Like most of the replies to this story your bitching about the old DW4000 modems. The question asked is about the new DW6000. Two completely different setups. I'm sitting here typing this on a Linux laptop through a DW6000. The Windows XP machine in the house is shut off and so is ICS. ICS did suck when I had the DW4000 but its no longer relevent to this discussion.
As for your pointing problems it sounds like your installer did a shitty job. Our dish has been up for over a year and I dont recall it ever losing lock due to wind and its been through some howling storms. It does need a solid mount and you really need to use 1 or 2 of the extra braces in the kit. You also need to keep the coax run to a minimum between the modem and the dish to minimize attenuation in the cable. The DW6000 is a compact little appliance so you can put it out of the way and close to the dish and run Ethernet twisted pair to the rest of the house. It pays to keep the coax short and the signal strength high so you have a margin for error for wind, rain, snow, whatever. We get 95% signal strength and could do better if we moved the DW6000. When we ran it the DW4000 needed to be close to the Windows computer that ran it through USB.
Certainly wireless is better if you can get it but if your really out in the country its usually not readily available and it remains to be seen if the companies trying to provide it in rural areas will make enough money to stay afloat.
I think you are talking about Direcway of a while ago, not today at least it hasn't been my experience in the last year. As the original question said we are talking about the DW6000. Its a standalone appliance with no Windows needed which knocks down points 5 and 6. Your bitching about the old DW4000 modem, using USB, and Windows in all its horrible, unrealiable glory.
It must have been really bad when you used it or your installation was screwed up. Uptime is certainly in the 99+% range for me, and its gotten nothing but better with the new DW6000 modem. So I disagree with point 2. They do reboot stuff on their satellite or in their NOC occassionally. Big deal.
I've never had any problems with DNS either not being there at all or not knowing about addresses. Maybe you have a really offensive taste, as in illegal, in web sites. So I disagree with point 3 also.
As I've said in other posts the fair use policy is a good things for their user community as whole. If your a blatant bandwidth hog, yea its not for you, of course neither is a dialup so I dont think point 1 is much of an issue in the context of this discussion.
Point 7, so you got a DIrectTV installer that was clueless about DirecWay. Not very suprising since there are a lot more DirectTV's installs than there are DirecWay installs.
The only point I agree with is 4, yes their tech support really and truly sucks. Same can be said of pretty much every company whose fallen for the Accenture sales pitch and hired a bunch of clueless, cheap, offshore workers who have no expertise about or knowledge in the product they are supporting and are sitting there reading FAQ's back to ya until you get fed up and hang up. You can thank execs who value profit margin over service and that is true just about every company these days. Get used to it.
As I've said in other posts the setup is a lot different between the old 4000 modems which had a bunch of flaky Windows only software running the modems through USB. In particular they had their own proxy server to try and hide the latency. I imagine it was good for performance but after one of the many Windows Update patches it started crashing on several sites family member used all the time. Direcway tech support, which I've bashed in another post, was completely hopeless in trying to solve the crash. Fortunately the 6000 modem came out, we switched and its been really reliable so far, knock on wood. Again I wager the 6000 is a simple Linux box or some other reliable embedded OS and I wager that is why it works way better than trying to use 100 variants of Windows, and USB, as a networking, gateway solution.
My sister has Starband and she went through a year of living hell when she first got it. Their tech support blamed clouds, airplanes and sunspots for the constant outages. She finally yelled a riot act at them and they sent a new modem and its worked great since. Flaky hardware in the modem.
We did have quite a few outages in the summer, they seldom lasted more than 15 minutes. Lately, and especially since upgrading to the 6000 a month ago, I've been using it a lot and I have seen very few, or actually no outages I can remember, other than snow on the dish. It probably helps having a short coax and a really strong signal so you have signal strength to spare.
I agree its not an ideal setup, and its only for people who can afford it and dont have better options. I imagine its worth doing a side by side comparison, with a dialup that now supports serious server side compression assuming you can get a second phone line at a reasonable price. There is also a company here now that is trying to do rural wireless and I might try them if I were to do it again today, but the setup we have is good enough for 98% of our needs, it works, its a pain to switch, so we're going to stick with it unless it goes south.
I should note I don't do ssh or VPN over it. If you need to type over it to a remote location it would probably be a pretty poor choice.
There is one down side with DirecWay I forgot to mention. I had real problems trying to subscribe to some email lists like Bugzilla at moziila.org and Bugtraq. Their email server would reject the confirmation emails for some reason. A guy at Mozilla sent me the exact log entry when the confirmation was rejected. It might be their spam filters, though I checked their filter list and saw no evidence it would reject these reputable sites. I suspect there is just something screwy in how there email server handles these slightly atypical emails.
I spent something like 16 hours on the phone to their tech support. At least 90% of it appears to be in India, all the front line support is. It is a case study in how horrible outsourcing tech support can be. They are just sitting there ready canned FAQ's and if your problem isn't in the FAQ you will never get a resolution. It was pretty clear the people I talked to weren't even basicly literate in using a browser, email or the net. I demanded to talk to a manager, he assured me he would escalate the issue. I never hear back, I call back and am on the line for a few more hours and it finally became obvious they assigned the bug to "needs further review" and it never was resolved. I wager a skilled email admin could have at least explained the problem in a few minutes if I had ever got through to one and their email server clearly appears to have a bug in it.
I had to use a FREE yahoo email for the lists that I couldn't get subscribed through Direcway. It worked without a hitch on the confirmation mails.
I think you are really overstating how bad it is. No its not DSL or cable modem but it is vastly superior to a dialup as long as you can affort it. One huge plus is there isn't a cat fight all the time over using the phone line for a phone or using it for internet. That alone was worth it assuming you cant get a second phone line cheap.
Your complaints about the complicated windows only software is the old 4000 modem and is not relevent to the 6000 Cmdr Taco was asking about. The 6000 is a vast improvement, I wager its just Linux box but don't know for sure, and is just a DHCP gateway. The latencies can run up to 1000 ms during peak, but from my Linux box, most of the time, they are much more typicly in the 500 ms range which is about as good as you can get with the speed of light constraint. Again the 6000 helps a lot with the latency especially if you are using a shared internet connection through the Windows box with the old 4000 modem. That really does bite. UPGRADE.
I hate to break it to you but satellite transponders are an expensive, finite resource. I would way rather live with their fair use policy versus having a bunch of bandwidth hogs, running fill tilt all day every day downloading movies, MP3's and CD images make it slow for everyone, all the time.
