and I thought, 'So what? SpaceX is already in orbit and has damned near certified the Dragon capsule.' These guys are still struggling to get their aircraft certified. Once Burt retired, it was like their lights went out. A suborbital ride when an orbital ride is coming available? It's like getting tickets to a 7 course banquet, then showing up and getting stuck at a table with a beautiful view of the kitchen door while the potscrubber drops a bag with a Big Mac & fries on it.
Yeah, gettin old sucks. I've had to wear bifocals for about 15 years now. Lasik scares the hell outta me. Lasers are cool and all that, but I get the willies thinking of anything coming at my eyes.
Is this the next step toward militarizing our law enforcement agencies?
I've finally figured it out - "militarization" is a buzzword for "cops doing anything but walking a beat with no radio, no gun, and no other technology".
No, the police aren't turning in a military.
Let's see...
Requiring all cops to go through SWAT team training, which is basically small unit assault training. To, you know, catch those militant speeders. Military grade equipment (assault rifles, military grade body armor, 'military-only' ammo for antiarmor use, etc) Armored vehicles.
Naw, the police isn't a damned bit militarized. (/sarcasm)
Hint, politicians: today it is not only quite possible, but not even that difficult to make a drone-killing missile in one's basement, complete with propeller- or heat-seeking electronics. And they'd never see it coming. ("Missile" might be misleading: it might be simpler and cheaper to make a self-guided ballistic projectile.)
And what they're doing is adding 8 million potential felons to the database for the crime of attempted destruction of government property. Somehow I don't think 'But you deployed these things and they violate my rights!' is going to be an adequate defense.
The statement "The Falcon Heavy has more than twice the power of the next largest rocket in the world" is true but somewhat misleading. Both the USA and Russia have had rockets in the past with more than twice the power that the "Falcon Heavy" will.
Mentioned in the blurb:
Essentially an upgunned Falcon 9 with strapon boosters, the Heavy has lift capability second only to the Saturn 5.
One should note that you could put up 10 Falcon Heavy launches for less than the cost of 1 Saturn 5 in 2012 dollars, roughly calculated to be on the order of $ 1.17 billion per launch of a Saturn 5. That's a couple hundred million under what NASA is paying for 12 Falcon 9 launches.
I think this is a very valid question and deserves to be asked.
Because when I posted it, i was undergoing severe caffiene withdrawl and tagged it NASA. I realised it about 3 seconds after I hit the 'submit' button. Moral of the story? Don't ascribe malice/conspiracy/whatever to something that can be explained by too much blood in my caffiene system.
Erm, what do you think Boeing, Lockheed, Martin Marietta are? It's been commercial for decades. This is just another company among many, except this one is headed by a publicity hound megalomaniac.
Um, no.
Lockeed, Boeing, Martin Marietta et al are product based companies so totally dependent on DoD contracts they'd go belly up in a hot second i the funding all dried up. The only thing keeping them remotely profitable are the cost-overruns. At the end of the cycle, they deliver a launch vehicle, airplane, whatever, at greatly increased cost to the government.
SpaceX, Armadillo, and the like are selling launch capability, as in, 'Give us X dollars, we'll hang Y tons of cargo and/or Z number of astronauts in orbit.' They fully retain ownership of their launch vehicles. As the Intersat contract shows, they're not limited to government contracts to survive. And Intersat is just the first. There'll be more companies buying launch capability from them.
In my opinion, B5 was great because of the 'flaws'. Humans weren't depicted as the oldest and wisest race around. Compared to the Vorlons and the Shadows, they were kids playing with capguns. Even the Mimbari had them out-teched. Londo was certainly seriously flawed, feelings of inadequacy due to his career peaking late in his life (in his opinion), after being punted off to a 'joke assignment' just to get him out of the public eye. And Garibaldi's personal flaws are many. All this contributed to one hell of a storyline.
Why? Publicly funded space travel isn't over. NASA has stated, just a few weeks ago, that their goal is Mars. The SLS and Orion are still progressing nicely towards their big tests. No mourning needed.
Although I think the SLS would be an awesome rocket, I ain't holding my breath... we'll be lucky to see that thing fly by 2025, if ever. In the meantime, Falcon Heavy and others will already have captured the heavy lift market. So really, why bother?
NASA's goal is Mars. Too bad the politicians will never let them get there with a manned mission. They keep on cutting the budget unless the projects involved produce pork in key Congressional districts. They killed Ares and Constellation. They'll kill SLS once the Falcon Heavy/Dragon proves itself.
