What are you worried about? They only spent a billion on it. Everybody knows that any government contract under a billion is worthless. They'll be lucky if they can even log into it at that price.
Although I think all the conspiracy theorists are crazy, the new world order is the eventual coalescence of the violation of inalienable rights and it's frequency of occurence across all nations.
Anymore the difference between the tinfoil hat brigade and the rest of society is, mainstream society believes that 1984 is coming. The tinfoil hat brigade believes it's already here.
Of course the reason they needed a clever hack in the first place was because the engineers had used different shaped CO2 scrubbers for the lander and the command module. Engineering at its finest. Not.
Different contractors with different subcontractors and no communication between the two.
I haven't seen manned missions to Mars yet.
Are you making a valid comparison? Or are you from a different time.
From the GP:
I'm not much of an expert, but I can think of more human missions that have failed (expensively and tragically) than robotic missions that have failed. And the mars rovers have lasted dramatically longer than expected. Plus, getting the rover unstuck from the sand shows that you can fix tough problems that require improvising even with a robot.
My point is, when a robot mission fails, everybody forgets about it in a few days except for the committee to investigate the failure and make recommendations on how to keep it from failing next time, assuming they can get a budget and mission for 'the next time'. When people die, it's all over the news for weeks, Congressional hearings are announced, the whole nine yards. You don't hear so much about the robot missions failing because nobody cares that much about robots. GP's position was that we had a better track record with the robots. We don't, not by an order of magnitude.
Take a look at the overall mission records to Mars. About half the missions have failed spectacularly, compared to what, half a dozen manned missions that ended in death? I'm including Apollo 1 and a couple known Russian meatshots, btw.
And the ISS would be down 25% of its total powre budget for months to come.
Let's face facts. The only way to make space safe for robots is keep them close enough to humans for repairs. Otherwise, one tiny component fails, so does a significant portion of the mission.
I can't complain that you are on board with science.... But you did the world a horrible disservice by cancelling the Texas Super Collider... You spent like 6 billion, then spent 3 billion to scrap it, when the total cost for construction was 12 billion.
Yeah, he kinda screwed the pooch on that one. For another 3 billion over what was finally spent (donut money & coffee money to the Pentagon), he coulda finished it up. Course, he was up to his ass in impeachment hearings at the time...
Um, a constant 1G accelleration would get you there in about two years subjective, a bit over 5 actual. You accellerate for a year at 1G, you're almost at lightspeed. You're half a lightyear out. Coast 3.5 light-years, 3.5 years actual (about 12 days subjective), decellerate for a year at 1G, you're there. The formula are simple. d=(1/2)*a*t*t for the runup distance (d equals one-half a-t-squared), time dialation factor is your tau, 1 - (% of c divided by 100)
unless we assume that it's still meant to be possible for individuals to band together and overthrow the government by force (which, let's face it, is unlikely these days)
Why do you say that? It seems to have worked out pretty well for a few Middle Eastern countries recently...
These regime changes were imposed from the outside, not the inside.
Problem is, how do you change the rules for filibustering if the rules debate is itself filibustered? The Democrats put the current rules into place, and damn, it's costing them bigtime now.
Labelling NASA missions as pork is how we deprecate them between administrations so as to prevent them from providing too much progress. Every prior administration's NASA budget is pork. And in4-8 years this one will be too.
Nonono, looted FOR pork, as in, funding they could safely cut away to give to their campaign contributors, though your definitition provides the 'justification' for doing so.
I said cuts in spending and increases in taxes were handed to him. That's stuff that was sunsetted a few years back. Nothing current. Increases in spending were by appropriation bills that got passed because they authorised the various spending the government needed to fund, things like Social Security and defense spending, and there were ammendments to those bills to properly pass out the appropriate pork. They couldn't be flushed back to the House because people would go without their Social Security or military payroll checks. Most of those were passed at the last minute.
