I heard that autopilot-controlled ILS landings were routine for cargo carriers, but the FAA doesn't allow it when passengers are aboard.
you heard wrong. The rules are very specific in this area. A 'normal' instrument landing into weather of cielings greater than 200 feet with visibility greater than 1/2 mile may be flown by a pilot, or by the autoland system, with no preference. A Category II ILS (100 feet, 1/4 mile) _should_ be flown by the autoland, but pilots may elect to hand fly if equipment problems dictate so. A Category III ils (cieling 0, visibility 0) may NOT be hand flown and MUST be flown by autoland, no exceptions. A non functional autoland is cause to divert to an alternate airport with weather conditions suitable for a hand flown landing.
Fedex and UPS do a lot more zero-zero autoland operations because they have invested in the equipment to allow them to do so on most of thier fleets. Very few airlines actually invest in the equipment and training to do CAT III approaches, and it's surprising how many dont even invest in the requirements for CAT II.
From a safety perspective, this is an absolute no brainer. Just look at the statistics, and look for the number of landing accidents attributed to 'pilot error', and then look for the number attributed to 'autoland malfunction'. Ratio those numbers against the number of hand flown landings, vs the number of autolands performed over the sample period. You'll find the difference between the ratios to be larger than 3 orders of magnitude, with the autoland a clear winner.
When it gets right down to it, in normal operations, on autoland capable equipment, there is really no reason to hand fly airplanes today. The autoland will do a safer job, and pilots get plenty of practise in the 'bad situations' in the simulator. The flight management system will fly a more precise profile, using less fuel, with a higher safety factor. This translates into safer operations and lower costs.
I've been flying for 28 years, made my living flying airplanes for 18 of those 28. Pilots of large aircraft today are nothing more than systems managers. They assemble and analyze data in real time, and act as keypunch operators for the flight management system. They provide an audio interface between the air traffic control system and the flight managment system keyboard. The article was completely out of context of reality, in reality the system being tested just eliminates the audio step of transferring air traffic control clearances into the on board flight management system, and instead transfers them via a data link, thereby removing the potential for keypunch errors.
The reporter writing the article saw something they didn't understand, and tried to dramatize it to a point it's totally removed from reality. There was no remote control, just automated data transfers of data that would normally be spoken then keypunched. I guess the reporter must be a/. regular....
When you read about what this patent is all about, it suddenly becomes very clear why there are countries in this world that just refuse to buy into the patent/copyright systems in general. Folks here tend to get wildly upset when the subject of China not upholding patents and copyrights comes up here on/., but, when the USPTO is granting this kind of patent on a daily basis, it's no wonder a growing economy wants no part of it.
There used to be a set of requirements for the issuance of a patent. Something had to be 'not obvious to an expert in the field' before it became patentable. The USPTO in its current form has made a joke out of the patent system as a whole, and this one is a very clear example. I'm not even an expert in the field, but, i had my own email subdomain (mydomain.somedomain.com) more than 15 years ago. I've still got the reciepts to prove it, so, it will be acceptable as 'demonstrateable prior art' in just about any court in the world, except the courts of the usa. They have converted the patent system into a 'first to apply' concept rather than a 'first to innovate' concept. There is no longer any requirement for uniqueness, or innovation at the USPTO, just 'first'.
Patents like this one have devalued the system, and value of a real patent, to the point where the time is not far off that more countries are going to reject american patents wholesale. Since it's not possible to filter the mess for 'what is a good patent' and 'what is a bad patent', the whole lot is going to be rejected in total. I for one am already starting to plant the political seeds in my own country to do just that, and this little escapade is great fodder for the cannon. Politicians are not bright at the best of times, but even the densest of them can understand the concept when it's laid out to them. I had email by subdomains laid out and in operation 15 years ago, it's obvious. Today, suddenly it becomes 'licensable' by american patent laws. i dont need my business to be held for ransom by a foreign company that's in the business of 'legal extortion'. The only way we are going to stop this, is to get the ball rolling to make american patents invalid in our country, because today they are upheld.
The choice in this case is really up to american business. If you want patents to be upheld worldwide, put the value back in them, fix the system. Leave it unchecked with crap like this coming out of the system, and the rest of the world is gonna reject them. it's good for bypassing the crap like this patent, but it's very bad for real innovation that requires real expenditures in research and development.
This is actually a very fundamental issue in terms of IP laws and protections in a global economy. IP is protected thru patents, and, patents like this paint a very sour color on the whole lot of them. Acceptance of US patents in other countries is an all or nothing deal, and many places have chosen 'none'. I live in a country that has chosen 'all', but, that's going to change if the USPTO doesn't. It has to, because if we continue to honor every patent that comes out of the US patent office, it's only a matter of time till we have to pay a licensing fee just to breathe.
Smarter children thru:
Playing with them, spending time with them.
Are you implying folks should invest time and effort into the process, and not just drive down to the supplement store and try buy a pill to make thier kids brighter?
And from the article:-
"Choline is a naturally occurring nutrient found in egg yolks, milk, nuts, fish, liver and other meats as well as in human breast milk."
The plain english translation, feed your children a naturally healthy and balanced diet, and it will automatically include the required items. But, you wont find any of this in the stuff dished out of a typical fast food joint. If they live on french fries, hamburgers, and a big gulp, they will never get the stuff they need to be bright, it'll show on the grades, and on thier waistline.
these are the haircuts of people that don't give a lot of wattage to personal apperance.
The video is actual footage of folks that built and launched a satellite 20 years ago, one that's still in orbit, and still functional. That's a _serious_ technical achievement. And you are more concerned about the haircuts?
I thought/. was a place to get away from clueless managers...
Except they don't, not really. MIR spent the majority of it's lifetime struggling to stay afloat and supported mostly by American dollars and American cargo transport. They Russians/Soviets haven't actually supported a functioning and useful station in orbit since the late 80's.
Mir was opened up in 1986. The first shuttle mission to Mir occurred in 1995. Shuttle missions to mir continued for 3 years, into 1998. Mir was effectively abandoned in 1999, and de-orbit happened in 2001.
From 1986 till 1999, Mir was re-supplied by a steady stream of progress cargo carriers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Of the 13 years Mir was operational, they USA participated for only 3. the original statement is pretty much right on the money, the soviet space agency has bucketloads of experience in dealing with a low orbit space station which was kept continually manned for most of the 13 operational years. Mir had its share of problems over that timeframe, but, that's pretty indicative of all space programs. The value of the soviet experience is just that, the EXPERIENCE i dealing with the problems. In the end, Mir was de-orbited in a controlled manner.
The usa on the other hand managed to put Skylab up, and actually put a crew on it for 3 relatively short missions of 28, 59 and 84 days. during this period it also had numerous problems, the biggest being temperature control. Ultimately Skylab de-orbited in a mostly uncontrolled manner on it's own, about 6 years ahead of the plan. The american experience with low orbit stations is hardly a drop in the bucket compared to the soviet experience, and it was in reality far less reliable than Mir. heck, it was shorter lived and less reliable than Salyut 7, the precursor to Mir.
Americans love to bash the Russian space program, but, the numbers speak for themselves. Take any metric you wish, and look at the statistics. Use 'time on mission', use 'launch vehicle reliability', or just about any other metric you choose to compare the programs. The reality of the matter is, the american manned space program only exceeded the soviet program on one occaision, and that was in July of 1969, when they placed a manned mission on the lunar surface.
They may be broke, but, simple facts speak for themselves. If you have ANY doubts, just take a look at the current state of the american manned space program. Last time i checked, they are outsourcing manned missions to the Russian program due to a technical inability to fly the missions themselves. Thats a pretty powerful statement that pretty much summs up the technical facts comparing the programs.