It can't be stressed enough that Boeing, Lockheed, et.al. aren't really aerospace companies anymore, they're funding sinks. The only reason they survive is government cost-plus contracts with built-in overruns to boost profits. They forgot how to deliver a space vehicle as a product if they ever knew how to begin with. SpaceX isn't selling NASA the vehicles, they're selling the lift capacity. How they generate said capacity isn't under NASA scrutiny other than safety concerns. Yes, they're using NASA launch facilities for the time being to send their rockets up, but expect that to change when the money starts coming in. And it will, now that they've demonstrated their capabilities. A lot of businesses who were holding back to wait and see will now start trickling forward to put their cash on the barrelhead for lift capacity. The glory days are just ahead.
And you'll send that food home how, exactly? 99% of all shipping today runs on diesel. No more diesel. Fly it? No more JP5. It's gonna take time to build those sailing ships and teach crews to sail them. And you'll need a lot of them. Economy of scale doesn't work so well when it comes to sailing vessels. The reason why they didn't build sail-powered supertankers is, the damned things are too big to move under sail. They figured that out in the 1600's already.
Besides, where you gonna find all the wood you need? Steel & aluminum hulls, you say? The US doesn't have any working steel mills anymore, and aluminum takes lots of electricity to refine and shape.
Mos likely, all those troops you send out to the 3rd World to exploit the locals (and you haven't told us how they're getting there without transport, btw...) are gonna get swamped once their ammo runs out, as has been noted already in another comment. Then they'll either be killed or assimulated just like the Chinese did to the Mongols. Ghenghis Khan might have won the war, but the Chinese took the long game and swallowed them up and digested them. Look up Kublai Khan sometime.
Ones of NASA's now fatal flaws is politicians change the goal and the plan about every four years right before anything is actually done.
NASA's budget comes up for review yearly. And every budget cycle, they still get a loud mouthed no-brained minority on the Hill bitching about all that 'money wasted in space'.
That's why Ares I turned in to the monstrosity it was, and why Allient and Astrium have resuscitated the design that will not die as their proposed Liberty launcher.
Hopefully, it'll have more than the 3000 kilo suborbital payload of Hermes. I'm thinking Falcon Heavy is the way to go. It'll lift just about any damned thing you can wrap a fairing around, cheap.
For example, the US spends a lot more on space activities than the member states of the European Space Agency, especially including DoD spending. Yet Europe is generally considered to be the more advanced culture scientifically and doesn't have quite the problem with the "non scientific, ignorant people" that are vexing you. So we have right here a data point indicating that maybe space exploration isn't all that beneficial in your own terms.
They didn't democratize education in Europe with any of that 'no child left behind' and 'let's teach them to embrace their diversity and acknowledge their uniqueness' bullshit. In Europe, they actually (gasp) try to make the kids read, write, do basic math up to elementary mathmatical analysis, speak at least 2 languages, learn their own and world histories, and more. Google up the stats on how the schools of the various countries are rated. Do it. I dare ya.
More likely, that 10% survivor rate will be someplace out in the 3rd World. Kill off the skillage needed to sustain a high tech civilisation, that civilisation will fall. For instance, kill off anybody who knows how an oil refinery works and how to make it produce gas & diesel. When the current stockpiles dry up, there'll be no more. Modern agriculture depends on that (relatively) cheap energy. No way we'll be able to feed 7 billion people on Bronze Age farming gear. The people doing Bronze Age style farming right now will still eat. Mostly. Unless they need to refrigerate some of their food. Then they're fucked.
Spinoff technologies. It will be cheaper to mine the moon for the raw materials for steel and put the finished product in geosynch orbit than it will be to boost every goddamned gram of every SPS we hang in space from Canaveral or Baikanour. SPSes are a spinoff technology. Also, lunar-built space vehicles that don't need to fight ehir way out of the Earth's gravity well. It's raining soup in space, and all everybody is doing is bitching their clothes are getting wet instead of hunting for a bucket.
More like, the natives believed they belonged TO the land. Didn't stop them from fighting over prime hunting/gardening territories (in the East, that is) and grazing territories on the plains and water in the Southwest...
They were called chronometers, and were developed in the 18th Century for use in navigation. A couple governments had prizes like the X Prize for the most accurate chronometers. IIRC, they had to keep variances within something like a couple seconds a year to be certified as a chronometer.