Oh, btw, the House starts a budget. It's been RINO for a couple years now, and they had enough votes to block anything they wanted to for about 6 years before that. And there's not a whole lot of control in the Senate when nobody can override a filibuster to shut it down. Some 'control' the Democrats have, yeah, a 'majority' in the Senate, but not enough to get anything done unless they can pry votes from the Republicans and Independents. Sending a budget that makes no sense to the Senate is a guarantee it'll get shot down, so if the House decides to spend 500 billion on donuts for the homeless while defunding things like Medicare, it's gonna get shot down, even though technically it's a 'budget'.
Problem is, a lot of cities depend on the traffic ticket revenue to stay afloat. Lynndale, on the West Side of Cleveland for instance, puts out a cop car beside an orange barrel all the time, even though there are no access ramps to the freeway inside the city limits. It's a cash cow for them. Now roboticize all the cars. No more speeding tickets, reckless operation, or DUI convictions. No more quick and dirty funding.
Problem is, can't hand out those DUI tickets and massive fines to robots. Can't get the damned things drunk. Let's face it, DUI laws passed that keep reducing the amount of blood alcohol to be considered legally impaired aren't passed to make the roads safer, they're passed to be able to prosecute more people for DUI and fine the living shit outta them, as well as pretty much ruin their lives. Robot cars would end this, and the various munincipalities that depend on traffic tickets will hate the lost revenue stream.
... unless they're going to mandate only robotically controlled cars on the roads. What good does it do for a car to keep track of its environment if it's being driven by an idiot? Will it make it safer for the woman putting her makeup on while trying to drive and eat a donut/bagel/whatever? Or will it help out the teenager driving while sexting? I don't see this as happening...
Now, if all the vehicles on the road were controlled by robots, then this makes sense. Fact is, I can see a case of not allowing manually controlled cars on the interstate, for example. And this would be a perfect application for this kind of tech.
El Presidente doesn't hand Congress a budget for consideration, Congress hands him a budget for his approval. And they haven't even done that in the last three years because they want him to fall flat on his ass. Why do you think we ran into the debt ceiling in the first place? The only 'cuts' in spending and 'increases' in taxes in the last three years are ones that were put in place before Obama showed up at the table and Congress couldn't ratfuck.
NERVA is probably impossible due to the fact that it's nuclear. If you were a corporate head with interests in space, would you want to hand over enriched nuclear fuel to some bright guy in orbit who you don't have completely under your thumb? Especially if that guy's got an advanced physics degree? Didn't think so.
The GOP is all about the big business. Boeing, Lockheed, et al would have folded if not for government cost-plus contracts that pay even when nothing is delivered, and have all those nifty cost overruns built right into them. It's The Way It's Done in the aerospace industry. If they manage to get control of both Congress and the White House, expect the 'traditional' aerospace companies to be deregulated and piled in pork while outfits like SpaceX get buried under red tape. Can't have these young upstarts changing The Way It's Done, especially with the next round of elections only a bit over 2 years away...
Bush knew his plan would never actually be implemented. Any plan for NASA that has all the costs back-loaded will never happen, and everyone ought to realize the whole point is a photo op and a few inches of news copy.
I'm no fan of Obama, but for me the one bright spot of his administration has been his stewardship of NASA, which should never have been in the business of LEO operations.
Pretty much this. Some nice column inches, some great photo ops, and a shitpile of pork to key Congressional districts is all . Let's face it, the only job of a Congresscritter is to get re-elected, and how best to do that than grabbing all the pork he can for his district and maybe create a couple jobs?
Bush 2 inherited what could be concievably be called a 'space program'. He looted it for pork, then shut the Shuttle down because it was getting unsafe. Then he got ambitious to provide yet more pork by coming up with the Aries systems. Congress was right to kill them, but wrong to replace them with SLS.
When NASA does hard science, they can't be beat. It's when they get stuck fighting over the scraps that Congress hands them after passing out the pork that they have trouble. And it doesn't help that the bosses they keep assigning are beancounters, either.
Slashdot Mirror
They must be slipping again in Arizona.
