Anybody who hasn't seen it already should check out Clark Lindsay's private spaceflight timeline on RLVNews.com. Basically, every January he compiles a listing of recent happenings in private spaceflight, and compiles announcements and predictions of future activity, trying to walk the line between being overly pessimistic and overly optimistic to try to get a realistic forecast. Of course, since the current forecast is almost a year old there's some things which are a little out of date: for example SpaceX has ran into some launch hitches, while Bigelow Aerospace has accelerated their private space station plans.
Very interesting. However, what I suggested is different in that it doesn't require an (extremely invasive and risky) brain implant, since it would monitor your brain signals indirectly through changes in your skin.
Here's info on the research into non-invasive versions:
Thanks for the response. I actually haven't read Thomas Friedman's book myself, but considering your comments on it, I might skip it and look elsewhere.
John Carmack also has a pretty interesting comment in reply to a post at Transterrestrial Musings about the incident and the nature of software problems in spaceflight:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/009577.ht ml
It is a bit murky to call, but I would classify the failure as a sensor failure, rather than a software failure. I have changed the software so that it will deal with the sensor behaving that way in the future, but every time a new sensor failure mode comes up, it would be unfair to blame the software for not predicting it.
It is easy for some people to deride software as "hacked together" if it doesn't conform to an ISO development process, but that is almost always a sign of ignorance.
Real software, in the real world, is developed in an iterative fashion, and there is a strong correlation between productivity and the speed of iteration. It is possible to develop software in other ways, but the much touted space shuttle software development path is probably a full three orders of magnitude less efficient than something done in startup mode. Since that is still a small cost relative to the full space shuttle program, it might possibly have been justified, but it doesn't mean it is a good way to start from a clean sheet of paper.
I do find it interesting that there is a decent contingent in the NewSpace crowd that is fairly software phobic. Software is one of the biggest advantage we have today, and replacing physical parts with code is one of the most productive things you can do.
An interesting question for people, that highlights their beliefs about engineering: Would you rather fly on the maiden voyage of a rocket that was designed and built to the highest ISO / MIL specs, or a rocket that was built in a garage, but had made 100 successful flights in a row?
In that case, only a blithering idiot would think the ISO rocket was safer, but finding the exact break point is more revealing. What if the ISO rocket had three good flights under its belt? What if the garage rocket had ten good flights, but the previous airframe had exploded, resulting in an engineering change? Do you think your odds would be better if Space Ship One was pulled back out for a flight, or on the maiden flight of Ares I?
I have a very explicit strategy to run our program so that failure is acceptable, and iterate as fast as we can. We have backup vehicles for a reason, and the big guys used to understand that back in the 50's. We are flying again on Saturday, so this didn't even slow us down.
Ahh, I'm bummed out now. I was really looking forward to seeing them at the X-Prize Cup in October. They were expected to claim the prize (for the level 1 lander challenge), as they had already completed flights matching the profile on their own, and just had to repeat it a the cup for it to be official. I don't know if they'll have enough time to rebuild the craft in time for the event.
That was just one of their vehicles. They still have Pixel. From Carmack's post:
We still have Pixel and Module 1 in flyable shape at the shop, so this doesn't have a critical impact on us, but it does change our testing plans for the next two months before the X-Prize Cup. We are cancelling the untethered 180 second flights for Pixel at OKSP. We will plan on doing two sets of back-to-back 180 flights under tether, but if we are going to risk a crash, it might as well be for the money at XPC now that we don't have a backup. We are going to finish up Module 2 in the next couple weeks so we have a backup for level 1. Modules 3 through 5 should also be at least frame constructed by XPC, but whether we get them wired and tested will depend on how our flight testing goes. If we manage to destroy a module in the next two months, we can crunch hard and get an extra one put together if necessary.
Thomas L. Friedman is an idiot. Perhaps, but he's also a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Do you have any reason to call him an idiot besides disagreeing with him?
We would have to have a Chernobyl event annually to compete with the death and destruction caused by the coal industry. Indeed. More people are killed every 10 years or so by coal power than have ever been killed by the entire history of nuclear power AND nuclear weapons.
Google is a decent company, but they do evil simply by virtue of dominating the market and being impossible for a newcomer to compete with. Is Google actually doing anything to prevent newcomers from entering the market?
That'd be a significant First. The habitat ready to go before the launch capability is there... That's pretty much the situation the International Space Station has been in for the past several years, with completed modules sitting around waiting until a shuttle can take them to orbit.;)
Parent comment: Inflatable, eh? Sounds, er, dangerous. No sharp objects, I hope...