The rest of their policies are about the same thing you are going to get from any corporate ISP these days.
I live in the middle of no where in the foothills of the Rockies having moved here from a city with great DSL. The dialup modem went out the window almost immediately. It drove me crazy. You really can never go back after you have broadband.
You do want the new Direcway 6000 modem. The old 4000 modems use a USB connection to a mandatory Windows box. The shared internet connection from Windows is slow and bites in general. MS really sucks at doing simple networking stuff. I imagine Direcway only sell the 6000 now though it might be a little pricier. We got rebates to trade in the 400 and agreed to another years service but it still cost $200-300 dollars.
The new 6000 modem is just a gateway you plug in to your Ethernet LAN. Direcway automaticly upgrades it. I wager its a Linux box but I don't know for sure. You set it up and control it via any browser. It works great from my Linux laptop though they only advertise Windows and Mac. It uses DHCP.
You do want to keep the cable run from the dish to the modem as short as possible to improve the signal stength like any dish. Ours coax is real short and we get about 95% signal strength which is the best the installer has seen.
If you get a lot of snow and wind is blowing it in the dish it does fill with snow, the signal craters and you have to sweep it, but thats true of satellite TV too.
They do have a fair use policy and will throttle you if you use it heavily. Trying to download a 300 MB ISO image it throttles at 200 MB, last time I tried, and you drop to modem speeds until the next day. So you need to stop the download and restart where you left off the next day. They have a place you can check your usage and where you stand. I think they throttle you monthly too if you abuse it though I haven't noticed that.
The performance is better off peak hours. As its gotten more popular the performance has suffered some during peak hours.
Uplink is not blazing though I send 500-600K attachments on email, they do take a while to upload.
Latency is certainly a problem. You notice it the worst on web pages that have a 100 little images and URL's embedded in them. Even then I still take it over a 56K anyday.
I play Everquest on it and its certainly playable though you have to learn to work around the latency which runs from as low as 200 ms up to 700 ms, usually around 500 ms. It was much worse on the old 4000 modem and the shared connection with Windows. You notice it when you try to chase down stuff since they are a 1/2 second from where you think they are so you have to lead them but keep them in view of your camera. Its best to play a caster with snare or root or have a pet to work around this. It takes a while to zone due to the latency.
The latency would probably make shooters unplayable though I haven't tried any.
One down side is I think you are putting money in the pocket of Rupert Murdoch and FOX since they bought DirectTV last year and I think DirecWay went with them. So if you dont like Fox politics...
My sister has the competitor, Starband which is the other satellite option in the U.S. I think it has to run through a Windows machine, at least last time I checked.
I dont suppose it occured to you that the Republicans got to the Democrat's tech so he intentionally left the Democrats vulnerable and delibrately didn't tell them. Maybe he was already a Republican sympathizer or maybe they paid him off.
Well, after the Republicans managed to raise the media concentration limits today from 35% to 39% today, using a secret Republican only conference committee, nearly every media outlet is owned by the man. Or worse something like 39% is owned by Rupert Murdoch and Fox which is pretty blatantly biased to the Republicans. Viacom/CBS owns another 39%, so two companies now own 78% of media outlets. I'm sure when Murdoch decides to buy some more they will raise the limit again to accomodate Fox since its the best thing thats ever happened to Republicans, a network that makes them out to be infallible and people watch it and they believe it.
Theres not even much left for GE/NBC and Disney/ABC which also qualify as the man. Clearchannel, of course, owns nearly all the radio stations, and they are also the man.
Right on. Just watch the Senate on CSPAN. I dont know how bad congress was when the Democrats controlled everything, didn't have CSPAN then, but I doubt its as bad as it today. Any pretense of democracy in the U.S. congress is gone. Nearly every piece of legislation is passed by a majority vote of our elected representatives. It then disappears in to a closed door Republican only conference committee that rewrites it per exacting directions from the white house. This is largely in contravention of all the long standing congressional rules to write all new legislation in conference. They are only supposed to reconcile differences in a bipartisan committe. It comes back to the floor and the Republicans either coerce or bribe their majority in to holding their nose and passing it.
The only brake remaining on a practical Republican dictatorship is the fact they dont have 60 seats in the senate so the Democrats can fillibuster but this just deadlocks everything and the Dems are getting really short on backbone to do it as often as they should. I bet you the Republicans are going to pull out all stops to get 60 seats in the senate in the next election.
The $300+ billion ombudsmen bill shoved through today is a case in point the collapse of our democratic system. After it was passed in both houses, in all its pork laden glory, it disappeared in to a secret Republican conference in which they:
- Raised the limits on media ownership from 35 to 39% to explicitly accomodate Viacom and the Fox propaganda network. Two companies can control 78% of media outlets now. - Stripped 8 million Americans of the write to draw overtime. If you are a veteran and recieved training in the military you can now be made a salaried employee and are given the opportunity to work 50 hours for 40 hours pay. The Replublicans are giving massive tax cuts to the non working wealthy at the same time they are forcing working people, like firefighters, nurses and cops to work longer for less. - Overturned legislation requiring country of origin labeling on food.
In previous weeks both houses passed legislation to set the media limit at 35%, retain current overtime rules, and to label food. Majority rule and democracy was apparently intolerable to the white house so they just wrote the laws the way they want them and put them in a giant pork laden spending bill in a secret conference committee knowing the Dems wouldn't dare fillibuster it in an election year.
All the distrubing smoke coming out of Diebold and the Pentagon's SERVE are manifestations of how far the Republicans are willing to go to hold and solidify their power. Remember the Army General who said its God's will Bush is our president in these trying times. I'm willing to bet a lot of Republican's are convinced they are the only people capable of ruling the U.S., and in turn the world, and they are willing to bend the constitution and democracy to the breaking point to gain something that is starting to resemble absolute power in a world dominating empire.
Kind of deflates all those people that argue its better to use robots to explore the solar system. Something goes wrong and theres no one around to hit Ctrl Alt Delete.
I agree 100% though you left out the worst of it. The commander-in-chief, the Secretary of Defense and all the rest of the political appointees in the DOD have their jobs and power riding on the outcome of presidential elections. They also head a chain of command where anyone failing to follows orders gets court marshalled and locked away. If the incumbent administration gets worried they are going to lose Florida by a few thousands votes, with this system, there is basicly nothing stopping them from flipping a few thousands votes from one party to the other or "accidentally" losing votes for their opponent. The probable absence of a paper trail in this system insures they wont get caught either.
