Try ROX Desktop, if you still miss RISC OS? Though it also doesn't seem very active; and, being a very mouse-driven environment running on top of *nix, perhaps it was just too awkward of a beast.
I wonder how it is in places which had "very theirs" computer system at some point - how many people (among general population) would go nostalgic when seeing, in the case of UK, some BBC Micro or Archimedes...
...the "mad Australian" let nothing get in the way of his quest for mastery. Not even a feline.
"Julian was constantly battling for dominance, even with my tomcat Herr Schmitt," says the German.
"Ever since Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden he (the cat) has suffered from psychosis. Julian would constantly attack the animal. He would spread out his fingers like a fork and grab the cat's throat.
(and let me just note that - with such violence against cats - Assange crossed the line, broke all limits, as far as I am concerned)
USB plugs tend to have an embossed logo on the "up" side (unless a manufacturer cares more about "aesthetics" than usability... ); one which can be easily felt, no need to see the plastic inside the connector. Too bad it seems to be less of a rule with USB flash drives - out of my selection, only around half have some embossed, Braille-like stuff (on the cable plugs it's usually the USB logo - on the flash drives it seems to be fairly random) on the "up" side. At least those which don't have it are only symmetric (it could be worse, with the mark on the "down" side)
I've never heard about the Nintendo twist - and I kinda doubt it; the USB comes from mid-90s, when the NES cartridge slot was still a fresh memory, and would probably make everybody wary about anything from Nintendo in the topic of connectors;p
Generally, "they" do think about it, micro-USB was designed with around an order of magnitude more cycles in mind than standard USB, and also more than mini-USB...on the side of the socket (moving wear- & damage-prone elements to the cable side; preferable, vs. bricking the device socket).
More generally, we demand and love ever more inexpensive toys.
Also, I won't complain if the next attempt would be less jerky... if not by longer exposures (which would introduce some motion blur, but probably also make lightning less visible), then at least by capturing photos more often.
What we know for certain is that he was a man behind the controls of a machine which took away, for many other people, ability of "living life" to the fullest. I guess that makes him, by your own criteria, a huge asshole.
And "mechanical failures" in those areas of aircraft are known to happen also when the pilot fails to realize that what he's trying to do - say, with too violent for the speed steering inputs - goes beyond the limits of construction.
Most of the time we are hardly in a state which our "conciousness" likes to call "concious" - more in a mode which our "mindful" brain would call "mindlessly doing daily chores" which, I suspect, is what being even fairly "low" animal feels like all the time (instead of merely most of the time). We probably also often experience this when dreaming or not-quite-awake; during intensive physical effort; watching TV; maybe when really drunk, too.
In fact, together with the last one, I often find some weird shit in chat archive, web history, etc.; supposedly remnants of only parts of my brain being semi-functional, before the entirety of them passes out.
But, sometimes, I almost suspect it is my cat who does this; using those opportune moments to refine her plans of taking over the world.
Though they hardly demand extraordinary evidence from... themselves. To their smart brain, it's just "obvious" how smart we are... but, go through a list of cognitive biases - this is the primary mode of operation for our brains.
Why do people refuse to admit mistakes - so deeply that they transform their own brains? They're not kidding themselves: they really believe what they have to believe to justify their original thought.
There are some pretty scary examples in this book. Psychologists who refuse to admit they'd bought into the false memory theories, causing enormous pain. Politicians. Authors. Doctors. Therapists. Alien abduction victims.
Most terrifying: The justice system operates this way. Once someone is accused of a crime - even under the most bizarre circumstances - the police believe he's guilty of something. Even when the DNA shows someone is innocent, or new evidence reveals the true perpetrator, they hesitate to let the accused person go free. ... Once we hold a position, say the authors, it's almost impossible to make a change.
Or: how we merely like to convince ourselves about reliability of our memory, how many myths about it & our minds we tend to believe. Not only textbook cognitive biases; also, say, the myth about "monolithic me" while split-brain patients end up virtually unchanged; there's one localized brain trauma which results in people becoming completely blind without them realizing it; popular harmful BS lies of "we're so important, gods love us, more of us live now than have ever lived!" & simply ignoring 100+ billion dead homo sapiens sapiens (at least we will be similarly ignored very quickly, so there's some "balance"); also myths about how decent and freedom loving people we are (a bit sad how our deep need for Just World gets derailed so easily:/ )
How, when people get older, they tend to start believing myths about the greatness of their youth (not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with "frustrating" reality of how much better in fact it is "now", for most cases of "now") - the "good old times" known in written forms since antiquity and which give tiresome political results (being essentially at the core of anti-liberalism; though, on the other side, it's not that much better, with progressivism too often forgetting about good stuff the past has to offer)
What's worse, all this while too many people live in a world of absolute right and wrong. With almost total lack of understanding of risk, statistics. Too stupid to connect their votes with the consequences they suffer.
Ignoring how a good leader is someone who sometimes makes mistakes; who is not perfect but is able to lead in good direction despite the imperfections. Contrast this with the usual rhetoric when people root for their "new mythical hero" and how they present them and their ideologies as perfection. A total BS right at the core of many political movements.
People believing their position in life is due to merit and hard work (despite most not ever doing anything which could be called "hard"), not understanding how it's largely an accident of birth, viewing the poor as lazy and unworthy of success (a view which eases acceptance of actions that maintain this relative social order). Perpetrating the myths of "land of opportunity" or "American Dream" while the actual metric of this stuff, social mobility, places the US at the bottom of developed countries (at the top are, popularly disparaged, so-called "nanny states")
People who will only learn new things if it confirms a pre-existing belief.
