Assuming that result is certain, probably. But OTOH, killing offspring of other males in not unheard of, as a way to promote you genes (evolution in action!); with at least close forms in humans (the usual killing or castration of hostile males, also boys, after conquest)
You're still on a website which uses... the more international format of date:p (for example, that "11/10/03" in the URL means third day of tenth month)
Most of us believe in individual freedom and the law should in very little degree dictate how others should live
I don't think that's really the case. Most of us are fairly comfortable, fond of strict rules, norms, and limitations of society which shaped us, in which we grew - and when we're quite content with it like that, we call it "freedom" (what, you forgot about strict rules, norms, and limitations? Yeah, exactly...)
It's largely a spectrum, not "most vs. fundamentalists" - the latter are largely just a bit further along (and they are typically given power, influence, thanks to how too many people believe the better part of what fundamentalists do)
Levitical law does say it's ok (heck, it instructs it) to kill you daughter (or son) when she insults, curses her parents (possibly when, say, she can't go out on any dates?). Or when she has an extramarital affair, also when she was seduced by his father-in-law; or if she was tricked into marriage with a man already married to her mother. If she has contact with ghosts or spirits, if she gives her child to a competing deity, if she blasphemes.
Other than that (though I probably missed a few), yeah, your daughter is fairly safe in Levitical law.
Is this one hip enough? (if you don't know neither of the languages available, Google Translate from from pl version gives slightly more bearable results)
Apart from already mentioned things - nerds also remember? (it's their "job" to be nosy). The thing with Apple aura, it was there also when their products were huge pile of excrements (large part of the 90s, in particular)...and yet, they still had similarly dedicated following. What that might suggest to those who remember history? (not overall one, oh no, they are usually horrible at that; just recent one in their field of interest)
Add the myths that grew around iPods, about the levels of their supposed dominance - while the percentages proudly boasted by Apple during their media events had "in those few selected markets" small print, while it's extremely clear the iPod really took off (and still only in few atypical places) much later than typically claimed and roughly at a time when the transition to music-capable phones was well under way (mobile phones which weren't castrated by carriers in most places).
What's happening, is we simply zoomed by the period of dedicated mp3 player contraptions. iPod rides the closing chapters of this short wave - and anyhow, in few atypical places.
In a reasonably prosperous ex-Comecon late EU member-state, I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've seen an iPod (well, excluding mine obviously...). S1 mp3 players, and similar (Creative, et al), seemed to be typical for quite some time; largely replaced by mobile phones few years ago already (usually by so called "feature phones"...though that often means touchsreens in the style of LG Cookie or Samsung Corby and Star).
And most places are less prosperous than mine, with even greater mark-up on Apple products.
Yes, the music capability of mobiles isn't used so universally as in the case of iPods. For my region, it's something like 20-30% of all European mobile phone users also regularly listening music on them. But that already adds up just in that one region to value in the range of total number of iPods ever produced.
Ah, good. [1] Frankly, such practice should always be the standard; it's almost like we purposefully did some things in suboptimal way [2] just to give the glorified glider contraption some purpose... while STS was conceptually obsolete before it seriously got onto drawing boards, with automatic docking and routine return of big valuable (actually reused) equipment done since the 60s.
1. Note, I was laughing in that bit mostly from a possible overcomplicated folding version, probably required to fit into the X-37B cargo bay.
2. Also, say, space station modules which cannot dock themselves (in fact, IIRC there is some talk of retrofitting few "western style" in-storage ISS modules with small orbital tugs, launching them on typical expendable launcher, and docking them autonomously like all Russian and some European or Japanese modules do; which would almost certainly end up less expensive, more efficient, than launching such on STS was - including R&D and manufacture of the tugs)
PS. Deorbit Hubble or...maybe another servicing mission? (but yeah, launching new one - obviously, not identical - would be probably more optimal; such approach is way overdue anyway, largest user of sats with, supposedly, some family resemblance, does just that; I can see a case for a more or less constant, low-intensity production of Hubble-likes - one to be launched every few years, incorporating latest imaging instruments, on an inexpensive expendable launcher; making scientists happy ...potentially making also the population at large happy, if only about how the tech and production resources, infrastructure & experience demanded by military are also put to some loftier goals; but I'm not sure the humanity has matured enough for that one)
It's possible that the X37b could be refitted with docking equipment, though it's not manned.
