Can you please explain to me why a Senator representing her constituants who, like most of us, want jobs, is a BAD thing? Isn't that why they're elected, to represent their constituants?
Because she's representing the interests of her constituents at the expense of other taxpayers. In a perfect world, all these kinds of decisions would be based on the science and what's practical. Of course, that isn't the world we live in, but that doesn't make it "OK". The economy is running well enough that the government doesn't need to create make-work jobs with federal funds.
Now, having said that, I will say if Congress has allocated funds to fix Hubble, by law that's how NASA must spend them.
Whaaaah? Congress's primary purpose it to raise taxes and allocate funds. The government simply wouldn't work at all if every agency was free to disregard Congress once the money arrived. It's Congress's job to "meddle in NASA's affairs.
BTW, it took perhaps 10 seconds of googling to find that. It's common knowledge, and it's embarrassing that you're debating the subject without knowing that.
That link doesn't address my point. I know the X-43A was a success in that it proved the scramjet can work (although the Aussies had one working a bit earlier, as I recall). But the X-43 is more of a missile than a spacecraft. The question is can you design a spacecraft that goes to orbit with live people and brings them back (alive). I did extensive googling when the project was going and all I ever found was this same press release regurgitated by whoever was doing science reporting that week.
Does this make sense to you: NASA, having received direction from the president to prepare for a manned mars shot, scuttles the only ongoing program with a chance to reduce the cost (and thus make it more palatable financially) of said mars mission?
Or, does this make more sense: NASA, having received direction from the president to prepare for a manned mars shot, scuttles programs that aren't working out and blames the mars directive. Particularly since they haven't spent much money on mars, and won't until after Bush leaves office (i.e. it'll never happen).
Enough drag to offset a *fourfold* increase in ISP?
I don't understand why you think the drag is so insignificant. I believe it offsets the ISP increase and then some, particularly if you intend to have large enough wings for a horizontal landing.
The X-43A worked on paper. It worked the same in real-world testing (actually slightly better). The X-43C works on paper. Undoubtedly, it would work equally well in the real world. Compressible flow simulations have gotten pretty darn good with modern turbulence models - and they show scramjets as performing quite nicely.
Again, I'm not saying the engine doesn't work. I'm just saying the increase in efficiency doesn't offset the drag. Do you remember the "Orbital Space Plane"? Cancelled after millions were wasted when it became clear the thing didn't even work on paper. Not because they didn't think scramjets would work, but because they couldn't make the numbers work for the platform.
I'm not seing it ever get done. I mean, you shouldn't be changing propellants about half a dozen times during the course of development;) I wish him the best, and have always been a big fan of his (even just from the programming standpoint alone), but I think his development methodology equates to a big waste of money.
The old joke in the space industry is "if you want to have a billion dollars, take 10 billion and start a rocket company..."
Also, the concept of Carmack getting to orbit in anything like anything he's worked with is just silly. His ISP and craft mass make SpaceShipOne look like the Space Shuttle. When your craft is coming in as denser and with much lower ISP than the V2, you've got serious problems.
In Carmack's defense, I'd like to point out the H2O2 engine would have had sufficient ISP to claim the X-prize, provided they were able to solve their quenching problems, and had they been able to secure sufficient quantities of 90% peroxide the catalyst wouldn't have been necessary (a problem not technical in nature). The project was supposed to be a one-trick pony that could claim the prize (and would have netted him (+)$8 million, by the way, vice Rutan's -$10 million).
If you read his site he readily admitted the engine was in no way efficient, but "good enough" was, well, good enough. The H2O2 engine burned with a much lower temperature than the biprops he's investigating now. That would have meant a much cheaper, more reliable engine (no regenerative cooling, no frozen valves from LOX, etc). When it was clear he didn't have any chance to win the prize he switched to a biprop. I don't think he ever intended to build an orbital craft with the monoprop.
By the way, part of the reason people are down on Carmack is t
"The primary purpose of the vehicle was to test scramjet engine technologies; while engineers involved in the program said it would take months to analyze their data, it appears that the X-43's scramjet performed well. The flight was the last of three test flights in the X-43 program, and perhaps the last NASA-supporte hypersonic flight program for years to come. A follow-on program to the X-43A, the X-43C, was cancelled by NASA earlier this year as the agency refocuses its technology development efforts on the exploration vision."
Where did you get that? My understanding was the X-43C was in grave jeopardy before the president announced the mars stuff (for the reasons I outlined). Is that from a technical publication?(not being hostile here, I really would like to see the whole article). I realize what the purpose of the project was, and I realize the engine worked. The fact that it works doesn't mean it's usefull for hauling cargo to orbit - you still have to design it into a launch system.