Because 9/11 was so statistically representative of crimes, or even of hijackings? (with passengers and crews largely being used, over the decades, to hijackers who want the aircraft to land somewhere, so that their demands can be more or less met and the passengers released)
Plus this was more about the overall non-argument of ~"vast majority of concealed weapons permit holders are decent people" which is roughly akin to "vast majority of concealed weapons permit holders breathe right now ~20/80 mix of oxygen and nitrogen, with some traces of other gasses" - duh? (and a fact which doesn't have much of any significance for the few who purposefully breathe other mixtures right now; or who undergo mild hypoxia right about now, are starting to act a little funny...maybe even inside of some flying aircraft)
TSA - a government agency that assumes accountability for security
And, perhaps, it takes the passengers' attention away from the airlines, as the main frustration-causing element of air travel? Lets the airlines get away with progressively more obnoxious service on their part? (which, in comparison of opening TSA experience, suddenly doesn't seem so bad)
Sometimes it really does seem that way, and why the airlines could very well be happy about all the passenger trauma caused by the TSA...
When just few percent of the launchpad mass gets into LEO, such (50+%) waste matters a lot. "The most reliable... most frequently used launch vehicle in the world" (and among the least expensive ones, also in cost per kg) is a fully expendable rocket, semi-mass produced (on average over 30 per year; though there's a more mass-produced example in the very first widely used, large rocket; and who knows where we would be if OTRAG weren't cancelled for political reasons), and probably comfortably on its way towards a century of service (with how a new launchpad in Guiana is inaugurated right about now). Mass production, simplification, modularisation (of standard units) is what generally seems to do the trick in lowering costs of operations; few large, unique and overcomplicated units generally accomplishes quite the contrary.
Besides, capsules can be largely reusable as well. And don't forget how much they can do, and did, that STS-class vehicle cannot. Plus, why would you want humans to do experiments in a capsule? Space stations are for that...for quite a bit longer than a puny one week (and if you insist, compare the length of "Soyuz strips" with those of the Shuttle in this timeline...the first type looking there more like actual spaceships).
And most of the space station modules historically lifted, did so on an expendable launcher. In fact, there is some talk of retrofitting few in-storage "western part style" ISS modules with small orbital tugs, launching them on average medium launchers, and docking them autonomously like all Russian and some Japanese and European modules do - what will most likely end up being less expensive (including the R&D and manufacture of tugs!), less wasteful, than launching such modules on STS was! (which was "required" for many ISS modules only because they were specifically constructed that way, to give the Shuttle some purpose).
Think about it for a second - STS was among the three most powerful, by far, launchers in history (if not the most powerful at take off, too lazy to check). And yet, its payload capability was merely in the range of many medium expendable launchers. Proton, Ariane 5, Delta IV, Atlas V, Falcon, Long March, Angara, Rus. Pick one.
One shot of such launcher already gives comparable amounts of stuff to work with (of course you also need to launch crew on a separate launch or two, but it still ends up more economical and with much greater possibilities, much longer stay). And, if doing one launch of STS-scale rocket but without the waste of a glorified glider, you'd have few times more in just that one launch (Energia was a bit more sensible like that from the start - the Buran was just its payload; another one was an 80 ton space station modules, one being also at the core of their Mars mission spacecraft which Energia was to asemble; SLS will be also capable of such, it will represent this more sensible approach)
And if you want to bring some stuff back... well, capsules also lead in the amounts of recovered, valuable, purpose-specific, actually reused equipment (also scientific missions, including half of NASA experiments of such type, most during the Cold War; another type, and few more variants of just this one capsule here...though the "Reentry" text of Foton, seemingly pasted over few arts, doesn't really make much sense and needs to be corr
It is absolutely expected that creators are the most appreciative of their darling, it doesn't say very much in itself. If problems were so minor as you present, there would be not much reason to just terminate the effort (and yes, the new materials and technology available now were certainly anticipated in calculations then; those which suggested that a "dumb rocket" would give something at worst comparable)
ESA provides them with low-level funding; it is certainly the goal of the organization to explore and be supportive of potentially(!!) promising paths, that's it, that's what public funding of research is also about. They have their own share of dead ends...
Now, don't get me wrong, it would be fun if Skylon works out, in practical operations. But we must be sceptical of the claims of those who are, one way or another, deeply invested in it. If only because of... come on, how many "this will be awesome, revolutionary, and inexpensive" we had, also from supposedly respectable entities? Heck, it was the same song behind the push for STS, and look how much of a train wreck of a project it ended up being.
It wasn't only about NK-33, and not only about this batch (from the numerous planned launchers using them, it would seem they are at least being prepped for production)
Plus the topic (marginal one, really; main one being "glorious 60s") was fuel economy, not "price of *fuel*"...all those costs you mention, "rocket, engines, electronics, and payload" are so high largely because of the scale of problems when efficiently (aka economically; preferably also reliably...) using the chemical energy of propellants; high efficiency must be the case if they are to have any chance of putting their payload into LEO; again, this what the launchers are about.