That's unlikely for proper docking, with the port used by the Chinese; APAS looks like it could have problems fitting into the cargo hold of X-37B. And if it would fit, that would be one heck of an exercise in futility (with docking port most likely taking most of space and mass allowance; well, since there would be no need for hard, hermetic seal, I imagine it's possible to come up with much more basic, "dock only" version of APAS...maybe folded one, deployable...overcomplicated; and for what?). Oh, wait, that does start to sound like many ~manned US space efforts.
If anything, it would be funny if the specific flavour of docking port, used by this Chinese station, wouldn't let such visitor go - the outpost possibly having automatic emergency station-keeping procedures, maybe also more powerful orientation thrusters and more delta-V than X-37B; like you said, "contingencies" (though "for everything" would mean most are utterly stupid...oh, wait)
Generally, provoking such cat & mouse games in LEO would be utterly stupid; the orbit is the ultimate asymmetric warfare battleground (say, take any medium rocket and launch a "satellite" of which by far the most massive part is a gravel container; such would not make much a difference for smaller players, orbital installations of which can be easily targeted individually as is - but they could be a massive headache on entities more invested in orbital installations), and we're possibly already not too far from Kessler Syndrome.
I see one major problem with you currently favoured approach - we're already possibly not too far from the Kessler Syndrome, and with such levels of activity in L & MEO, introducing many large targets for all the projectiles flying around (and constantly produced by new activity and previous impacts) might give curious results... While the orbit is the ultimate asymmetric warfare battleground (take any medium rocket and launch a "satellite" of which by far the most massive part is a gravel container)
Dreams of massive orbital infrastructures never seem to take into account the above. And the required advanced in-situ manufacturing makes them largely superfluous - you're not tied to Earth already, just go to the asteroids and such.
(heck, places like the middle of an ocean or Sahara desert are insanely more friendly to the (early) kinds of infrastructure required, so don't expect much of such space-anything as long as we mostly ignore Sahara (and such), as long it is a wasteland and not an industrial powerhouse)
In fact, I suspect "big and glorious" space travel might never get, well, big. Most of the humans can travel when they are miniaturised and in deep hibernation (even now, with easy transport across the Earth, most of humanity doesn't move much; most people die near the place where they were born); dozens of thousands on Earth are past the procedure! When grown humans are taken out of the equation, we can take our time...
...plus by the time all of this would be maybe-who-knows feasible, the whole surrounding tech background is likely to be quite different; changing the rules. Heck, 'we' might as well have "magical nanotech" & mind uploading in a few centuries (by this time we probably wouldn't expand much using the "big" methods), which would simply obsolete the dreams of "big & glorious" modes of space travel known from scifi (which often shows limited imagination - to make the work of writers easier & consumption more palatable to audiences / not too dissimilar from earthly experiences) and adored by all the scifi cargo cultists who treat it almost as proven to be viable - while largely in disregard of the absolutely wild realities of existing universe.
PS. Harmonic vibrations in untethered space elevators could be fun, too; especially since it would need to be constantly reboosted, its lifting capability isn't free. Also:
The problem with the big rocket approach is that it is exactly as hard to make the next trip as the last trip.
That's not strictly true in practise, not with benefits of mass production and operational expertise (vs. one of a kind megastructures?)
I've added HOTOL background to Skylon enthusiasms; it's not so clear as Skylon would like us to believe (with the types of public funding it gets being also about risky projects with unknown outcomes, investors not willing to step up)
...but, on top of that, "vertically" ("vertical thrust") is a popular but huge misunderstanding. The first rocket that got into space was A4, aka V-2 (~100 km during normal operational flight, and I think it could achieve ~180 if launched almost vertically). However... it was more than an order of magnitude away in energy expenditure required from being able to reach orbit. Launchers work primarily not for height, but for horizontal speed, kinetic energy, and most of those energy gains must happen outside of the atmosphere - a) the speed is high b) it gets squared in kinetic energy...