Ugh, this ends up coming up every time there's a story on Bigelow Aerospace's habitat modules. From the wikipedia article on Bigelow Aerospace:
Contrary to many expectations, Bigelow Aerospace anticipates that its inflatable modules will be more durable than rigid modules.[3] This is partially due to the company's use of several layers of vectran, a material twice as strong as kevlar, and also because, in theory, flexible walls should be able to sustain micrometeorite impacts better than rigid walls. Also, from the BA 330 article:
Its skin, made of high-strength textiles and Vectran-like materials, is wrapped with several layers of high-tension straps. It is particularly resistant to damage from micrometeorites and debris.... It is incorrect to equate it with an air-filled balloon floating in space. Rather, when expanded the outer shell is as hard to the touch as concrete,[1] the redundancy of the multiple (10+) layers of the bladder tends to rapidly distribute the impact energy of very low-mass high-speed impactors through the layers. A regular aluminium space station module negates an impact with Kevlar armor or other absorptive material, which is marginally more likely to suffer a catastrophic puncture in the event of an impact.
I'm pretty excited about this news, as it seems like Bigelow might have his human-rated space station up and running as early as 2009. Here's the text of the official announcement:
Hopefully SpaceX will have some successful launches soon, in order to provide Bigelow with a drastically more cost-effective way to launch modules and people. It'd be beautiful to see a SpaceX Dragon crew capsule taking people up to Bigelow's Sundancer habitat.
TFA said 180 meters**2 of livable space. I have no intuitive feel for that, so I did some quick conversion: that's about three 18-wheeler trailers. Another way to think about it is that the 180 m^3 in their initial "small-size" Sundancer prototype module is 42.3% of the total current internal volume of all the modules in the International Space Station (425 m^3). Bigelow's next planning on producing BA 330 modules, each of which will have 330 m^3 and can be linked up with each other and the Sundancer.
I was just skimming Kotaku, and it looks like the developers just released a free 60-page art book today. There's plenty of horrifically beautiful goodness inside, although (as one might expect) also some spoilers:
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/artbook.html
Way back when I was creating the BioShock Limited Edition, I took a poll for what you guys wanted to see in the box. And while we managed to put your top 3 choices in - the Making of DVD, Sountrack CD, and Big Daddy Figurine, we just couldn't manage a BioShock artbook.
But with a game as beautiful as BioShock, that just didn't sit right with me. Because everyone should be able to experience the beauty of BioShock, see the concept art and visualize the evolution of building such a revolutionary game.
So, with the help of the BioShock team and an amazing art designer, I put together a BioShock artbook for everyone to download. Here it is, in all its glory, in two PDF versions: a smaller, ebook download, and a more hi-resolution version that you can take to your local printshop and bind.
The one thing I'd recommend is skipping over Ken's foreword until after you've played the game, as it holds some spoilers you might want to keep secret your first playthrough is complete.
Other than that, and without further ado, I present to you BioShock: Breaking the Mold.
> When the very same market predicted a Kerry victory after the close of the Ohio and Florida polls?
Yup, and most people in general were also predicting a Kerry win at that time. If you had bid on Bush at that time, you could've made a fine bit of money.
Firstly, this isn't Digg, can we please not link to blogs?
Although I also wish that the summary included a link to the original paper, I found the blog entry by GrrlScientist to be a good layman's summary of the research, and was glad it was linked.
It'd be cool if something like this was self-powered and could be controlled by EMG (the electric signals given off by contracting muscles), sort of like this prehensile tail that some folks made at the Telluride Neuromorphic Workshop a few years back:
I'm sure part of it's congress, but at the same time I don't think Congress explicitly requested things like the liquids bans and so forth. People at the TSA both want to make sure like they're doing something productive, and also be sure that if something bad happens they won't end up losing their jobs because of the media broadcasting that they should've done some random thing.
Basically, congress (and through it's actions, TSA and DHS) need to look like theyre being strong and "doing something" about a threat amped up by the 24/7 media's need to have high impact news to generate revenue.
Bruce Schneier had an interesting piece on this a while back on this sort of Cover-Your-Ass security.
Can someone explain how the federal government can fund a program whose sole purpose is clearly in violation of the first amendment?
The funding was done via a congressional earmark to a non-profit organization. I'm not sure, but I don't think there's any particular limitations on what an organization can then do with that money, since the organization itself is operating within the bounds of law. If anything though, this is further evidence that earmarks gloriously suck.
His work is financed by a Justice Department grant initially provided through a Congressional earmark inserted into a spending bill by Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia.
The grant, about $150,000 a year, has helped pay for Mr. Rogers and another retired law enforcement officer in Reno, Nev., to harvest and review complaints about obscene matter on the Internet that citizens register on the Justice Department Web site.