Furthermore, you treat cost of fuel as it is when stored in cisterns near the launchpad. But it is much higher than that during launch. Not quite on the levels of LEO payload costs per kg... but when the fuel is, say, half used, the remaining half is worth not only its "cistern value", but also what it costs overall to get it to its present height and speed!
And yes, SpaceX took a less extreme approach (though they have yet to demonstrate the claimed "lower costs than the Russians"! And ex-Soviet engines are also quite straightforward, "simply" just using a very curious metallurgy and basic design concepts it allows); but note how they did choose a more efficient (overall, for the 1st stage job) fuel...
(actually, they chose it also for the second stage IIRC; maybe it shows how overall(!!) efficiency is best served by this quite "Russian" approach)
Note that Skylon precursor HOTOL, a project under seemingly much more reputable entities and stricter oversight, apparently came to conclusion that it would be not really operationally better than a "dumb rocket" using comparably advanced technology or materials...which for a specaplane are required to make it even barely possible.
Most (if not all, Taurus II is yet to fly) of the engines in question are and will be brand new; sold profitably. Redesigned quite a few times. Put into production (or prepared for one) in "high labour cost" place.
But at least you, suddenly, insist that economy of rockets does matter after all...
And specific impulse is far from the only measure of overall launcher efficiency (in converting its stored energy into LEO mass), particularly in a first stage engine, where optimal fuel density or thrust are important...and what makes those Russian engines extremely efficient at their task> (though NK-33 has a decently nice vacuum version, NK-43); heck, all of them are kerosene-fuelled, it's a given that exceptional specific impulse isn't a part of their exceptional efficiency.
Russia has 4+ decades of experience with manned "Exploration Class Vehicle" in Soyuz, the very first spacecraft which took macroscopic life (turtles, most notably...) beyond LEO (around the Moon) and safely back, during Zond 5 mission (and few more).
All this time it was used as an orbital ferry, but Soyuz is essentially capable of beyond-LEO operation. In fact... do you have $150 million? Well, then get yourself a ride (those are the people responsible for all orbital tourists to date, except for the first Japanese to Mir in ~1990)
Rockets are 90+% fuel at launch, used up very liberally, in just few minutes. Only few percent "barely" gets to LEO.
Yes, the absolute quantities and costs of propellants aren't large. However, for launch vehicles, fuel economy, aka efficiency in conversion of stored energy into desirable practical goal (vs., say, goals often seen with cars - how "mean" and "impressive" they are on some idiotic scale of penis-enhancement effects; in contrast, rockets are only coincidentally phallic;p ), is EVERYTHING. That's their main goal; even minute (and/or often very expensive to implement) improvements in fuel economy are often considered worthwhile due to noticeably greater payload capabilities they bring.
They are able to even override pork that you mention, or even the "Not Invented Here" syndrome, even in the US. Atlas V, the past darling of the Air Force IIRC, launcher of X-34 or few "big" probes...doing it on NPO Energomash RD-180 main engines, Energia & Zenit derived (as are Angara or Rus main engines). Taurus II, an upcoming star of "private American rocket industry revival" will use Kuznetsov NK-33 engines (and with a Zenit-derived 1st stage BTW), coming from N-1 (the Soviet Moonshot rocket).
There's even some talk of trying to push Kuznetsov NK-33 (well, with an inconspicuously Americanised name Aerojet AJ26) into the Space Launch System under discussion here.
Why is that, why do ~half of US launch systems might end up with ex-Soviet / Russian engines? The staged combustion cycle, which only the Russians successfully implemented, is extremely efficient.
Modern high bypass turbofan aircraft engines are sort of more akin to turboprops than to early turbojet engines. Propfan is one of more promising improvements. "Frames" go for composites, so organic materials...
Maybe what NASA says is that they've made a mistake. One almost not done by anyone else*...but very popular in works of fiction. Maybe it's simply how dreams about expected modes of space travel turned out to be wrong; dreams extrapolating (not understanding, generally) rates and directions of observed progress. Look at those airplanes from "our" times (imagined during rapid advances of marine tech; and we can even build them - take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy... still a horrible idea vs. "boring" reality)
Consider how the "spaceplanes" came to dominate scifi... around the 40s, during rapid advances of airplane tech (I can see a pattern...); how the designers and decision-makers of the Shuttle were undoubtedly raised on those works of fiction. And how they gave us an analogue of Catalina, at best (Spruce Goose, at worst); but something which looked very soothing and "inspiring" to the already constrained public imagination, already quite accustomed to airliners / Concorde. Something which probably robbed us at least of a decade of progress; was conceptually obsolete (with automatic rendezvous, docking and routine return of large valuable cargo done in the 60s) before it seriously got onto drawing boards. It was a retreat to early dreams.
Short spurs of progress are generally typical of our civilisation, in the Real World(tm); it's what tends to happen with everything. BTW, have you seen the ideas of Archimedes about floating improved? Come on, his law is over 2k years old, surely we should be able to ignore it by now...