The Pentagon should have NO control over casting of votes whether they can develop a secure system or not. They have been proven time and again to be fundementally untrustable.
I'm sorry to say it but on the heels of Diebold this just smacks of another strong indicator that the current administration is going to do whatever is necessary to insure they win the next Presidential election and to insure they get 60 seats in the Senate. If that happens we will for all intents and purposes be living in a dictatorship. We're on the brink already. The threat of a Democratic fillibuster in the senate is one of the few brakes left. If the Republicans get 60 seats in the senate in the next election that brake will be gone and Bush can pretty much pass any law he can coerce his party in to passing. Say hello to Patriot Act 2 and 3.
If you watch the Senate and House on CSPAN you already see democracy in the U.S. is being severly undermined. Time and again a majority in the house and senate votes one way on something, the legislation disappears in to a Republican only secret conference committee and the bill is rewritten by the White House and the Republican leadership to be exactly the opposite of what was passed by a majority in violation of all rules of both houses. Today it was the pork laden ombudsman spending bill. In a secret Repubican only conference provisions were added to:
- Eliminate overtime for 8 million Americans - Raise the cap on Media concentration from 35 to 39% specificly to accomodate Viacom and the Fox propaganda network. Two companies can now control 78% of American media. - Kill a requirement to label food with country of origin
These provisions are diametricly opposed to majority votes on each of these issues that happened by the rules, in the light of day. The bill is now headed for passage because the Democrats are to spineless to stop it since its attached to a huge pork laden spending bill.
I didn't have CSPAN when the Democrats had control of the white house and congress but I doubt it was nearly as scary and undemocratic as the current House and Senate is.
"Open Source is...more likely to be a net creator of American jobs"
I think you're mistaken if you see it that way. Very few U.S. politicians, if any, will.
Microsoft's monopoly is a huge job creator in the U.S. and the Washington congressional delegation makes sure everyone knows it. Its one of the few businesses left in the U.S. that has a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world.
Linux also has a lot more momentum outside the U.S. than it has in the U.S. It is a great equalizer in allowing the rest of the world to gain a foothold in software development that would otherwise be completely dominated by Microsoft and the U.S. Its pretty clear China, the rest of Asia, Europe, Brazil, etc have an incentive to go with Linux so they gain local control of software development, keep money at home instead of sending it to Microsoft and can prevent Microsoft and the U.S. from having a stranglehold on a critical part of their infrastructure. Not to mention the chance the NSA is using Microsoft software to spy on the world.
The Republicans, who completely dominate the U.S. now, are certain to be complete suckers for an argument that Linux threatens Microsoft and U.S. dominance of computing.
As soon as Bush and Ashcroft gained power they couldn't move fast enough to knock the legs out of the antitrust case against Microsoft and they are very likely to be eager to protect Microsoft in the future. They will always side with big business against rabal.
Sean O'Keefe is a bean counter(accountant) Bush sent to NASA to trim its budget. Neither of them have any interest in space exploration or science. I saw O'Keefe's new conference on CNN after the Bush announcement and it was sickening watching someone who had no vision, knowledge of or interest in space, dodging questions and avoiding specifics on this supposedly bold new initiative. You would think they would have prepared for this announcement and presented a bold vision, rather than looking like a deer in the headlights not knowing exactly what all this means or being unwilling to admit it.
Having seen the funding timeline for this at the news conference its pretty clear what the plan is. Kill off the space shuttle and the ISS while you divert all the space enthusiasts attention with the promise of bold missions to Mars and the Moon. Of course none of those start ramping up for years and until you've already started killing off space exploration and when it comes time to bend metal on the new projects, Bush will be long gone, no one will want to pay the tab and the conservatives will have managed to kill off the civilian space program. Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement.
This is a perplexing dilemna because killing off the space shuttle and ISS is exactly what the civilian space program needs to be come viable again. But when you do it you actually need to have a viable new program to replace it and this new program simply isn't viable.
You get a definitive clue something is wrong because they are going to continue wasting money to finish the completely useless ISS while they kill off the really valuable Hubble. Get a clue. The Hubble, like all the great observatories, is a priceless resource and they are one thing that should survive out of the current NASA along with JPL's efforts.
To me this smacks of the classic, clueless political manuevering and bureaucractic thinking that has been devestating space exploration for the last 30+ years.
Probably because if this were left to NASA they will pick a bunch of overeducated, overachievers, like the current astronaut core who will probably be completely helpless when they actually arrive on Mars. NASA astronauts seem to have to reherse every detail of every mission for years and that is not the model you would have for this mission.
You need people that know how to grow stuff, raise animals, drive a bulldozer, and repair things without enough spare parts. You need self sufficient survivors and I doubt the current Phd's in the astronaut corp would cut it.
I've made exactly the same proposal here on slashdot numerous times. It is the only rational way to approach manned exploration of of Mars. It dramaticly reduces the difficulty and cost of the mission since you dont have to get a return vehicle to Mars, with fuel, or produce the fuel there. A roud trip mission to Mars is misguided thinking stemming from an Apollo mindset and it simply isn't appropriate for the much longer mission to Mars. The Apollo approach also proved to be a dead end. Just think if the Apollo goal had been to put a habitat on the Moon instead of go there, pick up rocks, come back, yawn.
It also eliminates the long periods in zero G which seems to be NASA's misguided obsession (evidenced by the fact the 100 billion dollars wasted on the ISS which is now dedicated to zero G physiology research). Not sure after a long trip in zero G and a long period in 1/3 G on Mars a crew will be real happy coming back to earth's 1 G either. You also reduce the risk of radiation exposure in deep space.
Start lobbing cargo containers, habitats, hydroponics, a nuclear reactor etc at Mars ASAP using unmanned ships. Preceed this with a bunch more robotic missions to search for criticial resource on planet like water.
When cargo ships start arriving reliably and you have enough there to sustain colonists send one or two manned flights with a bunch of astronauts, with enough skills, to start a somewhat self sufficient colony or two. Once there there you dont NEED any more manned missions, just some more cargo flights until they learn to tap Mars resources and be self sufficient. When they are self sufficient the huge expense ends but you still have a bold expedition on Mars, in perpetuity, and we have expended our biosphere which is a priceless thing in the event man, or natural events, destroys earth's.