Shuttle and... Apollo (well, not for decades, too young for that; but I'm frustrated at myself how easily STS took me over as a kid, just because it was so "impressive")
Of the twelve people we sent to the Moon, only one was a geologist, during the very last mission (and that just barely; he was pushed ahead of schedule, which required some concerted effort of scientific community, when his mission was cancelled).
While, demonstrably, unmanned missions of the time provided scientific benefits fairly comparable to those of Apollo. With small portion of funds of the latter, we could probably maintain constant telerobotics presence.
You were going along fine, but then, after around 2/3rd of your post... sir, are you or were you ever a member of the Communist Party?
But seriously, how Apollo brought only one geologist for the ride is possibly one of the saddest testimonies about the mindset of humanity. I guess we should root for unmanned sample return Mars mission, it might happen relatively quickly and there might be some gain out of that... (possibly of the world view changing ones)
Generally, transport of humans as embryos seems to possibly make "manned" spaceflight considerably less stupid. Of course, that would encounter barriers coming from ancient mythologies (unless someone manages to hijack them for the purpose of colonisation, in a "this universe made by our deity for us, to spread life and his word" style - heck, spreading would basically require adopting some of the harder types of... monastic life).
I don't think anybody at NASA was so stupid... maybe, at most, some political manager types who saw photos of Baikonur provided by U-2 flights, showing train tracks leading right to the launchpads? (a handy thing when transporting heavy, long, fairly narrow payloads on few very clearly defined routes, no need for silly expensive crawlers)
It would realistically give maybe, what, 10 m/s? 20, 30 tops? The launcher needs to achieve almost 8000 (and the speed is squared in kinetic energy...). But now with all the tremendous complication and much harder aborts, that's a horrible trade off (heck, the heavier construction necessary to survive such dynamic launch would most likely far more than offset any gains)
What shredded the stack to pieces was aerodynamic force, when an SRB which detached itself positioned it "sideways" to supersonic air stream, nearly at the moment of highest aerodynamic loads. Fuel tank itself had little to do with it. There was no explosion, the tank was just severely structurally compromised by an out-of-control SRB (which burned through one of the elements attaching it to the rest, and was wrecking havoc "suspended" on only one). What looked like an explosion happened behind the stack, after the tank dumped virtually its whole load (bulkheads gave way, because of... SRB which was wrecking havoc). Read the report.
And no, there is nowhere near that high pressure inside of liquid fuel tanks, they don't try to rip themselves apart through every sealing, no need for o-rings of such type (NVM how the most crucial thing with safety of temperatures is how stable they are, how predictable; for cryogenic fuels, the answer is: extremely)
Also nice thing about liquid fuels - they can be non-toxic (many most successful and all new designs use such), fairly inert, and the rocket itself is virtually completely inert during production, it becomes "hot" only at the launchpad...which GREATLY benefits the prospects of mass production, lowering costs (not only production, also operations, etc.)
There's really no reason to excuse bad approaches.
Bad on many levels. SRBs were there mostly to negate the suboptimal characteristics of choosing hydrogen as fuel, to "average" characteristics of whole stack; when you just use kerosene, characteristics are already at that more optimal spot, and there's not much need for SRBs.
Solid fuel rockets might be maybe sometimes sensible if you treat them for what they are - a simple disposable tube with explosives; many of them are basically just that (the small ones used by many expendable launchers in the very first stages of flight). It's something what STS SRBs were nothing but (pointlessly modular, just to give pork to one contractor whose bread - wound up by crazy Cold War nuclear race - was starting to dry up after first arms control treaties, but properties desired for ICBMs don't translate neatly to LEO launchers; pointlessly reusable - a metal tube is not that valuable, but suddenly it needed recovery systems, ability to survive impact & to float, refurbishment procedures; pointlessly overcomplicated)
Frankly, I don't care much about people, most get a hell of a ride. Launching stuff into space is expensive. Solid rocket propulsion failed to provide an attractive offer, despite being probably the most produced type of rocket (but for other usage scenarios, where they are in turn more sensible)
One of my favs is the 1st successful US cruise missile, still firmly WW2; it was the V-1, reverse-engineered from bits and pieces (also gathered from early tests in Pomerania, and IIRC even some plans). Strangely absent from popcultural conciousness... what, because the US did the copying?;p
Jerrycans history is perhaps the greatest of all. Or maybe the Soviet RPG-7, reverse engineered, made in & used by US forces now? Or maybe Katyusha, copied by Waffen-SS?