Re:As nice as it would be...
on
Mars Rovers Update
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· Score: 3, Interesting
An interesting fact is that the cost of operating the entire mission is around US$ 3m a day,
There are 2 types of cost involved in this daily figure, those that are 'out of pocket' and those that are 'just accounting'. Take for example, the DSN time used to retrieve data from the rovers. Yes, it's very expensive I'm sure, those deep space monitoring stations cannot be cheap to build and operate. Every hour they spend pointed at mars collecting data from the MER vehicles is surely tracked, and cost accounted to the MER program, and rightfully so. BUT, it's not like they wouldn't cost anything if they were not pointed at the mars probes, the actual cost of operating the DSN system is for all practical purposes a known and fixed cost, and it's gonna be paid, no matter where they are pointed. This is why I'd call that portion of the daily cost 'just accounting', because the taxpayer is going to foot the bill for the deep space network, regardless of where it's pointed. But, when it's pointed at mars, the mars programs are being accounted as the 'cost', and rightfully so.
While the rovers are on active surface mission, there are a lot of extra people hanging around jpl, and i'm sure most of them are 'rather expensive' to keep on hand. this type of expense is 'out of pocket', it's an expense that wouldn't be happening if the rovers were not on surface mission. My own guess offhand is that the 3 million a day is probably half and half, one half true 'out of pocket' expenses, and the other half just accounting for equipment/personnel that would be on hand anyways, but are currently involved in the MER program. For the sake of easy math tho, I'm gonna suggest 1 mill is 'accounting' and 2 mill is 'real cost'.
Now take a look at the overall value proposition. the entire program is running in the 850 million range, and it's targetted for 2 rovers on surface, for 90 days each. That's 180 science days for a total cost of 850 million, or 4.72 million per active rover science day, as per mission parameters. this was the value proposition of the original mission, and the mission(s) were launched on this basis.
Now that surface operations are in progress, the daily burn rate is 3 million, for 2 rovers on surface. If a million of that is stuff like accounting for dsn time, then 2 million is the actual 'out of pocket' expense, or approximately 1 million per rover science day. this is 21% of the projected overall cost per day of science returned on the original budget.
The up front cost of placing the equipment on the surface of mars has been absorbed, and is planned to amortize over the first 90 days on surface. After 90 days, it becomes a simple value proposition. The 'real cost' of maintaining full operations earthside is 21% of the original budget. In terms of the 'accounting costs' for things like the dsn time, it's the same type of value proposition. The dsn network WILL be kept busy, it's simply a case of determining where there is more value. The 70 meter dish can point out at voyageur and get engineering data from the deep space probe (which will still be there in another 2 months), or it can point at mars, and take advantage of the 'limited time offer' of recieving martian data at 79% discount off the 'full retail' price that was paid for the first 90 days of surface time.
This is a large project, with lots of accounting involved, and surely there's more than its fair share of 'pork' buried in the 850 million price tag. BUT, it's real right now, and the real cost of retrieving a day of data from a single rover is in the range of $1 million. Considering the 'full retail' price for that runs 4.72 million after you amortize in all the launch costs etc, this is one time when a significant budget overrun due to 'extended surface time' is an absolute bargain.
This is kind of a double edged sword though. A design life of 90 days means there is budget for 90 days of operation. An overrun of 90 days on operational time represents a huge value proposition for
The Media reports short term, Microsoft laughs in the short term. But I'm a lot more interested in the long term, when Munich can look at the next upgrade cycle prices for Windows and laugh in their face.
This just illustrates a fundamental difference in the approaches to business. An established european company has a short term business plan that looks ahead 3 to 5 years, with a long term plan that looks well beyond that. An established american company has a short term business plan that looks out over the next quarter, and a longer term plan that looks out over the next year or two.
The munich decision is claimed to be political. Why is this a surprise, I'm pretty sure the city itself is a political entity. The real difference between a political and a private decision in this regard is simple. A political entity makes decisions to the benefit of it's constituents. A private entity makes self serving decisions. There is a very good cross reference here in the IT industry. For self serving reasons, corporate USA has made the decision to outsource major components of the IT industry. For political reasons, the city of Munich has made the desision to insource thier IT infrastructure. The private entity is responsible for thier own bottom line. The political entity is responsible for the entire economy, which translates to the bottom line of all it's constituents. So, in this case, the city is making an investment in home grown infrastructure and capability. Over time, the trickle down will be huge, the city is absorbing the up front pain of making the transition from outsourced to insourced. When that transition is complete, a whole bevy of skills and capability will be available locally, to the benefit of all local business, who will then be able to make a much less painful transition from outsourced to insourced.
What most of the/. crowd misses here, the Munich example is NOT about linux. Linux is nothing more than 'the kid that was available'. The decision was about outsourcing vs insourcing, and they made a fundamental decision to go the insourcing route. Most/. readers miss this detail for a simple reason, in the usa choosing to go with a microsoft solution would be considered an 'insourcing' decision, but for the rest of the world, it's not. For a European government entity to choose Microsoft as it's IT solutions provider, is akin to an american government entity choosing to provide services using a call center based in India.
Times change, political environments change. The world is a much different place today than it was 5 years ago politically. Who knows what political issues will spring up over the next 10 years that could concievably put another country on the recieving side of boycotts by the usa? Any country that is not considering such possibilities when building up critical operating infrastructure is just not doing a good job of looking out for it's constituents in the long term.
60 years ago, any German infrastructure that was wholly dependant on support from an american coporation was basically screwed. Times change, and anybody that says 'that cant happen again' just isn't dealing with reality. For more recent examples, look at the politics in the middle east. A certain government was financed into power by american interests, and 20 years later that same government found themselves looking up to see american armed forces attacking. Times changed.
Telephone has historically been regulated the world over because it became a critical infrastructure, that local economies became 100% dependant on telephone to function. Information technology has reached that type of critical mass today. A shutdown in the IT infrastructure will bring most business and government to a halt.
An overly simplified larger scale view that larger political entities must consider a factor. If our country was to end up on the other side of the fence from the usa in a large scale conflict, would our infras
but I'm unable to draw much of any conclusion from reading this article
You missed the obvious conclusion, it's right there in the article
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In 2000, he also wrote a friend-of-the-court brief for the Supreme Court on behalf of Florida voters who favored George W. Bush's win in the contested presidential election.
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Mine's an unpopular viewpoint, but I think that's only HALF-right. Unrestricted hunting and fishing with traditional tech, fine. Modern tech, modern restrictions.
I'm a white boy born and raised in the north. Grew up in the middle of all the native traditions, so, I like to think i've got a pretty good exposure to both sides of the equation on this issue.
I could not agree more strongly. I have absolutely no qualms with allowing year round unrestricted fishing and hunting using the technology and methodologies of tradition. BUT, if you want to drive a 120 foot seiner up to the river mouth, and lay a net thru which no fish has a hope of passing, then modern restrictions should apply. One set of that seine will take more salmon from the water than the whole summer of fishing by traditional methods did in years gone past.
If this picture is correct, a greater CO2 percentage in the atmosphere, other things being more or less equal, would lead to a higher steady state mean temperature.
Therein lies my whole point. The assumption of 'other things being more or less equal'. Look again at the equation, accounting for what you bring up.
Xfa-Yfb=E
X = Input from the sun
Y = Radiation to space
fa= Filter factor for atmosphere incoming
fb= Filter factor for atmosphere outgoing
If the change in atmosphere composition affects the ratio of fa to fb, it does play a factor. The factor Y is constant thruout, it's a function of the surface area exposed to the dark side. The median surface temperature is a factor of E.
To point the finger at co2 levels and put the blame there for median temperature rising requires the assumption that X is constant. This is NOT a valid assumption. Energy output of the sun is changing over time. Reference the geological records of history, the climate has changed from ice age to tropical and back again in most parts of the world, more than once. If we assume then that the co2 influence from human activity is limited to the last 100 years, then over the larger scope of history, the fa/fb relationship is not human influenced for the majority of the timeframe, and the climate has changed dramatically. While not in itself a proof, this is very strong empirical evidence to show that the factor X in the above equation is indeed not constant, and quite likely the dominant variable. If you want to get really into the details, you can quite likely draw a relationship between the fa/fb and the median temperature, and come up with some of the 'self feeding' scenarios, but it always comes back to the same thing. Prior to the human race making composition changes to the atmosphere, the major disrupting factor in the equation is X, and we had major climate changes in the past, which suggests, X is the triggering factor.
There lies my biggest complaint with the folks pointing at co2 as the causal effect for planetary warming. The process was in progress already before the human race arrived on the scene. Nothing we do will stop it. It's possible that we are contributing to an acceleration of the process, but there are more variables in play.