*The Shuttle appears to make more sense if you look at it as a geopolitical engineering project, to provoke the ignorant Soviet generals[1] into pushing for a rampant spending of their counterpart, to have a parity for (non-existent) "strategic advantage" of the STS. Of course, then one has to ask why was it allowed to continue sucking NASA dry for the past two decades?... there even was a good opportunity to terminate the program post-Challenger (of course, that in turn could be also a "revenge of the Buran" of sorts - it was essentially being prepped on its launchpad at the time, and of course the Soviets couldn't be allowed to be the only ones with a shuttle[2])
1. Their engineers very much didn't want to go there, preferring Spiral approach. With the vehicle being just a dumb payload of medium launcher...ultimately, when forced, doing the same with STS-class vehicle (Energia was a more sensible approach from the start, one very similar to this Space Launch System) - but it bled them dry, killed what they really wanted (Zarya "super Soyuz")
2. Who knows, the history might judge the last laugh was even more on Buran - in its only flight, it demonstared the whole main "point" behind a shuttle (its flight profile) to a much fuller degree than any of STS vehicles ever did. With the secondary point (LEO space station) being essentially, for STS fleet, in the form of maintenance and expansion of two space stations meant for Buran...
Those strap on boosters are very unlike that of Soyuz / R-7 rocket. In the latter, they are very similar to core stage, burning the same fuel mixture (kerosene and oxygen; a mix very suitable for first stages, giving nice balance of good specific impulse, high fuel and exhaust density, hence small tanks and large static thrust; a sweet spot, one sort of aimed at in coupling and "averaging" characteristics of STS hydrogen-burning engines with SRBs...yeah, "so why not just use kerosene?", like Saturn V also did BTW)
Generally, seeing capsules as a step backwards is at odds with basic chronology. Everybody at first expected "aerodynamic" or "spaceplane-ish" shapes from reentry vehicles, and worked towards it hard. They proved relatively unworkable. Blunt shape entry capsule was a relatively late innovation, an improvement; and a bit of a surprise. There's nothing wrong with capsules; physics, rocket equation, are a bitch.
Soyuz also worked out fine, being "the most reliable... most frequently used launch vehicle in the world" (and one of least expensive ones). With designs like Angara or Falcon improving even more on the concept, for example with parallel grouping of identical first stages (bringing even more benefits of mass production)
Seeing what huge and actually present amounts of misplaced ego, of drunken fantasies, give, it's courageous to recognize the conditions of the Real World(tm).
OTOH it might very well be cowardly when people want to hear about grandiose, fabulous, "awesome" and "inspiring" styles of space travel and colonisation typical of scifi (works of fiction); when they expect something palatable, nothing too uncomfortable and too alien from Earthly experiences (bonus: it's much easier to write / depict...), fearing to face the absolutely wild realities of actually existing universe. It's actually a sign of constrained imagination.
Ultimately, people will continue being upset how the space travel will most likely remain fundamentally different from their expectations. In the meantime, how many even realize that we can already send people when they are miniaturized and in deep hibernation and that dozens of thousands on Earth are past the procedure? Heck, give me one medium launcher + few dozen million bucks, and I can transport at least a thousand viable humans practically to anywhere in our system.
What if it is? For one, starting from RS-25 engines is probably suboptimal for heavy light expendable vehicle. Generally, hydrogen-fuelled first stages are suboptimal; they maybe have high specific impulse, but in first stage it's more than offset by complications from very low fuel density - say, large tank or not-so-great static thrust (essentially this is also why the Shuttle needed SRBs...)
We would be able to build a station 20 times as big as the ISS merely by not wasting huge quantities of upmass on airframe launched into space. The Shuttle approach was what killed our expansion into space. Didn't brought any real new capability (with automatic rendezvous and docking done since the 60s, and capsules returning large valuable cargo just as long), while expanding costs.
Or go on and continue "what if" dreaming which assumes completely unsustainable levels of funding...
This will have less lift capacity than... the shuttle
What is the point of including the wasted upmass of airframe? Excluding it, the lift capability of STS was in the range of many inexpensive expendable launchers; and there's nothing wrong with expandability - physics, rocket equation, are a bitch.
Some simple, back of the napkin calculations so you might get the feel of how much waste the "spaceplane" scifi cargo cult dream brought with it: the empty weight of the orbiter was 80 tons, weight at liftoff 110 tons including maximum payload of 24 tons. Lets be generous and assume, say, a capsule of 15 tons for comparable crew transport capabilities (other capabilities being superfluous), launched on a typical ~20+ tons launcher... that gives a wasted upmass of around 70 tons in each Shuttle launch.
Through 134 successful launches. Over 9000* tons of launched mass which could be in LEO, but was wasted on Buck Rogers style contraption.
Even if merely half of that was used for a space station, it would an order of magnitude larger than the ISS, probably easily of the spinning, "gravity" generating type. And on a somewhat higher orbit (ISS was for a long time on non-optimal one so that Shuttle would be able to reach it with usable payloads)
*Yes, I perhaps slightly inflated the above "70" ( ~65 being more realistic), but I wanted badly to sneak in the 9k line;p
The largest user of Hubble-like sats launches them on not-Shuttles for quite some time now. The number of "rendezvous, dock, supply spare parts" operations done by not-Shuttle absolutely dwarfs the number of times Shuttle did it.
Many non-core ISS segments had to be put up by Shuttle only because they were designed to give it purpose. Doing it with some expendable launcher and small orbital tug would be almost certainly more optimal.
Most of the useful, reusable, valuable cargo was brought down from orbit by not-Shuttle. The latter was conceptually obsolete before it seriously got onto drawing boards.
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Try ROX Desktop, if you still miss RISC OS? Though it also doesn't seem very active; and, being a very mouse-driven environment running on top of *nix, perhaps it was just too awkward of a beast.