One can also get designers outright (Sikorsky? Von Braun team?); defections were in all directions
And we can't forget the greatest game of all time, Tetris (even if that's a bit outside og the scope here)
Generally, not doing it would be just stupid. If there's a successful base design out there, you take and improve from it; trying and aiming to trace the already completed necessary intermediate steps would be foolish. Nobody did it when revving up their tech industries, aiming for a status of industrial powerhouse.
Well, Nokia also made "poor" (not for consumers) choice by being reluctant to allow too strong castration of phones and their UIs; something which US carriers demanded. Or how Qualcomm effectively blocked their US sales for some time. Or dynamics of random fashion (for example preferring RAZR and such, which were really quite atrocious; but in a fancy shell; not really replicating such uptake elsewhere)
And I think you overestimate the influence of those "enthusiast" sites, or the rapidness of shift. If anything, emergence of better (so called) feature phones over the years possibly hurt them more, opened people to Asian manufacturers; phones in the style of LG Cookie, Samsung Corby or Star (until recently #1 fastest 10 million units sold for Samsung) - and yup, phones not really present in the US or on those sites (but wildly popular in Europe)
no ordinary monkeys either. First and foremost, they...
...type quite randomly. Which would be absolutely not the case with ordinary ones, distribution of symbols most likely heavily biased towards centre of the keyboard, home row, generally where it's more comfortable to pounce at the keys (try it, you're a primate, not too far from monkeys)
applies equally to a vaccine: It is less than 100% effective for the people who do not receive it
Not really true, in practise. With mass vaccination campaigns there is a tipping point after which a particular disease is virtually eradicated; after which it is extremely difficult to contract it (one would essentially need to purposefully try very hard), even if you're a freeloader who refuses to be vaccinated (yes, vaccines are a major reason why also people phobic of them can lead quite healthy lives).
That's the case with practically every disease eradicated via vaccines, since virtually none of them guarantees immunity in the first place, among those who get vaccinated - they simply give it to large portion of the recipients, so there are not enough carriers for the survival of a pathogen.
BTW, sex is an activity which typically involves two people, and you can't really have control over how earnest the other party is in sticking to some lofty promises.
Natural selection doesn't "care" much about the dynamics of one generation, how many kids you will have. It's a blink of an eye for it.
Plus, even having one child possibly puts you ahead of majority of males (if the child is a girl), and outside (ahead) of what is possibly the largest group of males:
Dr Balaresque told BBC News: "The variance of reproductive success between males and females is completely different. If you look at a population, even now, most of the females have children, which is absolutely not the case for males.
"We estimate that about 40% of males do not leave any descendents. This means that each generation, you are losing the traces of 40% of males in that generation. The turnover for males is much higher than it is for females."
Not really. For a large piece - think a big piano, or (unavoidable analogy) a car, or maybe a loaded van being dropped from an aircraft at altitude (debris essentially falls at its terminal velocity when hitting surface). Yes, the day will suck for anything or anybody directly hit, or in the immediate vicinity; there's also a slight possibility of toxic propellants or such surviving the reentry. But I wouldn't really count it among "cause a lot of damage" even within city centres; don't expect anything really worse than a bad road accident (those even sometimes involve toxic substances; though, admittedly, such are unlikely in city centres) or not particularly newsworthy building fire / gas explosion.