Until such time as the variable X is thoroughly understood, anybody drawing conclusions based on the relationship of fa/fb is doing so on incomplete data. Spend a little time studying the issues of thermodynamics on satellites in orbit, where fa and fb are both constant and irrelavent factors. You will soon conclude that the assumption X=constant is very very wrong indeed. More than one system has failed prematurely in orbit due to thermodynamic problems that were rooted in the assumption that X=constant. X varies, the variations are cyclic. In a few more years we may even have enough data to start quantifying some of the longer term factors in the equations. who knows, maybe some day we'll even have enough data to predict it accurately. Then, and only then, will we be able to think about accurately modeling climate changes.
If you are a proponent of going beyond LEO with manned missions, this is the best scenario that could play out politically. In the short term, it's very easy to justify the financial aspects of simply contracting out to Russia all launch requirements for low orbit.
Politically this becomes an easy sell on all fronts. Financially it's way cheaper. In the event of 'incidents' (and you know they will happen), it's trivially easy to point the finger at Russia and say 'thier fault'. That's the biggest problem NASA has today, they are expected to play with very large, dangerous, explosive vehicles, submit them to extreme environments of launch/space/re-entry, and do so without losing an astronaut. This is unrealistic, so, it becomes politically easy to contract this job out, and then they can just blame the Russians when something goes wrong.
In the longer term, the American public will NOT settle for second or third best in this arena. Once the shuttles are retired, and all launches are outsourced to Russia, the american public is gonna wake up one morning and say 'hey, wait a sec, were we not the best at this at one time, how come we are not even in the game anymore?'.
At that point in time, the USA will gain the political will to accept the risk, and really start a program that goes beyond earth orbit. It wont happen right away, and actually will probably have to wait till the chinese land a man on the moon. But, that's what its gonna take to co-erce the american public back into a mode where they are willing to accept the risk, and, have a demonstrated need to 'come back' to the game.
Until john q. public gets hit in the face with the realization that the usa is no longer a leader, and not even in second place, in terms of space exploration/development, the public will not have the will to shoulder the expense, and the percieved risks of this endeavor. In the long run, the best thing that could possibly happen to the space program, is that the shuttles are never flown again, and the whole issue of orbital launches is just contracted out to the low bidder. At this point in time, there's only one qualified bidder, altho, china is not far off from that role. In the long run, it's the quickest route to 'beyond orbit'.
There is a problem with this, real math is not sensationalist journalism, and it wont get the public attention required to continue scraping out grants for research.
This whole issue of warming, it's all sensationalized, and, the single biggest factor is completely ignored. If you read the common media, you are left with the impression that because we release a little more co2 than we used to, a whole bunch of heat gets trapped, and everything changes. Well, hate to burst the bubble of a few folks, but, that's not what's really happening out there, what is described above is a more or less static problem, with co2 acting as an insulator, and the earth itself acting as the heat source.
The reality of the situation is, earth temperature is a dynamic problem. Heat is constantly being radiated from the sun, and it happens to hit the earth. If co2 is such a good insulator that it keeps heat within the atmosphere, it's just as good an insulator to keep it out. The surface temperature of the earth is a function of 2 rates of flow. The first being the rate at which heat is absorbed whilst a given spot is on the daylight side, vs the amount of heat being radiated whilst on the dark side. It's pretty much a given that you can consider the dark side a plenum, and it's ability to allow radiation of heat on the dark side is constant over time, never changes. But now go around to the light side, and ask yourself a simple question. Is the radiation coming in from the sun constant over time ?
The atmosphere may well act as a buffer zone, but, the heat coming in from the sun is the predominant factor in this equation. the mere fact we have polar icecaps is proof. The polar areas are exposed to less direct sunlight, and therefore are colder. The atmosphere is everywhere, and it's surely not doing a very good job of distributing heat evenly around the planet. Yes, it's a factor in the equation, but it's NOT the predominant factor. In reality, the atmosphere controls the rate of flow, not the absolute value. The heat being radiated by the sun is the predominant factor. The amount of change between day/night temperatures in any given area is indeed regulated by the atmosphere, it's the major source of damping in an otherwise harmonic equation, but, the median point of the harmonic motion is determined by how much radiation hits the surfact of the earth, coming in from the sun. If the co2 is preventing escape on the dark side of the swing, it's also preventing arrival on the light side of the swing. It's an insulator, not a valve.
What is the sun? It's a big lump of 'stuff' out there that happens to be involved in a self sustaining nuclear reaction, emitting a whole bunch of energy. Like the earth, the sun goes thru cycles, so, expecting the heat we get from the sun to remain constant over time, well, that's an unrealistic expectation. The real problem is, for the alarmists preaching about greenhouse gasses, thier entire arguement is based on the premise that the heat output from the sun is NOT changing. I have never seen any basis in science or in fact to support this assumption.
In the short term, the sun goes thru cycles of approximately 22 years. These cycles affect the amount of particulate matter being ejected from the sun, and it's a significant enough amount, it needs to be accounted for when doing long term predictions on orbital stability for items in low earth orbit. It kinda seems a little bit logical then to say, these same cycles are going to have some affect on the amount of heat that we get from the sun too. I dont know how much affect it will have, and I've never seen any actual research into that, but, i've also never seen anything to say otherwise, with some kind of 'proof' to validate the assumption that sun radiation is constant, and indeed, co2 levels are the determinging factor in earth temperatures. The reality is, all I've ever seen is correlations, where folks say 'co2 levels are up, temps are up, t
don't forget that most of the world's fresh water is locked up in the Antarctic ice cap, and that isn't floating in the sea - it's on dry land
The greenland icecap is also on land, and it's on par with the antarctic icecap in terms of volume of ice. BUT, theres a big difference if it all melts. The greenland icecap is situated between a couple mountain ranges, and is in places more than 3 miles thick, with a bottom well below sea level. If it all melts, it becomes a huge lake, whereas if the antarctic cap melts, it runs down into the ocean.
Followed the links, some interesting pictures from the experiments, especially if you backtrack and read the whole piece on the LDEF. But, I'm a little surprised, I've never heard this mission mentioned by all the conspiracy folks. Consider now the facts of LDEF.
The experiment container was carried into orbit aboard Challenger. Challenger was later lost in a launch incident.
The experiment container was retrieved from orbit and carried thru re-entry by Columbia. Columbia was later lost in a re-entry incident.
I've NEVER seen this mentioned in even the most wacko of conspiracy sites regarding the space program. This is to rich, I mean here it is, a solid link between the two incidents that resulted in loss of a shuttle. I mean it just doesn't get any better for those folks, here is an experiment that was carried on 2 shuttles, and both of those shuttles were subsequently lost during flight operations headed the same direction they carried LDEF. Challenger on the ascent, Columbia on the descent. Conspiracy? Curse? cmon, this is the stuff on which conspiracy sites thrive.
For those that really want to dig into it in a big way, LDEF was originally intended to be a 1 year mission, but, due to a few flight cancellations (after challenger accident) it turned into a much longer stay on orbit. In reality, the orbit retrieval was postponed a few times, to the point the experiment was almost lost to orbit decay before it was retrieved. C'mon all you conspiracy writers, here's a golden plot twist, why was the retrieval continually postponed almost to the point of loss, what were they hiding ????
ok, i've had my fun for the day, now I'll just sit back and wait to see how long it takes for some consipiracy author to pick up on this, and write a really cool twist to it all. Should be a great fun read when it happens.
By the way, does anyone know why the bitmap formap is writte upside down?
This is really easy. Back in the good old days, when developers measured memory in kilobytes rather than megabytes, and cpu speeds were expressed in single digit mhz rather than single digit ghz, performance was a BIG issue. The layout of the data inside a bitmap was set up to mimic the memory layout of a video card, so that you could literally just copy the data with no transforms.