I wonder how it is in places which had "very theirs" computer system at some point - how many people (among general population) would go nostalgic when seeing, in the case of UK, some BBC Micro or Archimedes...
...the "mad Australian" let nothing get in the way of his quest for mastery. Not even a feline.
"Julian was constantly battling for dominance, even with my tomcat Herr Schmitt," says the German.
"Ever since Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden he (the cat) has suffered from psychosis. Julian would constantly attack the animal. He would spread out his fingers like a fork and grab the cat's throat.
(and let me just note that - with such violence against cats - Assange crossed the line, broke all limits, as far as I am concerned)
USB plugs tend to have an embossed logo on the "up" side (unless a manufacturer cares more about "aesthetics" than usability... ); one which can be easily felt, no need to see the plastic inside the connector. Too bad it seems to be less of a rule with USB flash drives - out of my selection, only around half have some embossed, Braille-like stuff (on the cable plugs it's usually the USB logo - on the flash drives it seems to be fairly random) on the "up" side. At least those which don't have it are only symmetric (it could be worse, with the mark on the "down" side) ;p
...on the side of the socket (moving wear- & damage-prone elements to the cable side; preferable, vs. bricking the device socket).
I've never heard about the Nintendo twist - and I kinda doubt it; the USB comes from mid-90s, when the NES cartridge slot was still a fresh memory, and would probably make everybody wary about anything from Nintendo in the topic of connectors
Generally, "they" do think about it, micro-USB was designed with around an order of magnitude more cycles in mind than standard USB, and also more than mini-USB
More generally, we demand and love ever more inexpensive toys.
Too bad one other curious sight given by the ISS to its occupants is missing, aurora:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Australis_From_ISS.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Borealis.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Borealis_from_Expedition_6.ogg
Also, I won't complain if the next attempt would be less jerky... if not by longer exposures (which would introduce some motion blur, but probably also make lightning less visible), then at least by capturing photos more often.
What we know for certain is that he was a man behind the controls of a machine which took away, for many other people, ability of "living life" to the fullest. I guess that makes him, by your own criteria, a huge asshole.
And "mechanical failures" in those areas of aircraft are known to happen also when the pilot fails to realize that what he's trying to do - say, with too violent for the speed steering inputs - goes beyond the limits of construction.
Most of the time we are hardly in a state which our "conciousness" likes to call "concious" - more in a mode which our "mindful" brain would call "mindlessly doing daily chores" which, I suspect, is what being even fairly "low" animal feels like all the time (instead of merely most of the time). We probably also often experience this when dreaming or not-quite-awake; during intensive physical effort; watching TV; maybe when really drunk, too.
In fact, together with the last one, I often find some weird shit in chat archive, web history, etc.; supposedly remnants of only parts of my brain being semi-functional, before the entirety of them passes out.
But, sometimes, I almost suspect it is my cat who does this; using those opportune moments to refine her plans of taking over the world.
In the topic of rationalisations: "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts"
Why do people refuse to admit mistakes - so deeply that they transform their own brains? They're not kidding themselves: they really believe what they have to believe to justify their original thought.
There are some pretty scary examples in this book. Psychologists who refuse to admit they'd bought into the false memory theories, causing enormous pain. Politicians. Authors. Doctors. Therapists. Alien abduction victims.
Most terrifying: The justice system operates this way. Once someone is accused of a crime - even under the most bizarre circumstances - the police believe he's guilty of something. Even when the DNA shows someone is innocent, or new evidence reveals the true perpetrator, they hesitate to let the accused person go free.
...
Once we hold a position, say the authors, it's almost impossible to make a change.
Or: how we merely like to convince ourselves about reliability of our memory, how many myths about it & our minds we tend to believe. Not only textbook cognitive biases; also, say, the myth about "monolithic me" while split-brain patients end up virtually unchanged; there's one localized brain trauma which results in people becoming completely blind without them realizing it; popular harmful BS lies of "we're so important, gods love us, more of us live now than have ever lived!" & simply ignoring 100+ billion dead homo sapiens sapiens (at least we will be similarly ignored very quickly, so there's some "balance"); also myths about how decent and freedom loving people we are (a bit sad how our deep need for Just World gets derailed so easily :/ )
How, when people get older, they tend to start believing myths about the greatness of their youth (not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with "frustrating" reality of how much better in fact it is "now", for most cases of "now") - the "good old times" known in written forms since antiquity and which give tiresome political results (being essentially at the core of anti-liberalism; though, on the other side, it's not that much better, with progressivism too often forgetting about good stuff the past has to offer)
What's worse, all this while too many people live in a world of absolute right and wrong. With almost total lack of understanding of risk, statistics. Too stupid to connect their votes with the consequences they suffer.
Ignoring how a good leader is someone who sometimes makes mistakes; who is not perfect but is able to lead in good direction despite the imperfections. Contrast this with the usual rhetoric when people root for their "new mythical hero" and how they present them and their ideologies as perfection. A total BS right at the core of many political movements.
People believing their position in life is due to merit and hard work (despite most not ever doing anything which could be called "hard"), not understanding how it's largely an accident of birth, viewing the poor as lazy and unworthy of success (a view which eases acceptance of actions that maintain this relative social order). Perpetrating the myths of "land of opportunity" or "American Dream" while the actual metric of this stuff, social mobility, places the US at the bottom of developed countries (at the top are, popularly disparaged, so-called "nanny states")
People who will only learn new things if it confirms a pre-existing belief.