It probably seems more scary than it is because of how bad our primate minds are at assessing risk, statistics (go through a list of cognitive biases; this is our primary mode of operation). Road accidents and overall automotive safety are examples of that, too - with them, we also greatly value what merely feels safe (even if, in reality, stats are against it), what gives an illusion of control (say, by sitting higher than others)
Severe lack of such illusion is probably why sat debris (generally, sudden attack from above) is so scary, why we want so much to know where it will hit.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming that result is certain, probably. But OTOH, killing offspring of other males in not unheard of, as a way to promote you genes (evolution in action!); with at least close forms in humans (the usual killing or castration of hostile males, also boys, after conquest)
You're still on a website which uses... the more international format of date :p (for example, that "11/10/03" in the URL means third day of tenth month)
Most of us believe in individual freedom and the law should in very little degree dictate how others should live
I don't think that's really the case. Most of us are fairly comfortable, fond of strict rules, norms, and limitations of society which shaped us, in which we grew - and when we're quite content with it like that, we call it "freedom" (what, you forgot about strict rules, norms, and limitations? Yeah, exactly...)
It's largely a spectrum, not "most vs. fundamentalists" - the latter are largely just a bit further along (and they are typically given power, influence, thanks to how too many people believe the better part of what fundamentalists do)
Levitical law does say it's ok (heck, it instructs it) to kill you daughter (or son) when she insults, curses her parents (possibly when, say, she can't go out on any dates?). Or when she has an extramarital affair, also when she was seduced by his father-in-law; or if she was tricked into marriage with a man already married to her mother. If she has contact with ghosts or spirits, if she gives her child to a competing deity, if she blasphemes.
Other than that (though I probably missed a few), yeah, your daughter is fairly safe in Levitical law.
Life often ends badly for kids.
Is this one hip enough? (if you don't know neither of the languages available, Google Translate from from pl version gives slightly more bearable results)
Apart from already mentioned things - nerds also remember? (it's their "job" to be nosy). The thing with Apple aura, it was there also when their products were huge pile of excrements (large part of the 90s, in particular) ...and yet, they still had similarly dedicated following. What that might suggest to those who remember history? (not overall one, oh no, they are usually horrible at that; just recent one in their field of interest)
...though that often means touchsreens in the style of LG Cookie or Samsung Corby and Star).
Add the myths that grew around iPods, about the levels of their supposed dominance - while the percentages proudly boasted by Apple during their media events had "in those few selected markets" small print, while it's extremely clear the iPod really took off (and still only in few atypical places) much later than typically claimed and roughly at a time when the transition to music-capable phones was well under way (mobile phones which weren't castrated by carriers in most places).
What's happening, is we simply zoomed by the period of dedicated mp3 player contraptions. iPod rides the closing chapters of this short wave - and anyhow, in few atypical places.
In a reasonably prosperous ex-Comecon late EU member-state, I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've seen an iPod (well, excluding mine obviously...). S1 mp3 players, and similar (Creative, et al), seemed to be typical for quite some time; largely replaced by mobile phones few years ago already (usually by so called "feature phones"
And most places are less prosperous than mine, with even greater mark-up on Apple products.
Yes, the music capability of mobiles isn't used so universally as in the case of iPods. For my region, it's something like 20-30% of all European mobile phone users also regularly listening music on them. But that already adds up just in that one region to value in the range of total number of iPods ever produced.
Ah, good. [1] Frankly, such practice should always be the standard; it's almost like we purposefully did some things in suboptimal way [2] just to give the glorified glider contraption some purpose... while STS was conceptually obsolete before it seriously got onto drawing boards, with automatic docking and routine return of big valuable (actually reused) equipment done since the 60s.
...maybe another servicing mission? (but yeah, launching new one - obviously, not identical - would be probably more optimal; such approach is way overdue anyway, largest user of sats with, supposedly, some family resemblance, does just that; I can see a case for a more or less constant, low-intensity production of Hubble-likes - one to be launched every few years, incorporating latest imaging instruments, on an inexpensive expendable launcher; making scientists happy
...potentially making also the population at large happy, if only about how the tech and production resources, infrastructure & experience demanded by military are also put to some loftier goals; but I'm not sure the humanity has matured enough for that one)
1. Note, I was laughing in that bit mostly from a possible overcomplicated folding version, probably required to fit into the X-37B cargo bay.