Over time, video memory layouts changed, computers got faster, and now have more on cpu cache than they used to have memory. The rage in software development has come full circle. Instead of trying to optimize things to see how efficient they can be written, it seems to be a goal to see how much overhead one can put into a given application before it actually starts to do something useful. Some things tho seem to be trapped in thier legacy heritage, and the format of a bitmap is one of them.
take the ISS for example. Because we have to keep it in a particular orbit to satisfy the Russians,
The reality of the situation is, the iss orbit is not where it is to 'satisfy the Russians', it's to satifsy the laws of physics. There are two ways to achieve an on orbit rendevous, the first is to go charging up to orbit, and then later maneuver the orbit to match that of the target. This can be hugely wasteful in terms of energy expended in maneuvering. The second method is to wait for the target object to be on an overhead pass, so that a pure ballistic trajectory can take you directly from launch to the on orbit rendevous. This is the most efficient method of launch, allows the maximum payload delivery for a given launch vehicle.
The ISS orbit is determined by simple ballistics. It's where it is to provide maximum availability of direct launch windows from the Kennedy Space Center AND the Balkinor launch facilities. With shuttles all parked in the garage, I suspect there's a lot of folks at nasa today that are quite thankful for the decision to place ISS in an orbit that provides equal accessibility for the Soyuz and Progress vehicles. With no shuttle missions bringing up the groceries, it's very important that those progress launches pack in every possible pound of payload when they do get sent up.
Like everything else in life, ISS decisions are often a big compromise, most compromises are driven by physics, others by politics. To many uninformed folks, much of the decision making driven by physics appears to be political, because they dont understand the reality of the situation. Orbit selection for ISS was not chosen to 'satisfy the russians', but to optimize availability of resources in many scenarios. Lack of shuttle availability was one of those scenarios, and today it's reality. The ISS orbit is skewed a little from optimum shuttle inclinations due to the lifting capacities of the progress vehicles. With 20/20 hindsight, this was a brilliant decision. At the time, it appeared political to americans. It wasn't, it was driven by the need to have contingencies available in the event of prolonged periods of unavailble shuttles. We are currently a year into one of those periods.
But statistics is a stubbron thing. Russian space craft, from boosters to landers do have higher success rate. Go figure.
Dont you just hate that when the factual data kind of disagrees with what everybody wants to believe?
After challenger the statistics suggested a 2% failure rate for shuttles, with a wide margin of error in the estimate. After columbia, the 2% failure rate on shuttles is a much more reliable estimate. As much as folks want to believe shuttle incidents are 'accidents' and soviet incidents are 'sloppy engineering', eventually the statistics tell the real story. That story is pretty blunt. the shuttle fleet is ageing, so with continued operations, that 2% number is not likely to decrease, but it would not be surprising to see it increase as the fleet ages. then again, there are not enough shuttles to see that happen, we all know, one more incident will kill the program instantly.
The statistical sample is not large enough to say with 100% certainty that either program is actually better or worse engineered, but it is large enough to say, the differences between the engineering on both sides is not as large as many would like to believe, and currently the data suggests that the soviet hardware does indeed have a higher reliability factor in flight. The data set is small enought tho, a couple of incidents would indeed make a big difference in the data. There is one more statistic that cannot be ignored, there is no disputing this one as 'within the realm of statistical error'. Some of these things are gonna blow up, and it's gonna happen to both sides. Soviets seem to be better at doing it on the pad, while americans seem to be better at doing it in flight.
(If the Russians had a shuttle program, they'd have lost at least ten by now.)
The soviets did have an equivalent to the shuttle program, the buran + energia package. Energia was a heavy lift package which could carry the buran package as it's payload. The buran package was a winged orbiter/re-entry vehicle that resembles the shuttle in appearance. The first (and only) flight was unmanned for a couple orbits with a gliding return to roll out on a runway.
What really differentiated the soviet and american versions of the program technically were the launch package. Shuttle with it's main engine and external fuel tank is an intergral part of the launching package. Buran was merely a payload atop an independantly developed heavy lift package. Another big difference between the programs, after a single flight, the soviets realized it was far more cost effective to stick with proton+soyuz than to operate a 're-useable' shuttle.
The entire Communist industrial economy was built on lies and incompetence, and the only reason it seemed as powerful as it did last century is that the leaders were willing to sacrifice as many lives as needed to get the needed result.
I live north of the 49th. Your comment kind of reminds me of another country, just south of here. But, lets let the facts on space missions speak for themselves. Proton+Soyuz is the most reliable launch package available today, and currently the only man rated package availble for use on ISS missions. Shuttle has killed more occupants on mission than all other space vehicles combined.
Your forgot the part about where just as he starts to look at the delegation, president stops, and sits with a blank stare on his face for 20 minutes. Scientists apologoze, sorry, forgot to erase all memory of the trip over, and there's insufficient mental capacity to deal with memory of both the trip over and our meetings at the same time.
The sourced for this 'open' project is sitting in my cvs. We were in the process of setting it up to be cvs accessible thru sourceforge when we ran into a technical snag. Sourceforge requires sources for the entire project as part of the package, and there is one binary only driver file in the original WRT54G source releases from the linksys website. We dont have sources for that, so it's kind of hard for us to release it in source form. The unit itself is kind of useless without the driver for the wireless.
At that point we decided to just secure another source of hosting for the cvs, one which would take the project where the driver in question comes in binary only form. At the same time we got a few folks to test the binaries produced by the build system, to ensure that indeed the firmware will install and operate correctly on 'virgin' units. the project was in good shape, and we were looking to a full release in early january.
Enter the picture a few gpl zealots, that started bombarding the developers working on this project with rants about how we cannot release a gpl project if we dont include sources for the entire project, wireless driver included. Well, that's beyond our control, and to be honest about it, it's not our issue, we took the existing sources as released by the original vendor, and started a fork from that point. Basically we kept thier kernel and drivers, threw out everything in userland, and started creating a 'real' router in the userland space. We also put a bunch of patches into the kernel to fix various and sundry issues.
None of us have the time nor the inclination to get involved in the gpl battle regarding if/how the original sources comply with or violate the gpl. Our intent was to fork the project in the released form, and create a real router out of it, not to get involved in debates that really dont concern us, and tend to tie up a lot of time/energy.
When we started this project, we expected that the community would appreciate a project that is a lean mean little linux based router, with all the trimmings, running on a very inexpensive piece of off the shelf cheap hardware. We added read/write file systems to the flash, cleaned up a lot of other little details, built up failsafe modes so that the router can be recovered from configuration 'ooops' that prevents it from booting properly. the list goes on.
What I actually got was what turned into a daily bombardment of folks hollering about gpl violations regarding sources for the drivers that we dont have. At one point a few folks claiming to be kernel contributors basically told me we have to release all of it, or none of it. Well, that doesn't leave much choice then does it, we cant release something that's not in the upstream project from which we forked. So, we are at this time considering options. An easy way to remain in full compliance is to release nothing. As long as I'm getting daily bomardments about how our project is in violation of gpl because we cant release sources to the wireless drivers, then, I will remain in compliance, and release nothing.
The bottom line is, we went to great effort to fix the kernel, and re-work the entire design of the installation on that platform, so that it is a 'ready to go linux from scratch' with plenty of space to add in modules for anything that suits your fancy. We have folks working on mesh system, we have vpn setups in place, and we have started on general purpose web interfaces. It's a great little unit, with a LOT of potential, and I'm going to continue to use it. The community is welcome to the project, we've been adamant about that from the onset, but, if the community is going to hold us responsible for gpl issues on the upstream project, well, that leaves us with no choice. We are in full compliance with the gpl if we release nothing to anybody.
If you are interested in an 'open' project that's as open as we can make it, with the limitations handed by the upstream project, feel free to join us on irc. #wrt54g
We'd be winning if Earth would quit sending in the second string players (ie. Russia).;-)
The reality of the situation is, first string (Russia) is all tied up doing manned missions, so they have delegated the robot probes to the second string (usa). This is mostly due to the little detail, second string has no operational man rated vehicles to work with....
Not quite sure how China plays in yet, but, they also have a manned program these days, so, second place is actually up for grabs, the robot probes may soon have to take the third bench....
If you are that adamant about it, then I'm sure you wont buy any equipment not made in the usa either. In that case, we dont have to worry about your attitude at all, you wont be buying anything used in the IT industry since it's all made in asia anyways, so you wont be calling tech support....
This patent covers a method of redirection thru manipulation of the arp protocol. In more 'geeky' terms, it's ethernet spoofing.