Oh, and some of our most lasting
Because 9/11 was so statistically representative of crimes, or even of hijackings? (with passengers and crews largely being used, over the decades, to hijackers who want the aircraft to land somewhere, so that their demands can be more or less met and the passengers released)
...maybe even inside of some flying aircraft)
Plus this was more about the overall non-argument of ~"vast majority of concealed weapons permit holders are decent people" which is roughly akin to "vast majority of concealed weapons permit holders breathe right now ~20/80 mix of oxygen and nitrogen, with some traces of other gasses" - duh? (and a fact which doesn't have much of any significance for the few who purposefully breathe other mixtures right now; or who undergo mild hypoxia right about now, are starting to act a little funny
The vast majority of everybody don't do crimes, and often prevent them.
TSA - a government agency that assumes accountability for security
And, perhaps, it takes the passengers' attention away from the airlines, as the main frustration-causing element of air travel? Lets the airlines get away with progressively more obnoxious service on their part? (which, in comparison of opening TSA experience, suddenly doesn't seem so bad)
Sometimes it really does seem that way, and why the airlines could very well be happy about all the passenger trauma caused by the TSA...
When just few percent of the launchpad mass gets into LEO, such (50+%) waste matters a lot. "The most reliable ... most frequently used launch vehicle in the world" (and among the least expensive ones, also in cost per kg) is a fully expendable rocket, semi-mass produced (on average over 30 per year; though there's a more mass-produced example in the very first widely used, large rocket; and who knows where we would be if OTRAG weren't cancelled for political reasons), and probably comfortably on its way towards a century of service (with how a new launchpad in Guiana is inaugurated right about now). Mass production, simplification, modularisation (of standard units) is what generally seems to do the trick in lowering costs of operations; few large, unique and overcomplicated units generally accomplishes quite the contrary.
...for quite a bit longer than a puny one week (and if you insist, compare the length of "Soyuz strips" with those of the Shuttle in this timeline ...the first type looking there more like actual spaceships).
...though the "Reentry" text of Foton, seemingly pasted over few arts, doesn't really make much sense and needs to be corr
Besides, capsules can be largely reusable as well. And don't forget how much they can do, and did, that STS-class vehicle cannot. Plus, why would you want humans to do experiments in a capsule? Space stations are for that
And most of the space station modules historically lifted, did so on an expendable launcher. In fact, there is some talk of retrofitting few in-storage "western part style" ISS modules with small orbital tugs, launching them on average medium launchers, and docking them autonomously like all Russian and some Japanese and European modules do - what will most likely end up being less expensive (including the R&D and manufacture of tugs!), less wasteful, than launching such modules on STS was! (which was "required" for many ISS modules only because they were specifically constructed that way, to give the Shuttle some purpose).
Think about it for a second - STS was among the three most powerful, by far, launchers in history (if not the most powerful at take off, too lazy to check). And yet, its payload capability was merely in the range of many medium expendable launchers. Proton, Ariane 5, Delta IV, Atlas V, Falcon, Long March, Angara, Rus. Pick one.
One shot of such launcher already gives comparable amounts of stuff to work with (of course you also need to launch crew on a separate launch or two, but it still ends up more economical and with much greater possibilities, much longer stay). And, if doing one launch of STS-scale rocket but without the waste of a glorified glider, you'd have few times more in just that one launch (Energia was a bit more sensible like that from the start - the Buran was just its payload; another one was an 80 ton space station modules, one being also at the core of their Mars mission spacecraft which Energia was to asemble; SLS will be also capable of such, it will represent this more sensible approach)
And if you want to bring some stuff back... well, capsules also lead in the amounts of recovered, valuable, purpose-specific, actually reused equipment (also scientific missions, including half of NASA experiments of such type, most during the Cold War; another type, and few more variants of just this one capsule here
It is absolutely expected that creators are the most appreciative of their darling, it doesn't say very much in itself. If problems were so minor as you present, there would be not much reason to just terminate the effort (and yes, the new materials and technology available now were certainly anticipated in calculations then; those which suggested that a "dumb rocket" would give something at worst comparable)
ESA provides them with low-level funding; it is certainly the goal of the organization to explore and be supportive of potentially(!!) promising paths, that's it, that's what public funding of research is also about. They have their own share of dead ends...
Now, don't get me wrong, it would be fun if Skylon works out, in practical operations. But we must be sceptical of the claims of those who are, one way or another, deeply invested in it. If only because of... come on, how many "this will be awesome, revolutionary, and inexpensive" we had, also from supposedly respectable entities? Heck, it was the same song behind the push for STS, and look how much of a train wreck of a project it ended up being.
It wasn't only about NK-33, and not only about this batch (from the numerous planned launchers using them, it would seem they are at least being prepped for production)
...all those costs you mention, "rocket, engines, electronics, and payload" are so high largely because of the scale of problems when efficiently (aka economically; preferably also reliably...) using the chemical energy of propellants; high efficiency must be the case if they are to have any chance of putting their payload into LEO; again, this what the launchers are about.
Plus the topic (marginal one, really; main one being "glorious 60s") was fuel economy, not "price of *fuel*"
Furthermore, you treat cost of fuel as it is when stored in cisterns near the launchpad. But it is much higher than that during launch. Not quite on the levels of LEO payload costs per kg... but when the fuel is, say, half used, the remaining half is worth not only its "cistern value", but also what it costs overall to get it to its present height and speed!