2. Also, say, space station modules which cannot dock themselves (in fact, IIRC there is some talk of retrofitting few "western style" in-storage ISS modules with small orbital tugs, launching them on typical expendable launcher, and docking them autonomously like all Russian and some European or Japanese modules do; which would almost certainly end up less expensive, more efficient, than launching such on STS was - including R&D and manufacture of the tugs)
PS. Deorbit Hubble or
Still the "X37b" is merely a payload of Atlas V, just "a missile that can reach space" (on a Russian main engine BTW)
It's possible that the X37b could be refitted with docking equipment, though it's not manned.
That's unlikely for proper docking, with the port used by the Chinese; APAS looks like it could have problems fitting into the cargo hold of X-37B. And if it would fit, that would be one heck of an exercise in futility (with docking port most likely taking most of space and mass allowance; well, since there would be no need for hard, hermetic seal, I imagine it's possible to come up with much more basic, "dock only" version of APAS ...maybe folded one, deployable ...overcomplicated; and for what?). Oh, wait, that does start to sound like many ~manned US space efforts.
...oh, wait)
If anything, it would be funny if the specific flavour of docking port, used by this Chinese station, wouldn't let such visitor go - the outpost possibly having automatic emergency station-keeping procedures, maybe also more powerful orientation thrusters and more delta-V than X-37B; like you said, "contingencies" (though "for everything" would mean most are utterly stupid
Generally, provoking such cat & mouse games in LEO would be utterly stupid; the orbit is the ultimate asymmetric warfare battleground (say, take any medium rocket and launch a "satellite" of which by far the most massive part is a gravel container; such would not make much a difference for smaller players, orbital installations of which can be easily targeted individually as is - but they could be a massive headache on entities more invested in orbital installations), and we're possibly already not too far from Kessler Syndrome.
Dreams of massive orbital infrastructures never seem to take into account the above. And the required advanced in-situ manufacturing makes them largely superfluous - you're not tied to Earth already, just go to the asteroids and such.
(heck, places like the middle of an ocean or Sahara desert are insanely more friendly to the (early) kinds of infrastructure required, so don't expect much of such space-anything as long as we mostly ignore Sahara (and such), as long it is a wasteland and not an industrial powerhouse)
In fact, I suspect "big and glorious" space travel might never get, well, big. Most of the humans can travel when they are miniaturised and in deep hibernation (even now, with easy transport across the Earth, most of humanity doesn't move much; most people die near the place where they were born); dozens of thousands on Earth are past the procedure! When grown humans are taken out of the equation, we can take our time...
PS. Harmonic vibrations in untethered space elevators could be fun, too; especially since it would need to be constantly reboosted, its lifting capability isn't free. Also:
The problem with the big rocket approach is that it is exactly as hard to make the next trip as the last trip.
That's not strictly true in practise, not with benefits of mass production and operational expertise (vs. one of a kind megastructures?)
I've added HOTOL background to Skylon enthusiasms; it's not so clear as Skylon would like us to believe (with the types of public funding it gets being also about risky projects with unknown outcomes, investors not willing to step up)
...but, on top of that, "vertically" ("vertical thrust") is a popular but huge misunderstanding. The first rocket that got into space was A4, aka V-2 (~100 km during normal operational flight, and I think it could achieve ~180 if launched almost vertically). However... it was more than an order of magnitude away in energy expenditure required from being able to reach orbit. Launchers work primarily not for height, but for horizontal speed, kinetic energy, and most of those energy gains must happen outside of the atmosphere - a) the speed is high b) it gets squared in kinetic energy...
Shuttle and... Apollo (well, not for decades, too young for that; but I'm frustrated at myself how easily STS took me over as a kid, just because it was so "impressive")
Of the twelve people we sent to the Moon, only one was a geologist, during the very last mission (and that just barely; he was pushed ahead of schedule, which required some concerted effort of scientific community, when his mission was cancelled).