I wonder if there's anybody on slashdot that would admit to, and show, a spoofing setup of an age sufficient to qualify as prior art. There's gotta be a few hundred here that qualify...
I think you folks all missed the point completely. They have full dual redundancy on EVERYTHING in the MER program. Not only are the computer systems somewhat an issue, there's little issues like landing in one piece, etc etc. to that end, they built 2 full systems, packaged them on 2 different rockets, and fired them off a month apart from each other. this gave full dual redundancy to every system and every component, from the initial launch igniters, to every bit of hardware that landed on the surface. Then to maximize the redundancy, they set them to land on different halves of the planet, serious physical isolation of component set A and component set B.
If one complete set of hardware arrives on the surface, and returns scientific data, the mission is considered a success. the real issue and difference of this program is, they went with dual redundancy in everything, from launchers to arrival, not just separate systems mounted on the same physical hardware host.
This type of full redundancy does make a lot of sense when you consider, the highest risk portion of the mission is the entry and landing phase, followed closely by the launch phase. Dual redundant systems mounted on the same rover platform may well give for better chances of success whilst on the surface portion of the mission, but leaves a huge single point of failure during launch, and another one during entry and landing.
Take a peek over at nasa tv, and you well see what real mission redundancy is all about, second lander about to enter martian atmosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
you heard wrong. The rules are very specific in this area. A 'normal' instrument landing into weather of cielings greater than 200 feet with visibility greater than 1/2 mile may be flown by a pilot, or by the autoland system, with no preference. A Category II ILS (100 feet, 1/4 mile) _should_ be flown by the autoland, but pilots may elect to hand fly if equipment problems dictate so. A Category III ils (cieling 0, visibility 0) may NOT be hand flown and MUST be flown by autoland, no exceptions. A non functional autoland is cause to divert to an alternate airport with weather conditions suitable for a hand flown landing.
Fedex and UPS do a lot more zero-zero autoland operations because they have invested in the equipment to allow them to do so on most of thier fleets. Very few airlines actually invest in the equipment and training to do CAT III approaches, and it's surprising how many dont even invest in the requirements for CAT II.
From a safety perspective, this is an absolute no brainer. Just look at the statistics, and look for the number of landing accidents attributed to 'pilot error', and then look for the number attributed to 'autoland malfunction'. Ratio those numbers against the number of hand flown landings, vs the number of autolands performed over the sample period. You'll find the difference between the ratios to be larger than 3 orders of magnitude, with the autoland a clear winner.
When it gets right down to it, in normal operations, on autoland capable equipment, there is really no reason to hand fly airplanes today. The autoland will do a safer job, and pilots get plenty of practise in the 'bad situations' in the simulator. The flight management system will fly a more precise profile, using less fuel, with a higher safety factor. This translates into safer operations and lower costs.
I've been flying for 28 years, made my living flying airplanes for 18 of those 28. Pilots of large aircraft today are nothing more than systems managers. They assemble and analyze data in real time, and act as keypunch operators for the flight management system. They provide an audio interface between the air traffic control system and the flight managment system keyboard. The article was completely out of context of reality, in reality the system being tested just eliminates the audio step of transferring air traffic control clearances into the on board flight management system, and instead transfers them via a data link, thereby removing the potential for keypunch errors.
The reporter writing the article saw something they didn't understand, and tried to dramatize it to a point it's totally removed from reality. There was no remote control, just automated data transfers of data that would normally be spoken then keypunched. I guess the reporter must be a /. regular....
There used to be a set of requirements for the issuance of a patent. Something had to be 'not obvious to an expert in the field' before it became patentable. The USPTO in its current form has made a joke out of the patent system as a whole, and this one is a very clear example. I'm not even an expert in the field, but, i had my own email subdomain (mydomain.somedomain.com) more than 15 years ago. I've still got the reciepts to prove it, so, it will be acceptable as 'demonstrateable prior art' in just about any court in the world, except the courts of the usa. They have converted the patent system into a 'first to apply' concept rather than a 'first to innovate' concept. There is no longer any requirement for uniqueness, or innovation at the USPTO, just 'first'.
Patents like this one have devalued the system, and value of a real patent, to the point where the time is not far off that more countries are going to reject american patents wholesale. Since it's not possible to filter the mess for 'what is a good patent' and 'what is a bad patent', the whole lot is going to be rejected in total. I for one am already starting to plant the political seeds in my own country to do just that, and this little escapade is great fodder for the cannon. Politicians are not bright at the best of times, but even the densest of them can understand the concept when it's laid out to them. I had email by subdomains laid out and in operation 15 years ago, it's obvious. Today, suddenly it becomes 'licensable' by american patent laws. i dont need my business to be held for ransom by a foreign company that's in the business of 'legal extortion'. The only way we are going to stop this, is to get the ball rolling to make american patents invalid in our country, because today they are upheld.
The choice in this case is really up to american business. If you want patents to be upheld worldwide, put the value back in them, fix the system. Leave it unchecked with crap like this coming out of the system, and the rest of the world is gonna reject them. it's good for bypassing the crap like this patent, but it's very bad for real innovation that requires real expenditures in research and development.
This is actually a very fundamental issue in terms of IP laws and protections in a global economy. IP is protected thru patents, and, patents like this paint a very sour color on the whole lot of them. Acceptance of US patents in other countries is an all or nothing deal, and many places have chosen 'none'. I live in a country that has chosen 'all', but, that's going to change if the USPTO doesn't. It has to, because if we continue to honor every patent that comes out of the US patent office, it's only a matter of time till we have to pay a licensing fee just to breathe.
Are you implying folks should invest time and effort into the process, and not just drive down to the supplement store and try buy a pill to make thier kids brighter?
And from the article:-
"Choline is a naturally occurring nutrient found in egg yolks, milk, nuts, fish, liver and other meats as well as in human breast milk."
The plain english translation, feed your children a naturally healthy and balanced diet, and it will automatically include the required items. But, you wont find any of this in the stuff dished out of a typical fast food joint. If they live on french fries, hamburgers, and a big gulp, they will never get the stuff they need to be bright, it'll show on the grades, and on thier waistline.
So, what's new about any of this ?
The video is actual footage of folks that built and launched a satellite 20 years ago, one that's still in orbit, and still functional. That's a _serious_ technical achievement. And you are more concerned about the haircuts?
I thought /. was a place to get away from clueless managers...
Mir was opened up in 1986. The first shuttle mission to Mir occurred in 1995. Shuttle missions to mir continued for 3 years, into 1998. Mir was effectively abandoned in 1999, and de-orbit happened in 2001.
From 1986 till 1999, Mir was re-supplied by a steady stream of progress cargo carriers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Of the 13 years Mir was operational, they USA participated for only 3. the original statement is pretty much right on the money, the soviet space agency has bucketloads of experience in dealing with a low orbit space station which was kept continually manned for most of the 13 operational years. Mir had its share of problems over that timeframe, but, that's pretty indicative of all space programs. The value of the soviet experience is just that, the EXPERIENCE i dealing with the problems. In the end, Mir was de-orbited in a controlled manner.
The usa on the other hand managed to put Skylab up, and actually put a crew on it for 3 relatively short missions of 28, 59 and 84 days. during this period it also had numerous problems, the biggest being temperature control. Ultimately Skylab de-orbited in a mostly uncontrolled manner on it's own, about 6 years ahead of the plan. The american experience with low orbit stations is hardly a drop in the bucket compared to the soviet experience, and it was in reality far less reliable than Mir. heck, it was shorter lived and less reliable than Salyut 7, the precursor to Mir.
Americans love to bash the Russian space program, but, the numbers speak for themselves. Take any metric you wish, and look at the statistics. Use 'time on mission', use 'launch vehicle reliability', or just about any other metric you choose to compare the programs. The reality of the matter is, the american manned space program only exceeded the soviet program on one occaision, and that was in July of 1969, when they placed a manned mission on the lunar surface.
They may be broke, but, simple facts speak for themselves. If you have ANY doubts, just take a look at the current state of the american manned space program. Last time i checked, they are outsourcing manned missions to the Russian program due to a technical inability to fly the missions themselves. Thats a pretty powerful statement that pretty much summs up the technical facts comparing the programs.