Actually the Air Force and their need to develop ICBM's had far more to do with developing basic missile technology in the U.S. than NASA. Atlas and Titan were developed by the Air Force, ostensibly without German involvement though they no doubt stole a lot from the Germans. Atlas was first launched in 1957 before NASA was even chartered. Atlas was later modified by NASA to form the basis of the early Mercury launches.
http://www.strategic-air-command.com/missiles/Ti ta n/Titan_Missile_History.htm http://www.astronomer s.net/space_rockets/atlas_mis sile.htm
Descendents of Titan are still a mainstay for launching satellites. You are mistaken to think NASA is the only agency in the U.S. that launches satellites. The Air force and Navy probably launch more satellites than NASA.
Delta is the remaining NASA developed, civilian, expendable launch vehicle:
Uh, surveying, navigation (ships, airplanes and increasingly cars and trucks, increased safety for ships is huge), real-time tracking of freight carrying trucks, emergency location of accident victims, pinpointing brush and forest fires (from helicopters to ground crews), and in the not to distant future probably all kinds of unmanned vehicles, not just tractors.
Well if thats the best you could do I dont think you've won the point. Image stabilization might be an OK example though some research would be required to figure out who really invented it in the form its widely used. The other examples you cite dont seem to have any proven uses outside NASA. 2D barcodes is a distrubingly bureaucratic thing that is more of a damming statement about the shuttle and NASA that they would need to invent something like that to catalog the towering pile of bureaucracy and complexity that is the space shuttle.
You need to realize that NASA has a rather large bureau dedicated to trying to prove that everything they do results in spinoffs as a means to justify their budget. Back in the day I was a NASA contractor I had to go to an entire convention NASA holds each year trying to convince the world they produce spinoffs. The problem is they end up with a pretty bad tendency to take anything that might even remotely have spinoffs and stretch it to the hilt, usually beyond reality.
Dude, those are advances made by the space program for the space program. We are talking about advances that have benefits when they are spun off in to non space applications. If the X ray CCD's have applications in, and are affordable for, areas other than an X ray telescope then you would have a good example.
In thinking about my own post I think the important point is that technology spinoff is not really a very good argument for a space program. Fact is we spend billions in defense and we also get technological returns. Look, for example, at GPS which was developed entirely for military purposes and is yielding huge civilian and economic benefits that surpass anything recent I can think of NASA has done.
Fact is if you spend billions of dollars on any technological endevour you might get spin offs of substantial value, and you might not. I really doubt the spinoffs from space exploration are certain to justify the spending versus investing in fusion research, nanotechnology, biotech, defense or any other technological endeavour
I wager Apollo was something of a fluke simply because they hade to make huge leaps in things like electronics just to do it. I doubt you are going to see any similar leaps when we go back to the moon, the same place we went 35 years ago. In fact it sounds like NASA is planning to avoid high risk technology and may well just attempt to reinvent and refine a lot of the stuff they did 35 years ago and that is not something conducive to big advances in technology.
Having said all that, I could see trying to put a self sustaining colony on Mars as a potential source of big advances and spin offs since it would compell major advances in things like energy, food production and terraforming. Putting a knock off of the ISS on the moon, supplied from earth isn't likely to lead to many breakthroughs.
Me personally I think science is great and all but science missions will never hold the attention of politicians or the general public or justify the staggering price tags. Searching for life which keeps coming up as some kind of prime objective for exploring the solar system is an interesting question but finding microbes on Mars doesn't justify spending billions of dollars nor will it sustain an ambitious space program. Odds aren't in your favor your going to find life either.
Searching for water or other precious resources needed for a colony, now that counts for something, because there is really only one really good reason for a manned space program and that is put colonies out there. Colonies that will become self sustaining, grow and expand our biosphere. Perhaps cases can be made for mining, gathering helium isotopes or generating power but we are a long way from proving the economic viability of those and they aren't worth it until they can be made economicly viable.
Colonization is the reason for sending people in to the solar system, and to be honest to start by putting a base on the Moon is a dubious choice. The moon is a bad place for a manned presence. It has a hard vacuum, it has severe temperature extremes, very low gravity, and nasty soil that gets in to everything. Its only plus its not on earth and its not as far away as Mars but I really doubt you are going to effectively develop technology on the Moon for Mars. I wager everything for Mars will be different. I really doubt its going to be any good to stage trips to Mars or elsewhere. The Moon probably wont prove to be a good place to manufacture anything other than high mass, low tech shielding (unless water is found on the Moon). I wager nearly everything will come from Earth for a long time and I'm not clear on what the benefit is of staging it through the Moon.
Making it an international program would be another disaster just like the ISS. Instead of one set of politicians to keep in line you have 10 who randomly fund and defund their part of the program. You get massive infighting just like the ISS where the Russians are of the opinion the Americans dont know what they are doing and the Americans dont think the Russians know what they are doing and you spend all your time traveling half way around the world trying to make peace and get something done.
If you are serious about this set up a lean, mean organization like the old Lockheed skunkworks and tell them to go out and hire the best engineers they can find wherever they can find them, and put them all in one place (unlike NASA with a center everyplace a powerful politician managed to put one). I'm certain a whole lot of Russians, Indians and Chinese will flock to US payscales, except where their government stops them( and I imagine only China would successfully stop them). They would also be diverted from making ballistic missiles.
Well actually his dad made a similar speech declaring we would go to Mars. It was empty rhetoric in an election year too. Clinton and Gore and I think Reagan had the NASP and various other SSTO vehicles all of which went no where. They cynic in me thinks this a way to win some votes in key places like Florida where there are lots of aerospace workers. Aerospace workers will flock to Bush because of it. No one else will care one way or another.
I really hope this programs does gain traction and it does come to fruition but it really sounds like a lot of past bold new initiatives. Some money will go in to the pockets of each NASA center, some in to the pockets of Boeing and Lockheed. A bunch of studies will be churned out at the cost of billions of dollars, maybe they will start to bend metal, but costs will then start exploding due to political, bureaucratic and contractor corruption, schedules will slip, it will become prohibitively expensive and the program will either be scaled back to the point its useless or be killed all together.
If you really want to do a space program again you need to start with a blank slate with a new agency or company that is built from scratch and from the ground up to get something done, with people being hired based on merit and the ability to get things done. The old Lockheed skunkworks being the absolute best model to follow.
NASA and the contractors that feed at its trough will devour these small budget increases without a hiccup and without anything useful coming out the other side.