And yes, SpaceX took a less extreme approach (though they have yet to demonstrate the claimed "lower costs than the Russians"! And ex-Soviet engines are also quite straightforward, "simply" just using a very curious metallurgy and basic design concepts it allows); but note how they did choose a more efficient (overall, for the 1st stage job) fuel...
(actually, they chose it also for the second stage IIRC; maybe it shows how overall(!!) efficiency is best served by this quite "Russian" approach)
Note that Skylon precursor HOTOL, a project under seemingly much more reputable entities and stricter oversight, apparently came to conclusion that it would be not really operationally better than a "dumb rocket" using comparably advanced technology or materials ...which for a specaplane are required to make it even barely possible.
Most (if not all, Taurus II is yet to fly) of the engines in question are and will be brand new; sold profitably. Redesigned quite a few times. Put into production (or prepared for one) in "high labour cost" place.
...and what makes those Russian engines extremely efficient at their task> (though NK-33 has a decently nice vacuum version, NK-43); heck, all of them are kerosene-fuelled, it's a given that exceptional specific impulse isn't a part of their exceptional efficiency.
But at least you, suddenly, insist that economy of rockets does matter after all...
And specific impulse is far from the only measure of overall launcher efficiency (in converting its stored energy into LEO mass), particularly in a first stage engine, where optimal fuel density or thrust are important
Russia has 4+ decades of experience with manned "Exploration Class Vehicle" in Soyuz, the very first spacecraft which took macroscopic life (turtles, most notably...) beyond LEO (around the Moon) and safely back, during Zond 5 mission (and few more).
All this time it was used as an orbital ferry, but Soyuz is essentially capable of beyond-LEO operation. In fact... do you have $150 million? Well, then get yourself a ride (those are the people responsible for all orbital tourists to date, except for the first Japanese to Mir in ~1990)
Rockets are 90+% fuel at launch, used up very liberally, in just few minutes. Only few percent "barely" gets to LEO.
;p ), is EVERYTHING . That's their main goal; even minute (and/or often very expensive to implement) improvements in fuel economy are often considered worthwhile due to noticeably greater payload capabilities they bring.
...doing it on NPO Energomash RD-180 main engines, Energia & Zenit derived (as are Angara or Rus main engines). Taurus II, an upcoming star of "private American rocket industry revival" will use Kuznetsov NK-33 engines (and with a Zenit-derived 1st stage BTW), coming from N-1 (the Soviet Moonshot rocket).
...which typically simply ignored their true costs (which we are only starting to pay now)
Yes, the absolute quantities and costs of propellants aren't large. However, for launch vehicles, fuel economy, aka efficiency in conversion of stored energy into desirable practical goal (vs., say, goals often seen with cars - how "mean" and "impressive" they are on some idiotic scale of penis-enhancement effects; in contrast, rockets are only coincidentally phallic
They are able to even override pork that you mention, or even the "Not Invented Here" syndrome, even in the US. Atlas V, the past darling of the Air Force IIRC, launcher of X-34 or few "big" probes
There's even some talk of trying to push Kuznetsov NK-33 (well, with an inconspicuously Americanised name Aerojet AJ26) into the Space Launch System under discussion here.
Why is that, why do ~half of US launch systems might end up with ex-Soviet / Russian engines? The staged combustion cycle, which only the Russians successfully implemented, is extremely efficient.
PS. Plus, the parent poster addressed an overall phenomena of "wonderful 60s breakthroughs"
So, let us now compare what was accomplished with Apollo (that wasn't done by anything else) to the Shuttle exclusives...
Modern high bypass turbofan aircraft engines are sort of more akin to turboprops than to early turbojet engines. Propfan is one of more promising improvements. "Frames" go for composites, so organic materials...
...but very popular in works of fiction. Maybe it's simply how dreams about expected modes of space travel turned out to be wrong; dreams extrapolating (not understanding, generally) rates and directions of observed progress. Look at those airplanes from "our" times (imagined during rapid advances of marine tech; and we can even build them - take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy... still a horrible idea vs. "boring" reality)
...ultimately, when forced, doing the same with STS-class vehicle (Energia was a more sensible approach from the start, one very similar to this Space Launch System) - but it bled them dry, killed what they really wanted (Zarya "super Soyuz")
Maybe what NASA says is that they've made a mistake. One almost not done by anyone else*
Consider how the "spaceplanes" came to dominate scifi... around the 40s, during rapid advances of airplane tech (I can see a pattern...); how the designers and decision-makers of the Shuttle were undoubtedly raised on those works of fiction. And how they gave us an analogue of Catalina, at best (Spruce Goose, at worst); but something which looked very soothing and "inspiring" to the already constrained public imagination, already quite accustomed to airliners / Concorde. Something which probably robbed us at least of a decade of progress; was conceptually obsolete (with automatic rendezvous, docking and routine return of large valuable cargo done in the 60s) before it seriously got onto drawing boards. It was a retreat to early dreams.
Short spurs of progress are generally typical of our civilisation, in the Real World(tm); it's what tends to happen with everything. BTW, have you seen the ideas of Archimedes about floating improved? Come on, his law is over 2k years old, surely we should be able to ignore it by now...