There are 2 types of cost involved in this daily figure, those that are 'out of pocket' and those that are 'just accounting'. Take for example, the DSN time used to retrieve data from the rovers. Yes, it's very expensive I'm sure, those deep space monitoring stations cannot be cheap to build and operate. Every hour they spend pointed at mars collecting data from the MER vehicles is surely tracked, and cost accounted to the MER program, and rightfully so. BUT, it's not like they wouldn't cost anything if they were not pointed at the mars probes, the actual cost of operating the DSN system is for all practical purposes a known and fixed cost, and it's gonna be paid, no matter where they are pointed. This is why I'd call that portion of the daily cost 'just accounting', because the taxpayer is going to foot the bill for the deep space network, regardless of where it's pointed. But, when it's pointed at mars, the mars programs are being accounted as the 'cost', and rightfully so.
While the rovers are on active surface mission, there are a lot of extra people hanging around jpl, and i'm sure most of them are 'rather expensive' to keep on hand. this type of expense is 'out of pocket', it's an expense that wouldn't be happening if the rovers were not on surface mission. My own guess offhand is that the 3 million a day is probably half and half, one half true 'out of pocket' expenses, and the other half just accounting for equipment/personnel that would be on hand anyways, but are currently involved in the MER program. For the sake of easy math tho, I'm gonna suggest 1 mill is 'accounting' and 2 mill is 'real cost'.
Now take a look at the overall value proposition. the entire program is running in the 850 million range, and it's targetted for 2 rovers on surface, for 90 days each. That's 180 science days for a total cost of 850 million, or 4.72 million per active rover science day, as per mission parameters. this was the value proposition of the original mission, and the mission(s) were launched on this basis.
Now that surface operations are in progress, the daily burn rate is 3 million, for 2 rovers on surface. If a million of that is stuff like accounting for dsn time, then 2 million is the actual 'out of pocket' expense, or approximately 1 million per rover science day. this is 21% of the projected overall cost per day of science returned on the original budget.
The up front cost of placing the equipment on the surface of mars has been absorbed, and is planned to amortize over the first 90 days on surface. After 90 days, it becomes a simple value proposition. The 'real cost' of maintaining full operations earthside is 21% of the original budget. In terms of the 'accounting costs' for things like the dsn time, it's the same type of value proposition. The dsn network WILL be kept busy, it's simply a case of determining where there is more value. The 70 meter dish can point out at voyageur and get engineering data from the deep space probe (which will still be there in another 2 months), or it can point at mars, and take advantage of the 'limited time offer' of recieving martian data at 79% discount off the 'full retail' price that was paid for the first 90 days of surface time.
This is a large project, with lots of accounting involved, and surely there's more than its fair share of 'pork' buried in the 850 million price tag. BUT, it's real right now, and the real cost of retrieving a day of data from a single rover is in the range of $1 million. Considering the 'full retail' price for that runs 4.72 million after you amortize in all the launch costs etc, this is one time when a significant budget overrun due to 'extended surface time' is an absolute bargain.
This is kind of a double edged sword though. A design life of 90 days means there is budget for 90 days of operation. An overrun of 90 days on operational time represents a huge value proposition for
This just illustrates a fundamental difference in the approaches to business. An established european company has a short term business plan that looks ahead 3 to 5 years, with a long term plan that looks well beyond that. An established american company has a short term business plan that looks out over the next quarter, and a longer term plan that looks out over the next year or two.
The munich decision is claimed to be political. Why is this a surprise, I'm pretty sure the city itself is a political entity. The real difference between a political and a private decision in this regard is simple. A political entity makes decisions to the benefit of it's constituents. A private entity makes self serving decisions. There is a very good cross reference here in the IT industry. For self serving reasons, corporate USA has made the decision to outsource major components of the IT industry. For political reasons, the city of Munich has made the desision to insource thier IT infrastructure. The private entity is responsible for thier own bottom line. The political entity is responsible for the entire economy, which translates to the bottom line of all it's constituents. So, in this case, the city is making an investment in home grown infrastructure and capability. Over time, the trickle down will be huge, the city is absorbing the up front pain of making the transition from outsourced to insourced. When that transition is complete, a whole bevy of skills and capability will be available locally, to the benefit of all local business, who will then be able to make a much less painful transition from outsourced to insourced.
What most of the /. crowd misses here, the Munich example is NOT about linux. Linux is nothing more than 'the kid that was available'. The decision was about outsourcing vs insourcing, and they made a fundamental decision to go the insourcing route. Most /. readers miss this detail for a simple reason, in the usa choosing to go with a microsoft solution would be considered an 'insourcing' decision, but for the rest of the world, it's not. For a European government entity to choose Microsoft as it's IT solutions provider, is akin to an american government entity choosing to provide services using a call center based in India.
Times change, political environments change. The world is a much different place today than it was 5 years ago politically. Who knows what political issues will spring up over the next 10 years that could concievably put another country on the recieving side of boycotts by the usa? Any country that is not considering such possibilities when building up critical operating infrastructure is just not doing a good job of looking out for it's constituents in the long term.
60 years ago, any German infrastructure that was wholly dependant on support from an american coporation was basically screwed. Times change, and anybody that says 'that cant happen again' just isn't dealing with reality. For more recent examples, look at the politics in the middle east. A certain government was financed into power by american interests, and 20 years later that same government found themselves looking up to see american armed forces attacking. Times changed.
Telephone has historically been regulated the world over because it became a critical infrastructure, that local economies became 100% dependant on telephone to function. Information technology has reached that type of critical mass today. A shutdown in the IT infrastructure will bring most business and government to a halt.
An overly simplified larger scale view that larger political entities must consider a factor. If our country was to end up on the other side of the fence from the usa in a large scale conflict, would our infras
You missed the obvious conclusion, it's right there in the article
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In 2000, he also wrote a friend-of-the-court brief for the Supreme Court on behalf of Florida voters who favored George W. Bush's win in the contested presidential election.
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A political debt was owed....
I'm a white boy born and raised in the north. Grew up in the middle of all the native traditions, so, I like to think i've got a pretty good exposure to both sides of the equation on this issue.
I could not agree more strongly. I have absolutely no qualms with allowing year round unrestricted fishing and hunting using the technology and methodologies of tradition. BUT, if you want to drive a 120 foot seiner up to the river mouth, and lay a net thru which no fish has a hope of passing, then modern restrictions should apply. One set of that seine will take more salmon from the water than the whole summer of fishing by traditional methods did in years gone past.
Therein lies my whole point. The assumption of 'other things being more or less equal'. Look again at the equation, accounting for what you bring up.
Xfa-Yfb=E
X = Input from the sun
Y = Radiation to space
fa= Filter factor for atmosphere incoming
fb= Filter factor for atmosphere outgoing
If the change in atmosphere composition affects the ratio of fa to fb, it does play a factor. The factor Y is constant thruout, it's a function of the surface area exposed to the dark side. The median surface temperature is a factor of E.
To point the finger at co2 levels and put the blame there for median temperature rising requires the assumption that X is constant. This is NOT a valid assumption. Energy output of the sun is changing over time. Reference the geological records of history, the climate has changed from ice age to tropical and back again in most parts of the world, more than once. If we assume then that the co2 influence from human activity is limited to the last 100 years, then over the larger scope of history, the fa/fb relationship is not human influenced for the majority of the timeframe, and the climate has changed dramatically. While not in itself a proof, this is very strong empirical evidence to show that the factor X in the above equation is indeed not constant, and quite likely the dominant variable. If you want to get really into the details, you can quite likely draw a relationship between the fa/fb and the median temperature, and come up with some of the 'self feeding' scenarios, but it always comes back to the same thing. Prior to the human race making composition changes to the atmosphere, the major disrupting factor in the equation is X, and we had major climate changes in the past, which suggests, X is the triggering factor.
There lies my biggest complaint with the folks pointing at co2 as the causal effect for planetary warming. The process was in progress already before the human race arrived on the scene. Nothing we do will stop it. It's possible that we are contributing to an acceleration of the process, but there are more variables in play.