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Like most of the replies to this story your bitching about the old DW4000 modems. The question asked is about the new DW6000. Two completely different setups. I'm sitting here typing this on a Linux laptop through a DW6000. The Windows XP machine in the house is shut off and so is ICS. ICS did suck when I had the DW4000 but its no longer relevent to this discussion.
As for your pointing problems it sounds like your installer did a shitty job. Our dish has been up for over a year and I dont recall it ever losing lock due to wind and its been through some howling storms. It does need a solid mount and you really need to use 1 or 2 of the extra braces in the kit. You also need to keep the coax run to a minimum between the modem and the dish to minimize attenuation in the cable. The DW6000 is a compact little appliance so you can put it out of the way and close to the dish and run Ethernet twisted pair to the rest of the house. It pays to keep the coax short and the signal strength high so you have a margin for error for wind, rain, snow, whatever. We get 95% signal strength and could do better if we moved the DW6000. When we ran it the DW4000 needed to be close to the Windows computer that ran it through USB.
Certainly wireless is better if you can get it but if your really out in the country its usually not readily available and it remains to be seen if the companies trying to provide it in rural areas will make enough money to stay afloat.
I think you are talking about Direcway of a while ago, not today at least it hasn't been my experience in the last year. As the original question said we are talking about the DW6000. Its a standalone appliance with no Windows needed which knocks down points 5 and 6. Your bitching about the old DW4000 modem, using USB, and Windows in all its horrible, unrealiable glory.
It must have been really bad when you used it or your installation was screwed up. Uptime is certainly in the 99+% range for me, and its gotten nothing but better with the new DW6000 modem. So I disagree with point 2. They do reboot stuff on their satellite or in their NOC occassionally. Big deal.
I've never had any problems with DNS either not being there at all or not knowing about addresses. Maybe you have a really offensive taste, as in illegal, in web sites. So I disagree with point 3 also.
As I've said in other posts the fair use policy is a good things for their user community as whole. If your a blatant bandwidth hog, yea its not for you, of course neither is a dialup so I dont think point 1 is much of an issue in the context of this discussion.
Point 7, so you got a DIrectTV installer that was clueless about DirecWay. Not very suprising since there are a lot more DirectTV's installs than there are DirecWay installs.
The only point I agree with is 4, yes their tech support really and truly sucks. Same can be said of pretty much every company whose fallen for the Accenture sales pitch and hired a bunch of clueless, cheap, offshore workers who have no expertise about or knowledge in the product they are supporting and are sitting there reading FAQ's back to ya until you get fed up and hang up. You can thank execs who value profit margin over service and that is true just about every company these days. Get used to it.
As I've said in other posts the setup is a lot different between the old 4000 modems which had a bunch of flaky Windows only software running the modems through USB. In particular they had their own proxy server to try and hide the latency. I imagine it was good for performance but after one of the many Windows Update patches it started crashing on several sites family member used all the time. Direcway tech support, which I've bashed in another post, was completely hopeless in trying to solve the crash. Fortunately the 6000 modem came out, we switched and its been really reliable so far, knock on wood. Again I wager the 6000 is a simple Linux box or some other reliable embedded OS and I wager that is why it works way better than trying to use 100 variants of Windows, and USB, as a networking, gateway solution.
My sister has Starband and she went through a year of living hell when she first got it. Their tech support blamed clouds, airplanes and sunspots for the constant outages. She finally yelled a riot act at them and they sent a new modem and its worked great since. Flaky hardware in the modem.
We did have quite a few outages in the summer, they seldom lasted more than 15 minutes. Lately, and especially since upgrading to the 6000 a month ago, I've been using it a lot and I have seen very few, or actually no outages I can remember, other than snow on the dish. It probably helps having a short coax and a really strong signal so you have signal strength to spare.
I agree its not an ideal setup, and its only for people who can afford it and dont have better options. I imagine its worth doing a side by side comparison, with a dialup that now supports serious server side compression assuming you can get a second phone line at a reasonable price. There is also a company here now that is trying to do rural wireless and I might try them if I were to do it again today, but the setup we have is good enough for 98% of our needs, it works, its a pain to switch, so we're going to stick with it unless it goes south.
I should note I don't do ssh or VPN over it. If you need to type over it to a remote location it would probably be a pretty poor choice.
There is one down side with DirecWay I forgot to mention. I had real problems trying to subscribe to some email lists like Bugzilla at moziila.org and Bugtraq. Their email server would reject the confirmation emails for some reason. A guy at Mozilla sent me the exact log entry when the confirmation was rejected. It might be their spam filters, though I checked their filter list and saw no evidence it would reject these reputable sites. I suspect there is just something screwy in how there email server handles these slightly atypical emails.
I spent something like 16 hours on the phone to their tech support. At least 90% of it appears to be in India, all the front line support is. It is a case study in how horrible outsourcing tech support can be. They are just sitting there ready canned FAQ's and if your problem isn't in the FAQ you will never get a resolution. It was pretty clear the people I talked to weren't even basicly literate in using a browser, email or the net. I demanded to talk to a manager, he assured me he would escalate the issue. I never hear back, I call back and am on the line for a few more hours and it finally became obvious they assigned the bug to "needs further review" and it never was resolved. I wager a skilled email admin could have at least explained the problem in a few minutes if I had ever got through to one and their email server clearly appears to have a bug in it.
I had to use a FREE yahoo email for the lists that I couldn't get subscribed through Direcway. It worked without a hitch on the confirmation mails.
I think you are really overstating how bad it is. No its not DSL or cable modem but it is vastly superior to a dialup as long as you can affort it. One huge plus is there isn't a cat fight all the time over using the phone line for a phone or using it for internet. That alone was worth it assuming you cant get a second phone line cheap.
Your complaints about the complicated windows only software is the old 4000 modem and is not relevent to the 6000 Cmdr Taco was asking about. The 6000 is a vast improvement, I wager its just Linux box but don't know for sure, and is just a DHCP gateway. The latencies can run up to 1000 ms during peak, but from my Linux box, most of the time, they are much more typicly in the 500 ms range which is about as good as you can get with the speed of light constraint. Again the 6000 helps a lot with the latency especially if you are using a shared internet connection through the Windows box with the old 4000 modem. That really does bite. UPGRADE.
I hate to break it to you but satellite transponders are an expensive, finite resource. I would way rather live with their fair use policy versus having a bunch of bandwidth hogs, running fill tilt all day every day downloading movies, MP3's and CD images make it slow for everyone, all the time.
The rest of their policies are about the same thing you are going to get from any corporate ISP these days.
