programmes. The idea that private enterprise is better at space is a masturbatory fantasy of libertarians, and nothing more.
Actually, I bet that if NASA ever attempted to create an orbital launcher with the design goal of minimizing long-term costs, they could probably have a cost comparable to SpaceX's. However, the fact is that they haven't, and have no plans (and little incentive) to do so.
Coincidentally, a few days ago I created an entry on the HubDub virtual-money prediction market on the question of who would land the next human on the Moon:
http://www.hubdub.com/m15456/Who_will_land_the_next_human_on_the_Moon
It's currently standing at 41% US, 14% China, 11% Russia, 3% Japan, 3% India, 26% private organization, and a 3% chance that there won't be any humans on the moon between now and 2025.
It might be fun to create similar markets for Lunar and Martian settlements, but it's been already hard enough getting a sufficient number of long-term bids on the lunar landing contract.
In Scott Adams's survey of members of the American Economic Association, he found 48% Democrats, 17% Republicans, 27% Independents, 3% Libertarian, and 5% Other or not registered. However, in this working paper by Gross and Simmons (at Harvard and GMU, respectively), surveying economists working in academia, they find 34.3% Democrats, 37.1% Independents, and 28.6% Republicans.
Anyone have ideas on what's up with the disparities in the statistics? The only explanation I can think of is that the AEA includes economists in the public sector, where (as one might expect) folks tend to favor government intervention in the economy.
(By the way, for anyone curious, the stats for academia as a whole are 45.2% Democrats, 38.9% Independents, and 15.9% Republicans. In English it's 51.0/47.1/2.0, in computer science it's 32.3/58.1/9.7, and in electrical engineering it's 13.2/55.3/31.6)
Have us engineering students, engineers and insane rocket enthusiasts/investors design a mission to mars using live animals to test as many technologies as possible before you even think of sending a human mission. We US engineers are either bored building endless varieties of consumer crap or worrying what are we will be asked to build in a war with Russia and Iran. I vote C, a moused mission to mars. Think of the merchandising!
Actually, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, a collaboration between MIT and Georgia Tech, is working on something analogous to what you describe. They aren't planning on actually sending it to Mars though, just Earth orbit:
The Mars Gravity Biosatellite will carry a small population of mice to low Earth orbit aboard a spinning spacecraft creating "artificial gravity" equivalent to that on the Martian surface. The five-week mission will conduct the first in-depth study of how mammals adapt to a reduced-gravity environment. Groundbreaking data from this mission and its successors will be essential in determining future possibilities for human space exploration.
One of the areas where Pakistani support is most needed is in Waziristan. This is a region which borders Afghanistan and is technically part of Pakistan, but is effectively controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda -- it's generally regarded that if Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri are still alive, this is where they are operating from. I imagine that if India were to attempt to engage in military activities there, even though it isn't really controlled by Pakistan, Pakistan would still see it as an act of war against them. Plus they'd need to fly over a decent chunk of Pakistan to get there.