Incorrect. Scramjets produce ample net thrust, as was demonstrated by the X43, which was still accelerating at Mach 7, despite being designed to simply be able to maintain speed. Full-scale simulations show benefits up to almost orbital velocity.
I wasn't talking about thrust at all - I was talking about efficiency. I've no doubt you can get enough thrust from a scramjet. The question is can you build a real spacecraft with a low enough drag that you'll use less fuel than you would by including the oxidizer and having no drag. I haven't seen even pipe-dream type designs that work on paper.
And you seem not to be aware of how much of a propellant mass benefit you get; it's around a fourfold reduction in propellant if using hydrogen (ignoring drag), which gets multiplied many times over in terms of payload fraction.
I'm aware - this is the purpose of using an airbreathing engine. It's just that I don't think it's enough to make up for the energy you lose to drag plus the extra weight of the engines. Also, let's say you actually get up to a high enough speed to get into orbit. Wouldn't you end up in an elypical orbit? So you'd need a rocket engine to put yourself into a circular orbit, plus you need some way to deorbit. You're going to build a ship with rockets and scramjets with low enough weight and drag to be more efficient than just rockets?
It better be able to deal with it anyways, or you'll burn up on reentry. The only difference is that you need a different distribution - you need more on the leading edges.
But it's not the same. Look at the shuttle's angle of attack when it enters the atmosphere. They try to get as much heat over the "belly" as they can, so it's not all concentrated on the leading edges. You wouldn't be able to do that with a scramjet. "more on the leading edges" is quite a thorny materials problem.
No - too low, and you don't accelerate up to speed. What, are you picturing the scramjet climbing up, and then suddenly dipping down 10km after it's gained speed higher up? It's a flight trajectory; this is nothing new. Conventional rockets have to follow proper flight trajectories as well.
As I understand it the physical configuration of the intake is relatively specific to a speed/altitude combination. In other words, you'll need different engines at different phases of the flight or an engine that can reconfigure the shape of the intake.
It's not about fuel - at all. It's about structural integrity. The larger you make your rocket, the harder it is for it to bear its own weight. As rockets are build larger, you have to add more and more structural supports, which are really bad for your payload fraction. It's the same sort of problems that you encounter when building a skyscraper: the larger you make it, after a point it starts to become more expensive per square foot.
Additionally, once parts get big enough, they start becoming very expensive to build as you have to r
And ramjets would be great; unfortunately, we cancelled the program because of the premature Mars mission spending
Err... no. The program was cancelled because scramjets are useless for launching cargo into orbit. The problem is, as you pointed out earlier in your post, the majority of the energy you need to get to orbit is in the "horizontal" direction. Most orbital flight profiles expend only 10% of energy getting into space and 90% gathering enough speed for orbit.
What that means, in practical terms, is you lose too much energy to drag friction to make accelerating in the atmosphere worthwhile. You're better off just bringing the oxidizer with you.
And there are three more practical problems to deal with. The first is all the extra complexity you need to get up to speed. A scramjet doesn't work until the craft is already moving reasonably fast (OK, that's weaseling, but "reasonably" depends on the design). So you'll need some kind of rocket booster to get it going even if you're at altitude. No big deal, right? Well, it turns out separating from a booster in the atmosphere is a big deal (I believe that's what caused the first scramjet test failure). This would be a major source of complexity (and thus cost).
The second problem is materials. All that drag is gonna create a lot of heat, and your craft had better be able to deal with it. On top of that can you imagine going through an air pressure differential at mach 20? So your ship has to be able to withstand plasma temperatures and it has to be incredably tough.
Also, the intake configuration of your scramjet is heavily dependent on air density. So it only works in a very narrow range altitude range. Too high and you don't have enough oxygen for combustion, too low and you burn up from the air friction.
As near as I can figure, scramjets have only one application: long range, high altitude air-to-air missiles.
And the point here is what? To build a smaller rocket. Why not just build a bigger rocket? The price of the fuel is just a tiny fraction of your launch cost, so just use more of it. The cost driver for rockets is complexity, not materials.
The best solution would be a reusable VTOL rocket (not rebuildable, like the shuttle) It would require a very large rocket, since the ratio of fuel to cargo is large. But that would allow you to use the same rocket over and over without rebuilding it, since landing is virtually stress-free (from an engineering perspective) compared to the shuttle. See here for details.
The DC-X project was our best hope for cheap access to space. The project had demonstrated the technology involved with vertical landing, and would have evolved into a vehicle you could use over and over with only minor inspections between flights (as opposed to tearing it all apart, inspecting everything, and putting it back together).
But NASA killed it because they couldn't fund both it and the shuttle, and the shuttle was already proven technology in the sense you could already fly it to orbit and land it, while DC-X would have required a few iterations to make it work properly.
It's no coincidence Carmack chose the design he did, and he could probably get to orbit reasonably soon if he wasn't trying to fund the whole thing out-of-pocket.