I live in the middle of no where in the foothills of the Rockies having moved here from a city with great DSL. The dialup modem went out the window almost immediately. It drove me crazy. You really can never go back after you have broadband.
You do want the new Direcway 6000 modem. The old 4000 modems use a USB connection to a mandatory Windows box. The shared internet connection from Windows is slow and bites in general. MS really sucks at doing simple networking stuff. I imagine Direcway only sell the 6000 now though it might be a little pricier. We got rebates to trade in the 400 and agreed to another years service but it still cost $200-300 dollars.
The new 6000 modem is just a gateway you plug in to your Ethernet LAN. Direcway automaticly upgrades it. I wager its a Linux box but I don't know for sure. You set it up and control it via any browser. It works great from my Linux laptop though they only advertise Windows and Mac. It uses DHCP.
You do want to keep the cable run from the dish to the modem as short as possible to improve the signal stength like any dish. Ours coax is real short and we get about 95% signal strength which is the best the installer has seen.
If you get a lot of snow and wind is blowing it in the dish it does fill with snow, the signal craters and you have to sweep it, but thats true of satellite TV too.
They do have a fair use policy and will throttle you if you use it heavily. Trying to download a 300 MB ISO image it throttles at 200 MB, last time I tried, and you drop to modem speeds until the next day. So you need to stop the download and restart where you left off the next day. They have a place you can check your usage and where you stand. I think they throttle you monthly too if you abuse it though I haven't noticed that.
The performance is better off peak hours. As its gotten more popular the performance has suffered some during peak hours.
Uplink is not blazing though I send 500-600K attachments on email, they do take a while to upload.
Latency is certainly a problem. You notice it the worst on web pages that have a 100 little images and URL's embedded in them. Even then I still take it over a 56K anyday.
I play Everquest on it and its certainly playable though you have to learn to work around the latency which runs from as low as 200 ms up to 700 ms, usually around 500 ms. It was much worse on the old 4000 modem and the shared connection with Windows. You notice it when you try to chase down stuff since they are a 1/2 second from where you think they are so you have to lead them but keep them in view of your camera. Its best to play a caster with snare or root or have a pet to work around this. It takes a while to zone due to the latency.
The latency would probably make shooters unplayable though I haven't tried any.
One down side is I think you are putting money in the pocket of Rupert Murdoch and FOX since they bought DirectTV last year and I think DirecWay went with them. So if you dont like Fox politics...
My sister has the competitor, Starband which is the other satellite option in the U.S. I think it has to run through a Windows machine, at least last time I checked.
I dont suppose it occured to you that the Republicans got to the Democrat's tech so he intentionally left the Democrats vulnerable and delibrately didn't tell them. Maybe he was already a Republican sympathizer or maybe they paid him off.
Well, after the Republicans managed to raise the media concentration limits today from 35% to 39% today, using a secret Republican only conference committee, nearly every media outlet is owned by the man. Or worse something like 39% is owned by Rupert Murdoch and Fox which is pretty blatantly biased to the Republicans. Viacom/CBS owns another 39%, so two companies now own 78% of media outlets. I'm sure when Murdoch decides to buy some more they will raise the limit again to accomodate Fox since its the best thing thats ever happened to Republicans, a network that makes them out to be infallible and people watch it and they believe it.
Theres not even much left for GE/NBC and Disney/ABC which also qualify as the man. Clearchannel, of course, owns nearly all the radio stations, and they are also the man.
Right on. Just watch the Senate on CSPAN. I dont know how bad congress was when the Democrats controlled everything, didn't have CSPAN then, but I doubt its as bad as it today. Any pretense of democracy in the U.S. congress is gone. Nearly every piece of legislation is passed by a majority vote of our elected representatives. It then disappears in to a closed door Republican only conference committee that rewrites it per exacting directions from the white house. This is largely in contravention of all the long standing congressional rules to write all new legislation in conference. They are only supposed to reconcile differences in a bipartisan committe. It comes back to the floor and the Republicans either coerce or bribe their majority in to holding their nose and passing it.
The only brake remaining on a practical Republican dictatorship is the fact they dont have 60 seats in the senate so the Democrats can fillibuster but this just deadlocks everything and the Dems are getting really short on backbone to do it as often as they should. I bet you the Republicans are going to pull out all stops to get 60 seats in the senate in the next election.
The $300+ billion ombudsmen bill shoved through today is a case in point the collapse of our democratic system. After it was passed in both houses, in all its pork laden glory, it disappeared in to a secret Republican conference in which they:
- Raised the limits on media ownership from 35 to 39% to explicitly accomodate Viacom and the Fox propaganda network. Two companies can control 78% of media outlets now.
- Stripped 8 million Americans of the write to draw overtime. If you are a veteran and recieved training in the military you can now be made a salaried employee and are given the opportunity to work 50 hours for 40 hours pay. The Replublicans are giving massive tax cuts to the non working wealthy at the same time they are forcing working people, like firefighters, nurses and cops to work longer for less.
- Overturned legislation requiring country of origin labeling on food.
In previous weeks both houses passed legislation to set the media limit at 35%, retain current overtime rules, and to label food. Majority rule and democracy was apparently intolerable to the white house so they just wrote the laws the way they want them and put them in a giant pork laden spending bill in a secret conference committee knowing the Dems wouldn't dare fillibuster it in an election year.
All the distrubing smoke coming out of Diebold and the Pentagon's SERVE are manifestations of how far the Republicans are willing to go to hold and solidify their power. Remember the Army General who said its God's will Bush is our president in these trying times. I'm willing to bet a lot of Republican's are convinced they are the only people capable of ruling the U.S., and in turn the world, and they are willing to bend the constitution and democracy to the breaking point to gain something that is starting to resemble absolute power in a world dominating empire.
Kind of deflates all those people that argue its better to use robots to explore the solar system. Something goes wrong and theres no one around to hit Ctrl Alt Delete.
I agree 100% though you left out the worst of it. The commander-in-chief, the Secretary of Defense and all the rest of the political appointees in the DOD have their jobs and power riding on the outcome of presidential elections. They also head a chain of command where anyone failing to follows orders gets court marshalled and locked away. If the incumbent administration gets worried they are going to lose Florida by a few thousands votes, with this system, there is basicly nothing stopping them from flipping a few thousands votes from one party to the other or "accidentally" losing votes for their opponent. The probable absence of a paper trail in this system insures they wont get caught either.