As an aside, think they consider mirrorshades to be a 'disguise'? How about a suit & tie, since all anybody ever sees me in are polo shirts and jeans?
What are you worried about? They only spent a billion on it. Everybody knows that any government contract under a billion is worthless. They'll be lucky if they can even log into it at that price.
Right to privacy? Nope. Freedom of Speech? Nope.
Although I think all the conspiracy theorists are crazy, the new world order is the eventual coalescence of the violation of inalienable rights and it's frequency of occurence across all nations.
Anymore the difference between the tinfoil hat brigade and the rest of society is, mainstream society believes that 1984 is coming. The tinfoil hat brigade believes it's already here.
Of course the reason they needed a clever hack in the first place was because the engineers had used different shaped CO2 scrubbers for the lander and the command module. Engineering at its finest. Not.
Different contractors with different subcontractors and no communication between the two.
No air in space. Thus, no sound. Star Trek et al to the contrary, you do not hear explosions in space.
I haven't seen manned missions to Mars yet. Are you making a valid comparison? Or are you from a different time.
From the GP:
My point is, when a robot mission fails, everybody forgets about it in a few days except for the committee to investigate the failure and make recommendations on how to keep it from failing next time, assuming they can get a budget and mission for 'the next time'. When people die, it's all over the news for weeks, Congressional hearings are announced, the whole nine yards. You don't hear so much about the robot missions failing because nobody cares that much about robots. GP's position was that we had a better track record with the robots. We don't, not by an order of magnitude.
Take a look at the overall mission records to Mars. About half the missions have failed spectacularly, compared to what, half a dozen manned missions that ended in death? I'm including Apollo 1 and a couple known Russian meatshots, btw.
And the ISS would be down 25% of its total powre budget for months to come.
Let's face facts. The only way to make space safe for robots is keep them close enough to humans for repairs. Otherwise, one tiny component fails, so does a significant portion of the mission.
I can't complain that you are on board with science.... But you did the world a horrible disservice by cancelling the Texas Super Collider... You spent like 6 billion, then spent 3 billion to scrap it, when the total cost for construction was 12 billion.
Yeah, he kinda screwed the pooch on that one. For another 3 billion over what was finally spent (donut money & coffee money to the Pentagon), he coulda finished it up. Course, he was up to his ass in impeachment hearings at the time...
Um, a constant 1G accelleration would get you there in about two years subjective, a bit over 5 actual. You accellerate for a year at 1G, you're almost at lightspeed. You're half a lightyear out. Coast 3.5 light-years, 3.5 years actual (about 12 days subjective), decellerate for a year at 1G, you're there. The formula are simple. d=(1/2)*a*t*t for the runup distance (d equals one-half a-t-squared), time dialation factor is your tau, 1 - (% of c divided by 100)
Help! I've fallen and ...
Hey...
NICE CARPET!!
Why do you say that? It seems to have worked out pretty well for a few Middle Eastern countries recently...
These regime changes were imposed from the outside, not the inside.
Problem is, how do you change the rules for filibustering if the rules debate is itself filibustered? The Democrats put the current rules into place, and damn, it's costing them bigtime now.
Labelling NASA missions as pork is how we deprecate them between administrations so as to prevent them from providing too much progress. Every prior administration's NASA budget is pork. And in4-8 years this one will be too.
Nonono, looted FOR pork, as in, funding they could safely cut away to give to their campaign contributors, though your definitition provides the 'justification' for doing so.
I said cuts in spending and increases in taxes were handed to him. That's stuff that was sunsetted a few years back. Nothing current. Increases in spending were by appropriation bills that got passed because they authorised the various spending the government needed to fund, things like Social Security and defense spending, and there were ammendments to those bills to properly pass out the appropriate pork. They couldn't be flushed back to the House because people would go without their Social Security or military payroll checks. Most of those were passed at the last minute.