I am guessing that the article is talking about bigelow's.
Actually, that sounds quite possible, especially since Bigelow has stated that he emphatically doesn't want to get into the space hotel business directly, but would rather lease it to somebody else to do so. I would've thought the article would've mentioned something like that, though.
holy crap, they were not even talking about on the moon. They were talking orbital. $3 Billion is not enough to build a hotel, considering the ISS is cost at least 1 BILLION dollars per year to operate. As I've mentioned in another comment, Bigelow Aerospace already has a couple of one-third-size habitat prototypes in orbit right now, and he's stated that he doesn't plan to spend a total of more than $400 million on the project over the next several years.
Keep in mind that most of the $1.8 billion annual cost of the ISS is spent on space shuttle flight operations. Of course, since the space shuttle is used almost exclusively for the ISS, a good part of the $4 billion a year it costs to keep the shuttles running should probably be added to that as well. In any case, NASA's ISS spending figure isn't a good indicator of how much it would cost to run a for-profit orbital habitat.
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody who hasn't seen it already should check out Clark Lindsay's private spaceflight timeline on RLVNews.com. Basically, every January he compiles a listing of recent happenings in private spaceflight, and compiles announcements and predictions of future activity, trying to walk the line between being overly pessimistic and overly optimistic to try to get a realistic forecast. Of course, since the current forecast is almost a year old there's some things which are a little out of date: for example SpaceX has ran into some launch hitches, while Bigelow Aerospace has accelerated their private space station plans.
Very interesting. However, what I suggested is different in that it doesn't require an (extremely invasive and risky) brain implant, since it would monitor your brain signals indirectly through changes in your skin.
f ace#Non-invasive_BCIs
Here's info on the research into non-invasive versions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-computer_inter
Thanks for the response. I actually haven't read Thomas Friedman's book myself, but considering your comments on it, I might skip it and look elsewhere.
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/009577.h
It is easy for some people to deride software as "hacked together" if it doesn't conform to an ISO development process, but that is almost always a sign of ignorance.
Real software, in the real world, is developed in an iterative fashion, and there is a strong correlation between productivity and the speed of iteration. It is possible to develop software in other ways, but the much touted space shuttle software development path is probably a full three orders of magnitude less efficient than something done in startup mode. Since that is still a small cost relative to the full space shuttle program, it might possibly have been justified, but it doesn't mean it is a good way to start from a clean sheet of paper.
I do find it interesting that there is a decent contingent in the NewSpace crowd that is fairly software phobic. Software is one of the biggest advantage we have today, and replacing physical parts with code is one of the most productive things you can do.
An interesting question for people, that highlights their beliefs about engineering: Would you rather fly on the maiden voyage of a rocket that was designed and built to the highest ISO / MIL specs, or a rocket that was built in a garage, but had made 100 successful flights in a row?
In that case, only a blithering idiot would think the ISO rocket was safer, but finding the exact break point is more revealing. What if the ISO rocket had three good flights under its belt? What if the garage rocket had ten good flights, but the previous airframe had exploded, resulting in an engineering change? Do you think your odds would be better if Space Ship One was pulled back out for a flight, or on the maiden flight of Ares I?
I have a very explicit strategy to run our program so that failure is acceptable, and iterate as fast as we can. We have backup vehicles for a reason, and the big guys used to understand that back in the 50's. We are flying again on Saturday, so this didn't even slow us down.
John Carmack
That was just one of their vehicles. They still have Pixel. From Carmack's post: We still have Pixel and Module 1 in flyable shape at the shop, so this doesn't have a critical impact on us, but it does change our testing plans for the next two months before the X-Prize Cup. We are cancelling the untethered 180 second flights for Pixel at OKSP. We will plan on doing two sets of back-to-back 180 flights under tether, but if we are going to risk a crash, it might as well be for the money at XPC now that we don't have a backup. We are going to finish up Module 2 in the next couple weeks so we have a backup for level 1. Modules 3 through 5 should also be at least frame constructed by XPC, but whether we get them wired and tested will depend on how our flight testing goes. If we manage to destroy a module in the next two months, we can crunch hard and get an extra one put together if necessary.
> Now, if you're suggesting that there is a way to go 16,000 km in half an hour without going above 28044 km/hr then I'd really like to hear how.
;)
You could traverse 16,000km of the earth's surface by just going through the center of the planet.