The Pentagon should have NO control over casting of votes whether they can develop a secure system or not. They have been proven time and again to be fundementally untrustable.
I'm sorry to say it but on the heels of Diebold this just smacks of another strong indicator that the current administration is going to do whatever is necessary to insure they win the next Presidential election and to insure they get 60 seats in the Senate. If that happens we will for all intents and purposes be living in a dictatorship. We're on the brink already. The threat of a Democratic fillibuster in the senate is one of the few brakes left. If the Republicans get 60 seats in the senate in the next election that brake will be gone and Bush can pretty much pass any law he can coerce his party in to passing. Say hello to Patriot Act 2 and 3.
If you watch the Senate and House on CSPAN you already see democracy in the U.S. is being severly undermined. Time and again a majority in the house and senate votes one way on something, the legislation disappears in to a Republican only secret conference committee and the bill is rewritten by the White House and the Republican leadership to be exactly the opposite of what was passed by a majority in violation of all rules of both houses. Today it was the pork laden ombudsman spending bill. In a secret Repubican only conference provisions were added to:
- Eliminate overtime for 8 million Americans
- Raise the cap on Media concentration from 35 to 39% specificly to accomodate Viacom and the Fox propaganda network. Two companies can now control 78% of American media.
- Kill a requirement to label food with country of origin
These provisions are diametricly opposed to majority votes on each of these issues that happened by the rules, in the light of day. The bill is now headed for passage because the Democrats are to spineless to stop it since its attached to a huge pork laden spending bill.
I didn't have CSPAN when the Democrats had control of the white house and congress but I doubt it was nearly as scary and undemocratic as the current House and Senate is.
"Open Source is...more likely to be a net creator of American jobs"
I think you're mistaken if you see it that way. Very few U.S. politicians, if any, will.
Microsoft's monopoly is a huge job creator in the U.S. and the Washington congressional delegation makes sure everyone knows it. Its one of the few businesses left in the U.S. that has a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world.
Linux also has a lot more momentum outside the U.S. than it has in the U.S. It is a great equalizer in allowing the rest of the world to gain a foothold in software development that would otherwise be completely dominated by Microsoft and the U.S. Its pretty clear China, the rest of Asia, Europe, Brazil, etc have an incentive to go with Linux so they gain local control of software development, keep money at home instead of sending it to Microsoft and can prevent Microsoft and the U.S. from having a stranglehold on a critical part of their infrastructure. Not to mention the chance the NSA is using Microsoft software to spy on the world.
The Republicans, who completely dominate the U.S. now, are certain to be complete suckers for an argument that Linux threatens Microsoft and U.S. dominance of computing.
As soon as Bush and Ashcroft gained power they couldn't move fast enough to knock the legs out of the antitrust case against Microsoft and they are very likely to be eager to protect Microsoft in the future. They will always side with big business against rabal.
Sean O'Keefe is a bean counter(accountant) Bush sent to NASA to trim its budget. Neither of them have any interest in space exploration or science. I saw O'Keefe's new conference on CNN after the Bush announcement and it was sickening watching someone who had no vision, knowledge of or interest in space, dodging questions and avoiding specifics on this supposedly bold new initiative. You would think they would have prepared for this announcement and presented a bold vision, rather than looking like a deer in the headlights not knowing exactly what all this means or being unwilling to admit it.
Having seen the funding timeline for this at the news conference its pretty clear what the plan is. Kill off the space shuttle and the ISS while you divert all the space enthusiasts attention with the promise of bold missions to Mars and the Moon. Of course none of those start ramping up for years and until you've already started killing off space exploration and when it comes time to bend metal on the new projects, Bush will be long gone, no one will want to pay the tab and the conservatives will have managed to kill off the civilian space program. Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement.
This is a perplexing dilemna because killing off the space shuttle and ISS is exactly what the civilian space program needs to be come viable again. But when you do it you actually need to have a viable new program to replace it and this new program simply isn't viable.
You get a definitive clue something is wrong because they are going to continue wasting money to finish the completely useless ISS while they kill off the really valuable Hubble. Get a clue. The Hubble, like all the great observatories, is a priceless resource and they are one thing that should survive out of the current NASA along with JPL's efforts.
To me this smacks of the classic, clueless political manuevering and bureaucractic thinking that has been devestating space exploration for the last 30+ years.
> why finish your degree?
Probably because if this were left to NASA they will pick a bunch of overeducated, overachievers, like the current astronaut core who will probably be completely helpless when they actually arrive on Mars. NASA astronauts seem to have to reherse every detail of every mission for years and that is not the model you would have for this mission.
You need people that know how to grow stuff, raise animals, drive a bulldozer, and repair things without enough spare parts. You need self sufficient survivors and I doubt the current Phd's in the astronaut corp would cut it.
> Have you ever read Red Mars or its sequels?
Where do you think I got the idea, heh.
I've made exactly the same proposal here on slashdot numerous times. It is the only rational way to approach manned exploration of of Mars. It dramaticly reduces the difficulty and cost of the mission since you dont have to get a return vehicle to Mars, with fuel, or produce the fuel there. A roud trip mission to Mars is misguided thinking stemming from an Apollo mindset and it simply isn't appropriate for the much longer mission to Mars. The Apollo approach also proved to be a dead end. Just think if the Apollo goal had been to put a habitat on the Moon instead of go there, pick up rocks, come back, yawn.
It also eliminates the long periods in zero G which seems to be NASA's misguided obsession (evidenced by the fact the 100 billion dollars wasted on the ISS which is now dedicated to zero G physiology research). Not sure after a long trip in zero G and a long period in 1/3 G on Mars a crew will be real happy coming back to earth's 1 G either. You also reduce the risk of radiation exposure in deep space.
Start lobbing cargo containers, habitats, hydroponics, a nuclear reactor etc at Mars ASAP using unmanned ships. Preceed this with a bunch more robotic missions to search for criticial resource on planet like water.
When cargo ships start arriving reliably and you have enough there to sustain colonists send one or two manned flights with a bunch of astronauts, with enough skills, to start a somewhat self sufficient colony or two. Once there there you dont NEED any more manned missions, just some more cargo flights until they learn to tap Mars resources and be self sufficient. When they are self sufficient the huge expense ends but you still have a bold expedition on Mars, in perpetuity, and we have expended our biosphere which is a priceless thing in the event man, or natural events, destroys earth's.