But the technologies involved do have civilian applications. I'm thinking just-in-time manufacturing, small-lot manufacturing, boutique manufacturing, that sort of thing.
Is this a hedge in case China decides to stop making shit for the US? Or plain ol' pork?
Probably B disguised as A
I'm thinking, probably Plan A disguised as Plan B. DARPA people are pretty damned clever. They know how to play that favorite of all gameshows on the Hill, 'The Appropriations Game'.
As opposed to living in their parents' basement with no woemn, no sex, and going blind from all the really AWFUL porn the internet gives you access to?
Nice one indeed. GeeDub announced the successors to Shuttle during his second term and the ned of the Shuttle program as well. He painted this really cool vision of America's future in space.
Then he let his cronies cut NASA's budget to buy votes so they could hang onto their offices.
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It makes about as much sense as the US demanding ThePirateBay get shut down.
and I thought, 'So what? SpaceX is already in orbit and has damned near certified the Dragon capsule.' These guys are still struggling to get their aircraft certified. Once Burt retired, it was like their lights went out. A suborbital ride when an orbital ride is coming available? It's like getting tickets to a 7 course banquet, then showing up and getting stuck at a table with a beautiful view of the kitchen door while the potscrubber drops a bag with a Big Mac & fries on it.
And for those of us who wear bifocals?
Yeah, gettin old sucks. I've had to wear bifocals for about 15 years now. Lasik scares the hell outta me. Lasers are cool and all that, but I get the willies thinking of anything coming at my eyes.
How's this for an idea?
The first cunt we fly one of these things up should be the Governor himself.
Let's see...
Requiring all cops to go through SWAT team training, which is basically small unit assault training. To, you know, catch those militant speeders.
Military grade equipment (assault rifles, military grade body armor, 'military-only' ammo for antiarmor use, etc)
Armored vehicles.
Naw, the police isn't a damned bit militarized. (/sarcasm)
And what they're doing is adding 8 million potential felons to the database for the crime of attempted destruction of government property. Somehow I don't think 'But you deployed these things and they violate my rights!' is going to be an adequate defense.
Mentioned in the blurb:
One should note that you could put up 10 Falcon Heavy launches for less than the cost of 1 Saturn 5 in 2012 dollars, roughly calculated to be on the order of $ 1.17 billion per launch of a Saturn 5. That's a couple hundred million under what NASA is paying for 12 Falcon 9 launches.
Because when I posted it, i was undergoing severe caffiene withdrawl and tagged it NASA. I realised it about 3 seconds after I hit the 'submit' button. Moral of the story? Don't ascribe malice/conspiracy/whatever to something that can be explained by too much blood in my caffiene system.
Um, no.
Lockeed, Boeing, Martin Marietta et al are product based companies so totally dependent on DoD contracts they'd go belly up in a hot second i the funding all dried up. The only thing keeping them remotely profitable are the cost-overruns. At the end of the cycle, they deliver a launch vehicle, airplane, whatever, at greatly increased cost to the government.
SpaceX, Armadillo, and the like are selling launch capability, as in, 'Give us X dollars, we'll hang Y tons of cargo and/or Z number of astronauts in orbit.' They fully retain ownership of their launch vehicles. As the Intersat contract shows, they're not limited to government contracts to survive. And Intersat is just the first. There'll be more companies buying launch capability from them.
In my opinion, B5 was great because of the 'flaws'. Humans weren't depicted as the oldest and wisest race around. Compared to the Vorlons and the Shadows, they were kids playing with capguns. Even the Mimbari had them out-teched. Londo was certainly seriously flawed, feelings of inadequacy due to his career peaking late in his life (in his opinion), after being punted off to a 'joke assignment' just to get him out of the public eye. And Garibaldi's personal flaws are many. All this contributed to one hell of a storyline.
First rule of Hollywood. NEVER use your own money.
NASA's goal is Mars. Too bad the politicians will never let them get there with a manned mission. They keep on cutting the budget unless the projects involved produce pork in key Congressional districts. They killed Ares and Constellation. They'll kill SLS once the Falcon Heavy/Dragon proves itself.