Until such time as the variable X is thoroughly understood, anybody drawing conclusions based on the relationship of fa/fb is doing so on incomplete data. Spend a little time studying the issues of thermodynamics on satellites in orbit, where fa and fb are both constant and irrelavent factors. You will soon conclude that the assumption X=constant is very very wrong indeed. More than one system has failed prematurely in orbit due to thermodynamic problems that were rooted in the assumption that X=constant. X varies, the variations are cyclic. In a few more years we may even have enough data to start quantifying some of the longer term factors in the equations. who knows, maybe some day we'll even have enough data to predict it accurately. Then, and only then, will we be able to think about accurately modeling climate changes.
Politically this becomes an easy sell on all fronts. Financially it's way cheaper. In the event of 'incidents' (and you know they will happen), it's trivially easy to point the finger at Russia and say 'thier fault'. That's the biggest problem NASA has today, they are expected to play with very large, dangerous, explosive vehicles, submit them to extreme environments of launch/space/re-entry, and do so without losing an astronaut. This is unrealistic, so, it becomes politically easy to contract this job out, and then they can just blame the Russians when something goes wrong.
In the longer term, the American public will NOT settle for second or third best in this arena. Once the shuttles are retired, and all launches are outsourced to Russia, the american public is gonna wake up one morning and say 'hey, wait a sec, were we not the best at this at one time, how come we are not even in the game anymore?'.
At that point in time, the USA will gain the political will to accept the risk, and really start a program that goes beyond earth orbit. It wont happen right away, and actually will probably have to wait till the chinese land a man on the moon. But, that's what its gonna take to co-erce the american public back into a mode where they are willing to accept the risk, and, have a demonstrated need to 'come back' to the game.
Until john q. public gets hit in the face with the realization that the usa is no longer a leader, and not even in second place, in terms of space exploration/development, the public will not have the will to shoulder the expense, and the percieved risks of this endeavor. In the long run, the best thing that could possibly happen to the space program, is that the shuttles are never flown again, and the whole issue of orbital launches is just contracted out to the low bidder. At this point in time, there's only one qualified bidder, altho, china is not far off from that role. In the long run, it's the quickest route to 'beyond orbit'.
There is a problem with this, real math is not sensationalist journalism, and it wont get the public attention required to continue scraping out grants for research.
This whole issue of warming, it's all sensationalized, and, the single biggest factor is completely ignored. If you read the common media, you are left with the impression that because we release a little more co2 than we used to, a whole bunch of heat gets trapped, and everything changes. Well, hate to burst the bubble of a few folks, but, that's not what's really happening out there, what is described above is a more or less static problem, with co2 acting as an insulator, and the earth itself acting as the heat source.
The reality of the situation is, earth temperature is a dynamic problem. Heat is constantly being radiated from the sun, and it happens to hit the earth. If co2 is such a good insulator that it keeps heat within the atmosphere, it's just as good an insulator to keep it out. The surface temperature of the earth is a function of 2 rates of flow. The first being the rate at which heat is absorbed whilst a given spot is on the daylight side, vs the amount of heat being radiated whilst on the dark side. It's pretty much a given that you can consider the dark side a plenum, and it's ability to allow radiation of heat on the dark side is constant over time, never changes. But now go around to the light side, and ask yourself a simple question. Is the radiation coming in from the sun constant over time ?
The atmosphere may well act as a buffer zone, but, the heat coming in from the sun is the predominant factor in this equation. the mere fact we have polar icecaps is proof. The polar areas are exposed to less direct sunlight, and therefore are colder. The atmosphere is everywhere, and it's surely not doing a very good job of distributing heat evenly around the planet. Yes, it's a factor in the equation, but it's NOT the predominant factor. In reality, the atmosphere controls the rate of flow, not the absolute value. The heat being radiated by the sun is the predominant factor. The amount of change between day/night temperatures in any given area is indeed regulated by the atmosphere, it's the major source of damping in an otherwise harmonic equation, but, the median point of the harmonic motion is determined by how much radiation hits the surfact of the earth, coming in from the sun. If the co2 is preventing escape on the dark side of the swing, it's also preventing arrival on the light side of the swing. It's an insulator, not a valve.
What is the sun? It's a big lump of 'stuff' out there that happens to be involved in a self sustaining nuclear reaction, emitting a whole bunch of energy. Like the earth, the sun goes thru cycles, so, expecting the heat we get from the sun to remain constant over time, well, that's an unrealistic expectation. The real problem is, for the alarmists preaching about greenhouse gasses, thier entire arguement is based on the premise that the heat output from the sun is NOT changing. I have never seen any basis in science or in fact to support this assumption.
In the short term, the sun goes thru cycles of approximately 22 years. These cycles affect the amount of particulate matter being ejected from the sun, and it's a significant enough amount, it needs to be accounted for when doing long term predictions on orbital stability for items in low earth orbit. It kinda seems a little bit logical then to say, these same cycles are going to have some affect on the amount of heat that we get from the sun too. I dont know how much affect it will have, and I've never seen any actual research into that, but, i've also never seen anything to say otherwise, with some kind of 'proof' to validate the assumption that sun radiation is constant, and indeed, co2 levels are the determinging factor in earth temperatures. The reality is, all I've ever seen is correlations, where folks say 'co2 levels are up, temps are up, t
The greenland icecap is also on land, and it's on par with the antarctic icecap in terms of volume of ice. BUT, theres a big difference if it all melts. The greenland icecap is situated between a couple mountain ranges, and is in places more than 3 miles thick, with a bottom well below sea level. If it all melts, it becomes a huge lake, whereas if the antarctic cap melts, it runs down into the ocean.
The experiment container was carried into orbit aboard Challenger. Challenger was later lost in a launch incident.
The experiment container was retrieved from orbit and carried thru re-entry by Columbia. Columbia was later lost in a re-entry incident.
I've NEVER seen this mentioned in even the most wacko of conspiracy sites regarding the space program. This is to rich, I mean here it is, a solid link between the two incidents that resulted in loss of a shuttle. I mean it just doesn't get any better for those folks, here is an experiment that was carried on 2 shuttles, and both of those shuttles were subsequently lost during flight operations headed the same direction they carried LDEF. Challenger on the ascent, Columbia on the descent. Conspiracy? Curse? cmon, this is the stuff on which conspiracy sites thrive.
For those that really want to dig into it in a big way, LDEF was originally intended to be a 1 year mission, but, due to a few flight cancellations (after challenger accident) it turned into a much longer stay on orbit. In reality, the orbit retrieval was postponed a few times, to the point the experiment was almost lost to orbit decay before it was retrieved. C'mon all you conspiracy writers, here's a golden plot twist, why was the retrieval continually postponed almost to the point of loss, what were they hiding ????
ok, i've had my fun for the day, now I'll just sit back and wait to see how long it takes for some consipiracy author to pick up on this, and write a really cool twist to it all. Should be a great fun read when it happens.
This is really easy. Back in the good old days, when developers measured memory in kilobytes rather than megabytes, and cpu speeds were expressed in single digit mhz rather than single digit ghz, performance was a BIG issue. The layout of the data inside a bitmap was set up to mimic the memory layout of a video card, so that you could literally just copy the data with no transforms.
Over time, video memory layouts changed, computers got faster, and now have more on cpu cache than they used to have memory. The rage in software development has come full circle. Instead of trying to optimize things to see how efficient they can be written, it seems to be a goal to see how much overhead one can put into a given application before it actually starts to do something useful. Some things tho seem to be trapped in thier legacy heritage, and the format of a bitmap is one of them.
The reality of the situation is, the iss orbit is not where it is to 'satisfy the Russians', it's to satifsy the laws of physics. There are two ways to achieve an on orbit rendevous, the first is to go charging up to orbit, and then later maneuver the orbit to match that of the target. This can be hugely wasteful in terms of energy expended in maneuvering. The second method is to wait for the target object to be on an overhead pass, so that a pure ballistic trajectory can take you directly from launch to the on orbit rendevous. This is the most efficient method of launch, allows the maximum payload delivery for a given launch vehicle.