While, demonstrably, unmanned missions of the time provided scientific benefits fairly comparable to those of Apollo. With small portion of funds of the latter, we could probably maintain constant telerobotics presence.
You were going along fine, but then, after around 2/3rd of your post... sir, are you or were you ever a member of the Communist Party?
But seriously, how Apollo brought only one geologist for the ride is possibly one of the saddest testimonies about the mindset of humanity. I guess we should root for unmanned sample return Mars mission, it might happen relatively quickly and there might be some gain out of that... (possibly of the world view changing ones)
Generally, transport of humans as embryos seems to possibly make "manned" spaceflight considerably less stupid. Of course, that would encounter barriers coming from ancient mythologies (unless someone manages to hijack them for the purpose of colonisation, in a "this universe made by our deity for us, to spread life and his word" style - heck, spreading would basically require adopting some of the harder types of... monastic life).
But imagine... zombies... IN SPACE!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111
Well, maybe it's still Ares, if not Aries... :p
(@sig, aren't teabaggers what became out of 60s hippies, anyway?)
I don't think anybody at NASA was so stupid... maybe, at most, some political manager types who saw photos of Baikonur provided by U-2 flights, showing train tracks leading right to the launchpads? (a handy thing when transporting heavy, long, fairly narrow payloads on few very clearly defined routes, no need for silly expensive crawlers)
... most frequently used launch vehicle in the world
It would realistically give maybe, what, 10 m/s? 20, 30 tops? The launcher needs to achieve almost 8000 (and the speed is squared in kinetic energy...). But now with all the tremendous complication and much harder aborts, that's a horrible trade off (heck, the heavier construction necessary to survive such dynamic launch would most likely far more than offset any gains)
Genius of Korolev and some luck did the trick, when choosing early approaches (that did include striving for relative simplicity). So much so that essentially the same rocket turned out to be the most reliable
What shredded the stack to pieces was aerodynamic force, when an SRB which detached itself positioned it "sideways" to supersonic air stream, nearly at the moment of highest aerodynamic loads. Fuel tank itself had little to do with it. There was no explosion, the tank was just severely structurally compromised by an out-of-control SRB (which burned through one of the elements attaching it to the rest, and was wrecking havoc "suspended" on only one). What looked like an explosion happened behind the stack, after the tank dumped virtually its whole load (bulkheads gave way, because of... SRB which was wrecking havoc). Read the report.
...which GREATLY benefits the prospects of mass production, lowering costs (not only production, also operations, etc.)
And no, there is nowhere near that high pressure inside of liquid fuel tanks, they don't try to rip themselves apart through every sealing, no need for o-rings of such type (NVM how the most crucial thing with safety of temperatures is how stable they are, how predictable; for cryogenic fuels, the answer is: extremely)
Also nice thing about liquid fuels - they can be non-toxic (many most successful and all new designs use such), fairly inert, and the rocket itself is virtually completely inert during production, it becomes "hot" only at the launchpad
There's really no reason to excuse bad approaches.
Bad on many levels. SRBs were there mostly to negate the suboptimal characteristics of choosing hydrogen as fuel, to "average" characteristics of whole stack; when you just use kerosene, characteristics are already at that more optimal spot, and there's not much need for SRBs.
Solid fuel rockets might be maybe sometimes sensible if you treat them for what they are - a simple disposable tube with explosives; many of them are basically just that (the small ones used by many expendable launchers in the very first stages of flight). It's something what STS SRBs were nothing but (pointlessly modular, just to give pork to one contractor whose bread - wound up by crazy Cold War nuclear race - was starting to dry up after first arms control treaties, but properties desired for ICBMs don't translate neatly to LEO launchers; pointlessly reusable - a metal tube is not that valuable, but suddenly it needed recovery systems, ability to survive impact & to float, refurbishment procedures; pointlessly overcomplicated)
Frankly, I don't care much about people, most get a hell of a ride. Launching stuff into space is expensive. Solid rocket propulsion failed to provide an attractive offer, despite being probably the most produced type of rocket (but for other usage scenarios, where they are in turn more sensible)
One of my favs is the 1st successful US cruise missile, still firmly WW2; it was the V-1, reverse-engineered from bits and pieces (also gathered from early tests in Pomerania, and IIRC even some plans). Strangely absent from popcultural conciousness... what, because the US did the copying? ;p
Jerrycans history is perhaps the greatest of all. Or maybe the Soviet RPG-7, reverse engineered, made in & used by US forces now? Or maybe Katyusha, copied by Waffen-SS?