Actually the Air Force and their need to develop ICBM's had far more to do with developing basic missile technology in the U.S. than NASA. Atlas and Titan were developed by the Air Force, ostensibly without German involvement though they no doubt stole a lot from the Germans. Atlas was first launched in 1957 before NASA was even chartered. Atlas was later modified by NASA to form the basis of the early Mercury launches.
i ta n/Titan_Missile_History.htmr s.net/space_rockets/atlas_mis sile.htm
r oc ket.htm
http://www.strategic-air-command.com/missiles/T
http://www.astronome
Descendents of Titan are still a mainstay for launching satellites. You are mistaken to think NASA is the only agency in the U.S. that launches satellites. The Air force and Navy probably launch more satellites than NASA.
Delta is the remaining NASA developed, civilian, expendable launch vehicle:
http://www.astronomers.net/space_rockets/delta_
Uh, surveying, navigation (ships, airplanes and increasingly cars and trucks, increased safety for ships is huge), real-time tracking of freight carrying trucks, emergency location of accident victims, pinpointing brush and forest fires (from helicopters to ground crews), and in the not to distant future probably all kinds of unmanned vehicles, not just tractors.
Well if thats the best you could do I dont think you've won the point. Image stabilization might be an OK example though some research would be required to figure out who really invented it in the form its widely used. The other examples you cite dont seem to have any proven uses outside NASA. 2D barcodes is a distrubingly bureaucratic thing that is more of a damming statement about the shuttle and NASA that they would need to invent something like that to catalog the towering pile of bureaucracy and complexity that is the space shuttle.
You need to realize that NASA has a rather large bureau dedicated to trying to prove that everything they do results in spinoffs as a means to justify their budget. Back in the day I was a NASA contractor I had to go to an entire convention NASA holds each year trying to convince the world they produce spinoffs. The problem is they end up with a pretty bad tendency to take anything that might even remotely have spinoffs and stretch it to the hilt, usually beyond reality.
Dude, those are advances made by the space program for the space program. We are talking about advances that have benefits when they are spun off in to non space applications. If the X ray CCD's have applications in, and are affordable for, areas other than an X ray telescope then you would have a good example.
In thinking about my own post I think the important point is that technology spinoff is not really a very good argument for a space program. Fact is we spend billions in defense and we also get technological returns. Look, for example, at GPS which was developed entirely for military purposes and is yielding huge civilian and economic benefits that surpass anything recent I can think of NASA has done.
Fact is if you spend billions of dollars on any technological endevour you might get spin offs of substantial value, and you might not. I really doubt the spinoffs from space exploration are certain to justify the spending versus investing in fusion research, nanotechnology, biotech, defense or any other technological endeavour
I wager Apollo was something of a fluke simply because they hade to make huge leaps in things like electronics just to do it. I doubt you are going to see any similar leaps when we go back to the moon, the same place we went 35 years ago. In fact it sounds like NASA is planning to avoid high risk technology and may well just attempt to reinvent and refine a lot of the stuff they did 35 years ago and that is not something conducive to big advances in technology.
Having said all that, I could see trying to put a self sustaining colony on Mars as a potential source of big advances and spin offs since it would compell major advances in things like energy, food production and terraforming. Putting a knock off of the ISS on the moon, supplied from earth isn't likely to lead to many breakthroughs.
Me personally I think science is great and all but science missions will never hold the attention of politicians or the general public or justify the staggering price tags. Searching for life which keeps coming up as some kind of prime objective for exploring the solar system is an interesting question but finding microbes on Mars doesn't justify spending billions of dollars nor will it sustain an ambitious space program. Odds aren't in your favor your going to find life either.
Searching for water or other precious resources needed for a colony, now that counts for something, because there is really only one really good reason for a manned space program and that is put colonies out there. Colonies that will become self sustaining, grow and expand our biosphere. Perhaps cases can be made for mining, gathering helium isotopes or generating power but we are a long way from proving the economic viability of those and they aren't worth it until they can be made economicly viable.
Colonization is the reason for sending people in to the solar system, and to be honest to start by putting a base on the Moon is a dubious choice. The moon is a bad place for a manned presence. It has a hard vacuum, it has severe temperature extremes, very low gravity, and nasty soil that gets in to everything. Its only plus its not on earth and its not as far away as Mars but I really doubt you are going to effectively develop technology on the Moon for Mars. I wager everything for Mars will be different. I really doubt its going to be any good to stage trips to Mars or elsewhere. The Moon probably wont prove to be a good place to manufacture anything other than high mass, low tech shielding (unless water is found on the Moon). I wager nearly everything will come from Earth for a long time and I'm not clear on what the benefit is of staging it through the Moon.
Making it an international program would be another disaster just like the ISS. Instead of one set of politicians to keep in line you have 10 who randomly fund and defund their part of the program. You get massive infighting just like the ISS where the Russians are of the opinion the Americans dont know what they are doing and the Americans dont think the Russians know what they are doing and you spend all your time traveling half way around the world trying to make peace and get something done.
If you are serious about this set up a lean, mean organization like the old Lockheed skunkworks and tell them to go out and hire the best engineers they can find wherever they can find them, and put them all in one place (unlike NASA with a center everyplace a powerful politician managed to put one). I'm certain a whole lot of Russians, Indians and Chinese will flock to US payscales, except where their government stops them( and I imagine only China would successfully stop them). They would also be diverted from making ballistic missiles.
"but he's the only one who has"
Well actually his dad made a similar speech declaring we would go to Mars. It was empty rhetoric in an election year too. Clinton and Gore and I think Reagan had the NASP and various other SSTO vehicles all of which went no where. They cynic in me thinks this a way to win some votes in key places like Florida where there are lots of aerospace workers. Aerospace workers will flock to Bush because of it. No one else will care one way or another.
I really hope this programs does gain traction and it does come to fruition but it really sounds like a lot of past bold new initiatives. Some money will go in to the pockets of each NASA center, some in to the pockets of Boeing and Lockheed. A bunch of studies will be churned out at the cost of billions of dollars, maybe they will start to bend metal, but costs will then start exploding due to political, bureaucratic and contractor corruption, schedules will slip, it will become prohibitively expensive and the program will either be scaled back to the point its useless or be killed all together.
If you really want to do a space program again you need to start with a blank slate with a new agency or company that is built from scratch and from the ground up to get something done, with people being hired based on merit and the ability to get things done. The old Lockheed skunkworks being the absolute best model to follow.
NASA and the contractors that feed at its trough will devour these small budget increases without a hiccup and without anything useful coming out the other side.