Ugh, this ends up coming up every time there's a story on Bigelow Aerospace's habitat modules. From the wikipedia article on Bigelow Aerospace: Contrary to many expectations, Bigelow Aerospace anticipates that its inflatable modules will be more durable than rigid modules.[3] This is partially due to the company's use of several layers of vectran, a material twice as strong as kevlar, and also because, in theory, flexible walls should be able to sustain micrometeorite impacts better than rigid walls. Also, from the BA 330 article: Its skin, made of high-strength textiles and Vectran-like materials, is wrapped with several layers of high-tension straps. It is particularly resistant to damage from micrometeorites and debris.
I'm pretty excited about this news, as it seems like Bigelow might have his human-rated space station up and running as early as 2009. Here's the text of the official announcement:
h p#update
http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/multiverse/news.p
Also, here's a pretty good article from Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log.
Hopefully SpaceX will have some successful launches soon, in order to provide Bigelow with a drastically more cost-effective way to launch modules and people. It'd be beautiful to see a SpaceX Dragon crew capsule taking people up to Bigelow's Sundancer habitat.
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/artbook.html Way back when I was creating the BioShock Limited Edition, I took a poll for what you guys wanted to see in the box. And while we managed to put your top 3 choices in - the Making of DVD, Sountrack CD, and Big Daddy Figurine, we just couldn't manage a BioShock artbook.
But with a game as beautiful as BioShock, that just didn't sit right with me. Because everyone should be able to experience the beauty of BioShock, see the concept art and visualize the evolution of building such a revolutionary game.
So, with the help of the BioShock team and an amazing art designer, I put together a BioShock artbook for everyone to download. Here it is, in all its glory, in two PDF versions: a smaller, ebook download, and a more hi-resolution version that you can take to your local printshop and bind.
The one thing I'd recommend is skipping over Ken's foreword until after you've played the game, as it holds some spoilers you might want to keep secret your first playthrough is complete.
Other than that, and without further ado, I present to you BioShock: Breaking the Mold.
> When the very same market predicted a Kerry victory after the close of the Ohio and Florida polls?
Yup, and most people in general were also predicting a Kerry win at that time. If you had bid on Bush at that time, you could've made a fine bit of money.
Firstly, this isn't Digg, can we please not link to blogs?
Although I also wish that the summary included a link to the original paper, I found the blog entry by GrrlScientist to be a good layman's summary of the research, and was glad it was linked.
> Holland doesn't have to spend billions to fight in Iraq: No war == free health care and education ;)
The healthcare and education isn't any more "free" than the war is.
It'd be cool if something like this was self-powered and could be controlled by EMG (the electric signals given off by contracting muscles), sort of like this prehensile tail that some folks made at the Telluride Neuromorphic Workshop a few years back:
e cts/EMGtail/emg_tail.html
http://www.isr.umd.edu/Labs/CSSL/horiuchilab/proj
I'm sure part of it's congress, but at the same time I don't think Congress explicitly requested things like the liquids bans and so forth. People at the TSA both want to make sure like they're doing something productive, and also be sure that if something bad happens they won't end up losing their jobs because of the media broadcasting that they should've done some random thing.
Basically, congress (and through it's actions, TSA and DHS) need to look like theyre being strong and "doing something" about a threat amped up by the 24/7 media's need to have high impact news to generate revenue.
Bruce Schneier had an interesting piece on this a while back on this sort of Cover-Your-Ass security.
The funding was done via a congressional earmark to a non-profit organization. I'm not sure, but I don't think there's any particular limitations on what an organization can then do with that money, since the organization itself is operating within the bounds of law. If anything though, this is further evidence that earmarks gloriously suck. His work is financed by a Justice Department grant initially provided through a Congressional earmark inserted into a spending bill by Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia.
The grant, about $150,000 a year, has helped pay for Mr. Rogers and another retired law enforcement officer in Reno, Nev., to harvest and review complaints about obscene matter on the Internet that citizens register on the Justice Department Web site.
I am guessing that the article is talking about bigelow's.
Actually, that sounds quite possible, especially since Bigelow has stated that he emphatically doesn't want to get into the space hotel business directly, but would rather lease it to somebody else to do so. I would've thought the article would've mentioned something like that, though.
You know what ELSE some weirdos could 'enter' that is inflatable... ;) I'm apparently the least funny mofo on the damned planet. :(
;)
Oh, hah, sorry, I -totally- missed that joke.
Keep in mind that most of the $1.8 billion annual cost of the ISS is spent on space shuttle flight operations. Of course, since the space shuttle is used almost exclusively for the ISS, a good part of the $4 billion a year it costs to keep the shuttles running should probably be added to that as well. In any case, NASA's ISS spending figure isn't a good indicator of how much it would cost to run a for-profit orbital habitat.