The F117 (US stealth tech in general) also inspired by and building on some Soviet breakthroughs.
One can also get designers outright (Sikorsky? Von Braun team?); defections were in all directions
And we can't forget the greatest game of all time, Tetris (even if that's a bit outside og the scope here)
Generally, not doing it would be just stupid. If there's a successful base design out there, you take and improve from it; trying and aiming to trace the already completed necessary intermediate steps would be foolish. Nobody did it when revving up their tech industries, aiming for a status of industrial powerhouse.
Well, Nokia also made "poor" (not for consumers) choice by being reluctant to allow too strong castration of phones and their UIs; something which US carriers demanded. Or how Qualcomm effectively blocked their US sales for some time. Or dynamics of random fashion (for example preferring RAZR and such, which were really quite atrocious; but in a fancy shell; not really replicating such uptake elsewhere)
And I think you overestimate the influence of those "enthusiast" sites, or the rapidness of shift. If anything, emergence of better (so called) feature phones over the years possibly hurt them more, opened people to Asian manufacturers; phones in the style of LG Cookie, Samsung Corby or Star (until recently #1 fastest 10 million units sold for Samsung) - and yup, phones not really present in the US or on those sites (but wildly popular in Europe)
no ordinary monkeys either. First and foremost, they...
applies equally to a vaccine: It is less than 100% effective for the people who do not receive it
Not really true, in practise. With mass vaccination campaigns there is a tipping point after which a particular disease is virtually eradicated; after which it is extremely difficult to contract it (one would essentially need to purposefully try very hard), even if you're a freeloader who refuses to be vaccinated (yes, vaccines are a major reason why also people phobic of them can lead quite healthy lives).
That's the case with practically every disease eradicated via vaccines, since virtually none of them guarantees immunity in the first place, among those who get vaccinated - they simply give it to large portion of the recipients, so there are not enough carriers for the survival of a pathogen.
BTW, sex is an activity which typically involves two people, and you can't really have control over how earnest the other party is in sticking to some lofty promises.
Plus, even having one child possibly puts you ahead of majority of males (if the child is a girl), and outside (ahead) of what is possibly the largest group of males:
Dr Balaresque told BBC News: "The variance of reproductive success between males and females is completely different. If you look at a population, even now, most of the females have children, which is absolutely not the case for males.
"We estimate that about 40% of males do not leave any descendents. This means that each generation, you are losing the traces of 40% of males in that generation. The turnover for males is much higher than it is for females."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8467623.stm
Not really. For a large piece - think a big piano, or (unavoidable analogy) a car, or maybe a loaded van being dropped from an aircraft at altitude (debris essentially falls at its terminal velocity when hitting surface). Yes, the day will suck for anything or anybody directly hit, or in the immediate vicinity; there's also a slight possibility of toxic propellants or such surviving the reentry. But I wouldn't really count it among "cause a lot of damage" even within city centres; don't expect anything really worse than a bad road accident (those even sometimes involve toxic substances; though, admittedly, such are unlikely in city centres) or not particularly newsworthy building fire / gas explosion.
It probably seems more scary than it is because of how bad our primate minds are at assessing risk, statistics (go through a list of cognitive biases; this is our primary mode of operation). Road accidents and overall automotive safety are examples of that, too - with them, we also greatly value what merely feels safe (even if, in reality, stats are against it), what gives an illusion of control (say, by sitting higher than others)
Severe lack of such illusion is probably why sat debris (generally, sudden attack from above) is so scary, why we want so much to know where it will hit.
Kinda how Zeus and his lightings are scary.
Psion their sister company made...