The ISS orbit is determined by simple ballistics. It's where it is to provide maximum availability of direct launch windows from the Kennedy Space Center AND the Balkinor launch facilities. With shuttles all parked in the garage, I suspect there's a lot of folks at nasa today that are quite thankful for the decision to place ISS in an orbit that provides equal accessibility for the Soyuz and Progress vehicles. With no shuttle missions bringing up the groceries, it's very important that those progress launches pack in every possible pound of payload when they do get sent up.
Like everything else in life, ISS decisions are often a big compromise, most compromises are driven by physics, others by politics. To many uninformed folks, much of the decision making driven by physics appears to be political, because they dont understand the reality of the situation. Orbit selection for ISS was not chosen to 'satisfy the russians', but to optimize availability of resources in many scenarios. Lack of shuttle availability was one of those scenarios, and today it's reality. The ISS orbit is skewed a little from optimum shuttle inclinations due to the lifting capacities of the progress vehicles. With 20/20 hindsight, this was a brilliant decision. At the time, it appeared political to americans. It wasn't, it was driven by the need to have contingencies available in the event of prolonged periods of unavailble shuttles. We are currently a year into one of those periods.
Dont you just hate that when the factual data kind of disagrees with what everybody wants to believe?
After challenger the statistics suggested a 2% failure rate for shuttles, with a wide margin of error in the estimate. After columbia, the 2% failure rate on shuttles is a much more reliable estimate. As much as folks want to believe shuttle incidents are 'accidents' and soviet incidents are 'sloppy engineering', eventually the statistics tell the real story. That story is pretty blunt. the shuttle fleet is ageing, so with continued operations, that 2% number is not likely to decrease, but it would not be surprising to see it increase as the fleet ages. then again, there are not enough shuttles to see that happen, we all know, one more incident will kill the program instantly.
The statistical sample is not large enough to say with 100% certainty that either program is actually better or worse engineered, but it is large enough to say, the differences between the engineering on both sides is not as large as many would like to believe, and currently the data suggests that the soviet hardware does indeed have a higher reliability factor in flight. The data set is small enought tho, a couple of incidents would indeed make a big difference in the data. There is one more statistic that cannot be ignored, there is no disputing this one as 'within the realm of statistical error'. Some of these things are gonna blow up, and it's gonna happen to both sides. Soviets seem to be better at doing it on the pad, while americans seem to be better at doing it in flight.
The soviets did have an equivalent to the shuttle program, the buran + energia package. Energia was a heavy lift package which could carry the buran package as it's payload. The buran package was a winged orbiter/re-entry vehicle that resembles the shuttle in appearance. The first (and only) flight was unmanned for a couple orbits with a gliding return to roll out on a runway.
What really differentiated the soviet and american versions of the program technically were the launch package. Shuttle with it's main engine and external fuel tank is an intergral part of the launching package. Buran was merely a payload atop an independantly developed heavy lift package. Another big difference between the programs, after a single flight, the soviets realized it was far more cost effective to stick with proton+soyuz than to operate a 're-useable' shuttle.
The entire Communist industrial economy was built on lies and incompetence, and the only reason it seemed as powerful as it did last century is that the leaders were willing to sacrifice as many lives as needed to get the needed result.
I live north of the 49th. Your comment kind of reminds me of another country, just south of here. But, lets let the facts on space missions speak for themselves. Proton+Soyuz is the most reliable launch package available today, and currently the only man rated package availble for use on ISS missions. Shuttle has killed more occupants on mission than all other space vehicles combined.
Your forgot the part about where just as he starts to look at the delegation, president stops, and sits with a blank stare on his face for 20 minutes. Scientists apologoze, sorry, forgot to erase all memory of the trip over, and there's insufficient mental capacity to deal with memory of both the trip over and our meetings at the same time.
At that point we decided to just secure another source of hosting for the cvs, one which would take the project where the driver in question comes in binary only form. At the same time we got a few folks to test the binaries produced by the build system, to ensure that indeed the firmware will install and operate correctly on 'virgin' units. the project was in good shape, and we were looking to a full release in early january.
Enter the picture a few gpl zealots, that started bombarding the developers working on this project with rants about how we cannot release a gpl project if we dont include sources for the entire project, wireless driver included. Well, that's beyond our control, and to be honest about it, it's not our issue, we took the existing sources as released by the original vendor, and started a fork from that point. Basically we kept thier kernel and drivers, threw out everything in userland, and started creating a 'real' router in the userland space. We also put a bunch of patches into the kernel to fix various and sundry issues.
None of us have the time nor the inclination to get involved in the gpl battle regarding if/how the original sources comply with or violate the gpl. Our intent was to fork the project in the released form, and create a real router out of it, not to get involved in debates that really dont concern us, and tend to tie up a lot of time/energy.
When we started this project, we expected that the community would appreciate a project that is a lean mean little linux based router, with all the trimmings, running on a very inexpensive piece of off the shelf cheap hardware. We added read/write file systems to the flash, cleaned up a lot of other little details, built up failsafe modes so that the router can be recovered from configuration 'ooops' that prevents it from booting properly. the list goes on.
What I actually got was what turned into a daily bombardment of folks hollering about gpl violations regarding sources for the drivers that we dont have. At one point a few folks claiming to be kernel contributors basically told me we have to release all of it, or none of it. Well, that doesn't leave much choice then does it, we cant release something that's not in the upstream project from which we forked. So, we are at this time considering options. An easy way to remain in full compliance is to release nothing. As long as I'm getting daily bomardments about how our project is in violation of gpl because we cant release sources to the wireless drivers, then, I will remain in compliance, and release nothing.
The bottom line is, we went to great effort to fix the kernel, and re-work the entire design of the installation on that platform, so that it is a 'ready to go linux from scratch' with plenty of space to add in modules for anything that suits your fancy. We have folks working on mesh system, we have vpn setups in place, and we have started on general purpose web interfaces. It's a great little unit, with a LOT of potential, and I'm going to continue to use it. The community is welcome to the project, we've been adamant about that from the onset, but, if the community is going to hold us responsible for gpl issues on the upstream project, well, that leaves us with no choice. We are in full compliance with the gpl if we release nothing to anybody.
If you are interested in an 'open' project that's as open as we can make it, with the limitations handed by the upstream project, feel free to join us on irc. #wrt54g
The reality of the situation is, first string (Russia) is all tied up doing manned missions, so they have delegated the robot probes to the second string (usa). This is mostly due to the little detail, second string has no operational man rated vehicles to work with....
Not quite sure how China plays in yet, but, they also have a manned program these days, so, second place is actually up for grabs, the robot probes may soon have to take the third bench....
If you are that adamant about it, then I'm sure you wont buy any equipment not made in the usa either. In that case, we dont have to worry about your attitude at all, you wont be buying anything used in the IT industry since it's all made in asia anyways, so you wont be calling tech support....
This patent covers a method of redirection thru manipulation of the arp protocol. In more 'geeky' terms, it's ethernet spoofing.
I wonder if there's anybody on slashdot that would admit to, and show, a spoofing setup of an age sufficient to qualify as prior art. There's gotta be a few hundred here that qualify...
Well, if you really want to keep score, dont forget about the polar landers, 3 failures in one fell swoop....
I think you folks all missed the point completely. They have full dual redundancy on EVERYTHING in the MER program. Not only are the computer systems somewhat an issue, there's little issues like landing in one piece, etc etc. to that end, they built 2 full systems, packaged them on 2 different rockets, and fired them off a month apart from each other. this gave full dual redundancy to every system and every component, from the initial launch igniters, to every bit of hardware that landed on the surface. Then to maximize the redundancy, they set them to land on different halves of the planet, serious physical isolation of component set A and component set B.
If one complete set of hardware arrives on the surface, and returns scientific data, the mission is considered a success. the real issue and difference of this program is, they went with dual redundancy in everything, from launchers to arrival, not just separate systems mounted on the same physical hardware host.
This type of full redundancy does make a lot of sense when you consider, the highest risk portion of the mission is the entry and landing phase, followed closely by the launch phase. Dual redundant systems mounted on the same rover platform may well give for better chances of success whilst on the surface portion of the mission, but leaves a huge single point of failure during launch, and another one during entry and landing.
Take a peek over at nasa tv, and you well see what real mission redundancy is all about, second lander about to enter martian atmosphere.