It can't be stressed enough that Boeing, Lockheed, et.al. aren't really aerospace companies anymore, they're funding sinks. The only reason they survive is government cost-plus contracts with built-in overruns to boost profits. They forgot how to deliver a space vehicle as a product if they ever knew how to begin with. SpaceX isn't selling NASA the vehicles, they're selling the lift capacity. How they generate said capacity isn't under NASA scrutiny other than safety concerns. Yes, they're using NASA launch facilities for the time being to send their rockets up, but expect that to change when the money starts coming in. And it will, now that they've demonstrated their capabilities. A lot of businesses who were holding back to wait and see will now start trickling forward to put their cash on the barrelhead for lift capacity. The glory days are just ahead.
And you'll send that food home how, exactly? 99% of all shipping today runs on diesel. No more diesel. Fly it? No more JP5. It's gonna take time to build those sailing ships and teach crews to sail them. And you'll need a lot of them. Economy of scale doesn't work so well when it comes to sailing vessels. The reason why they didn't build sail-powered supertankers is, the damned things are too big to move under sail. They figured that out in the 1600's already.
Besides, where you gonna find all the wood you need? Steel & aluminum hulls, you say? The US doesn't have any working steel mills anymore, and aluminum takes lots of electricity to refine and shape.
Mos likely, all those troops you send out to the 3rd World to exploit the locals (and you haven't told us how they're getting there without transport, btw...) are gonna get swamped once their ammo runs out, as has been noted already in another comment. Then they'll either be killed or assimulated just like the Chinese did to the Mongols. Ghenghis Khan might have won the war, but the Chinese took the long game and swallowed them up and digested them. Look up Kublai Khan sometime.
NASA's budget comes up for review yearly. And every budget cycle, they still get a loud mouthed no-brained minority on the Hill bitching about all that 'money wasted in space'.
Hopefully, it'll have more than the 3000 kilo suborbital payload of Hermes. I'm thinking Falcon Heavy is the way to go. It'll lift just about any damned thing you can wrap a fairing around, cheap.
They didn't democratize education in Europe with any of that 'no child left behind' and 'let's teach them to embrace their diversity and acknowledge their uniqueness' bullshit. In Europe, they actually (gasp) try to make the kids read, write, do basic math up to elementary mathmatical analysis, speak at least 2 languages, learn their own and world histories, and more. Google up the stats on how the schools of the various countries are rated. Do it. I dare ya.
More likely, that 10% survivor rate will be someplace out in the 3rd World. Kill off the skillage needed to sustain a high tech civilisation, that civilisation will fall. For instance, kill off anybody who knows how an oil refinery works and how to make it produce gas & diesel. When the current stockpiles dry up, there'll be no more. Modern agriculture depends on that (relatively) cheap energy. No way we'll be able to feed 7 billion people on Bronze Age farming gear. The people doing Bronze Age style farming right now will still eat. Mostly. Unless they need to refrigerate some of their food. Then they're fucked.
Spinoff technologies. It will be cheaper to mine the moon for the raw materials for steel and put the finished product in geosynch orbit than it will be to boost every goddamned gram of every SPS we hang in space from Canaveral or Baikanour. SPSes are a spinoff technology. Also, lunar-built space vehicles that don't need to fight ehir way out of the Earth's gravity well. It's raining soup in space, and all everybody is doing is bitching their clothes are getting wet instead of hunting for a bucket.
More like, the natives believed they belonged TO the land. Didn't stop them from fighting over prime hunting/gardening territories (in the East, that is) and grazing territories on the plains and water in the Southwest...
They were called chronometers, and were developed in the 18th Century for use in navigation. A couple governments had prizes like the X Prize for the most accurate chronometers. IIRC, they had to keep variances within something like a couple seconds a year to be certified as a chronometer.
But the technologies involved do have civilian applications. I'm thinking just-in-time manufacturing, small-lot manufacturing, boutique manufacturing, that sort of thing.
A lot.
How much of the remainder is food? I hear ADM is having a record year...
I'm thinking, probably Plan A disguised as Plan B. DARPA people are pretty damned clever. They know how to play that favorite of all gameshows on the Hill, 'The Appropriations Game'.
As opposed to living in their parents' basement with no woemn, no sex, and going blind from all the really AWFUL porn the internet gives you access to?
Nice one indeed. GeeDub announced the successors to Shuttle during his second term and the ned of the Shuttle program as well. He painted this really cool vision of America's future in space.
Then he let his cronies cut NASA's budget to buy votes so they could hang onto their offices.
My ex-wife and her lawyer? Pass the popcorn!!