Oh, btw, the House starts a budget. It's been RINO for a couple years now, and they had enough votes to block anything they wanted to for about 6 years before that. And there's not a whole lot of control in the Senate when nobody can override a filibuster to shut it down. Some 'control' the Democrats have, yeah, a 'majority' in the Senate, but not enough to get anything done unless they can pry votes from the Republicans and Independents. Sending a budget that makes no sense to the Senate is a guarantee it'll get shot down, so if the House decides to spend 500 billion on donuts for the homeless while defunding things like Medicare, it's gonna get shot down, even though technically it's a 'budget'.
Problem is, a lot of cities depend on the traffic ticket revenue to stay afloat. Lynndale, on the West Side of Cleveland for instance, puts out a cop car beside an orange barrel all the time, even though there are no access ramps to the freeway inside the city limits. It's a cash cow for them. Now roboticize all the cars. No more speeding tickets, reckless operation, or DUI convictions. No more quick and dirty funding.
It'll probably need to be computer controlled, therefore, loggable.
Problem is, can't hand out those DUI tickets and massive fines to robots. Can't get the damned things drunk. Let's face it, DUI laws passed that keep reducing the amount of blood alcohol to be considered legally impaired aren't passed to make the roads safer, they're passed to be able to prosecute more people for DUI and fine the living shit outta them, as well as pretty much ruin their lives. Robot cars would end this, and the various munincipalities that depend on traffic tickets will hate the lost revenue stream.
... unless they're going to mandate only robotically controlled cars on the roads. What good does it do for a car to keep track of its environment if it's being driven by an idiot? Will it make it safer for the woman putting her makeup on while trying to drive and eat a donut/bagel/whatever? Or will it help out the teenager driving while sexting? I don't see this as happening...
Now, if all the vehicles on the road were controlled by robots, then this makes sense. Fact is, I can see a case of not allowing manually controlled cars on the interstate, for example. And this would be a perfect application for this kind of tech.
El Presidente doesn't hand Congress a budget for consideration, Congress hands him a budget for his approval. And they haven't even done that in the last three years because they want him to fall flat on his ass. Why do you think we ran into the debt ceiling in the first place? The only 'cuts' in spending and 'increases' in taxes in the last three years are ones that were put in place before Obama showed up at the table and Congress couldn't ratfuck.
NERVA is probably impossible due to the fact that it's nuclear. If you were a corporate head with interests in space, would you want to hand over enriched nuclear fuel to some bright guy in orbit who you don't have completely under your thumb? Especially if that guy's got an advanced physics degree? Didn't think so.
The GOP is all about the big business. Boeing, Lockheed, et al would have folded if not for government cost-plus contracts that pay even when nothing is delivered, and have all those nifty cost overruns built right into them. It's The Way It's Done in the aerospace industry. If they manage to get control of both Congress and the White House, expect the 'traditional' aerospace companies to be deregulated and piled in pork while outfits like SpaceX get buried under red tape. Can't have these young upstarts changing The Way It's Done, especially with the next round of elections only a bit over 2 years away...
Bush knew his plan would never actually be implemented. Any plan for NASA that has all the costs back-loaded will never happen, and everyone ought to realize the whole point is a photo op and a few inches of news copy.
I'm no fan of Obama, but for me the one bright spot of his administration has been his stewardship of NASA, which should never have been in the business of LEO operations.
Pretty much this. Some nice column inches, some great photo ops, and a shitpile of pork to key Congressional districts is all . Let's face it, the only job of a Congresscritter is to get re-elected, and how best to do that than grabbing all the pork he can for his district and maybe create a couple jobs?
Bush 2 inherited what could be concievably be called a 'space program'. He looted it for pork, then shut the Shuttle down because it was getting unsafe. Then he got ambitious to provide yet more pork by coming up with the Aries systems. Congress was right to kill them, but wrong to replace them with SLS.
When NASA does hard science, they can't be beat. It's when they get stuck fighting over the scraps that Congress hands them after passing out the pork that they have trouble. And it doesn't help that the bosses they keep assigning are beancounters, either.
Lack of solar energy isn't a problem til you hit the orbit of Saturn. Just make bigger mirrors as you go further out from Earth.