*The Shuttle appears to make more sense if you look at it as a geopolitical engineering project, to provoke the ignorant Soviet generals[1] into pushing for a rampant spending of their counterpart, to have a parity for (non-existent) "strategic advantage" of the STS. Of course, then one has to ask why was it allowed to continue sucking NASA dry for the past two decades?... there even was a good opportunity to terminate the program post-Challenger (of course, that in turn could be also a "revenge of the Buran" of sorts - it was essentially being prepped on its launchpad at the time, and of course the Soviets couldn't be allowed to be the only ones with a shuttle[2])
1. Their engineers very much didn't want to go there, preferring Spiral approach. With the vehicle being just a dumb payload of medium launcher
2. Who knows, the history might judge the last laugh was even more on Buran - in its only flight, it demonstared the whole main "point" behind a shuttle (its flight profile) to a much fuller degree than any of STS vehicles ever did. With the secondary point (LEO space station) being essentially, for STS fleet, in the form of maintenance and expansion of two space stations meant for Buran...
Those strap on boosters are very unlike that of Soyuz / R-7 rocket. In the latter, they are very similar to core stage, burning the same fuel mixture (kerosene and oxygen; a mix very suitable for first stages, giving nice balance of good specific impulse, high fuel and exhaust density, hence small tanks and large static thrust; a sweet spot, one sort of aimed at in coupling and "averaging" characteristics of STS hydrogen-burning engines with SRBs ...yeah, "so why not just use kerosene?", like Saturn V also did BTW)
... most frequently used launch vehicle in the world" (and one of least expensive ones). With designs like Angara or Falcon improving even more on the concept, for example with parallel grouping of identical first stages (bringing even more benefits of mass production)
Generally, seeing capsules as a step backwards is at odds with basic chronology. Everybody at first expected "aerodynamic" or "spaceplane-ish" shapes from reentry vehicles, and worked towards it hard. They proved relatively unworkable. Blunt shape entry capsule was a relatively late innovation, an improvement; and a bit of a surprise. There's nothing wrong with capsules; physics, rocket equation, are a bitch.
Soyuz also worked out fine, being "the most reliable
Seeing what huge and actually present amounts of misplaced ego, of drunken fantasies, give, it's courageous to recognize the conditions of the Real World(tm).
OTOH it might very well be cowardly when people want to hear about grandiose, fabulous, "awesome" and "inspiring" styles of space travel and colonisation typical of scifi (works of fiction); when they expect something palatable, nothing too uncomfortable and too alien from Earthly experiences (bonus: it's much easier to write / depict...), fearing to face the absolutely wild realities of actually existing universe. It's actually a sign of constrained imagination.
Ultimately, people will continue being upset how the space travel will most likely remain fundamentally different from their expectations. In the meantime, how many even realize that we can already send people when they are miniaturized and in deep hibernation and that dozens of thousands on Earth are past the procedure? Heck, give me one medium launcher + few dozen million bucks, and I can transport at least a thousand viable humans practically to anywhere in our system.
If it ain't broke, don't reinvent the wheel
What if it is? For one, starting from RS-25 engines is probably suboptimal for heavy light expendable vehicle. Generally, hydrogen-fuelled first stages are suboptimal; they maybe have high specific impulse, but in first stage it's more than offset by complications from very low fuel density - say, large tank or not-so-great static thrust (essentially this is also why the Shuttle needed SRBs...)
It's a pork, don't be wooed.
We would be able to build a station 20 times as big as the ISS merely by not wasting huge quantities of upmass on airframe launched into space. The Shuttle approach was what killed our expansion into space. Didn't brought any real new capability (with automatic rendezvous and docking done since the 60s, and capsules returning large valuable cargo just as long), while expanding costs.
Or go on and continue "what if" dreaming which assumes completely unsustainable levels of funding...
This will have less lift capacity than ... the shuttle
What is the point of including the wasted upmass of airframe? Excluding it, the lift capability of STS was in the range of many inexpensive expendable launchers; and there's nothing wrong with expandability - physics, rocket equation, are a bitch.
;p
Some simple, back of the napkin calculations so you might get the feel of how much waste the "spaceplane" scifi cargo cult dream brought with it: the empty weight of the orbiter was 80 tons, weight at liftoff 110 tons including maximum payload of 24 tons. Lets be generous and assume, say, a capsule of 15 tons for comparable crew transport capabilities (other capabilities being superfluous), launched on a typical ~20+ tons launcher... that gives a wasted upmass of around 70 tons in each Shuttle launch.
Through 134 successful launches. Over 9000* tons of launched mass which could be in LEO, but was wasted on Buck Rogers style contraption.
Even if merely half of that was used for a space station, it would an order of magnitude larger than the ISS, probably easily of the spinning, "gravity" generating type. And on a somewhat higher orbit (ISS was for a long time on non-optimal one so that Shuttle would be able to reach it with usable payloads)
*Yes, I perhaps slightly inflated the above "70" ( ~65 being more realistic), but I wanted badly to sneak in the 9k line
The largest user of Hubble-like sats launches them on not-Shuttles for quite some time now. The number of "rendezvous, dock, supply spare parts" operations done by not-Shuttle absolutely dwarfs the number of times Shuttle did it.
Many non-core ISS segments had to be put up by Shuttle only because they were designed to give it purpose. Doing it with some expendable launcher and small orbital tug would be almost certainly more optimal.
Most of the useful, reusable, valuable cargo was brought down from orbit by not-Shuttle. The latter was conceptually obsolete before it seriously got onto drawing boards.