Actually if you remember Bush kicked off his campaing with a new mission for Nasa on mars exploration and congress introduced bills making Nasa do this.
Sure, but as I point out in my response to another poster, none of that is funded to the level you would need to fix Hubble.
They are now servely cash stripped and its impossible with a mere 8 billion dollar budget to put man on mars. The figure could be ten times that.
But yes this killed Hubble since it would make it expensive and distract for Nasa's new mission.
I doubt it. I don't think Hubble or the mars mission will be funded. The real money for Mars is supposed to be spent after Bush leaves office, so I can virtually gaurentee you it'll never happen. I think the whole thing is kind of a dodge to defund everything but ISS and the Space Shuttle, since doing otherwise would cause a reallocation in jobs across congressional districts.
Nasa does risk assesments for everything. Its odd nasa would make such a quick decision if it were not political.
But that's the point. Politics is the major component of every decision at (or about) NASA. Did you ever wonder why the space shuttle has windows?
wtf do you think makes the budget choices at the white house?
OK, first of all, the white house doesn't make budget choices. They gin up a budget request, but all the decisions get made by congress. That's in the document. In fact, congress can completely ignore the president in budgetary matters, provided they're willing to override a veto. I real life that doesn't happen, but the truth is GWB can't do squat on his own.
the "other places" are the comparatively pointless mars and dangerous militarization of orbital space missions, which are both bush pet projects.
This displays a stunning lack of understanding of how things really work. NASA's budget has nothing to do with the military budget or even what NASA does. The whole reason NASA isn't a fraction of its current size is it creates jobs in key congressional districts, and since the manned space program generates the most publicity that's what gets fully funded. Politics and NASA are absolutely inseperable. I'm sure we could all find a more efficient way to spend that money, but the reality is the taxpayers are less interested in the kind of basic science you get from hubble and more in tune with Buck Rogers and Captain Kirk. It was once said of Carl Sagan (I wish I could find the attribution) "every time he convinces someone we don't need manned spaceflight where robots will suffice we lose an advocate for the space program." NASA has taken that to heart.
The mars missions were campaign fluff that will never get funded at all, never mind fully. Anytime a politician promises a program that'll be funded after he leaves office you can pretty much assume it's not serious.
no war would equal billions more a month for other purposes, like scientifically useful space missions.
Not really. They're borrowing money for the war, so the real impact of not having a war is taxes would be a little lower in ten years or so. The idea that the overall budget is a fixed size and funding one program means cutting another is naive to say the least. The only way to get "scientifically useful space missions" funded is to get the public interested in them.
i'm tired of wasting my time on you, so futher responses from you will be ignored. and as Mr. Malda apparently doesn't really care about mismoderation, i probably won't be bothering to respond to comments on mismoderated posts at all, since nobody will see them. fark off. and that goes double for the biased mismoderators, wtf you are.
In other words, "I can't make a cogent argument or back up anything I say, so I'm going to ignore you when you pick apart my incoherent ramblings." That about right? And are you really so foolish as to think Rob Malda reads every post and weighs it carefully to decide if the moderation is correct?
Also, you still never provided a link for all that "militarization of space" poppycock. The reality is space has been militarized from day one in the form of spy satellites. As far as I know, there aren't any plans to put actual weapons in space, and I'd appreciate a link from anyone who has other information. My search for space weapons came up with this link, which describes programs which are either white-paper pipe dreams or technology demonstrators. The ground-based ASAT programs have been around for decades.
OK, great, you provided links to the fact that they cut the funding. So what? That doesn't mean he "wanted it dead". It just means they thought the money would be spent better in other places.
And that has nothing to do with the war. No war =/= hubble funding.
they didn't really do a risk analysis. they killed the mission is because bush didn't want the telescope to live and they did what was politically expedient, not for valid technical or scientific reasons.
Dude, start taking your meds. That tirade doesn't make any sense. You could accuse Bush of not caring whether or not the telescope lives, but you're gonna have to come up with some kind of source to make that allegation. As for the militarization stuff, that's not happening at NASA.
The reality is fixing the Hubble will be damn expensive, and there's some question as to what is the most reasonable allocation of funding. As much as I think the NASA is full of boondoggles, I'm not sure the amount of useful science in the Hubble is worth the cost of fixing it.
If I were in charge I'd send the shuttle up for its final mission to fix Hubble then scrap the shuttle and the ISS. Then I'd take the money they were soaking up and use it for robotic missions.
And now HPs calculators from the 70's and 80's sell for hundreds of dollars on EBay
No kiddin'? I have a HP 41CV I've used since college to do my taxes. Might be time to sell it and get one of those free ones you get for opening a bank account.
I have to say I'm depressed about HP. In the '80s and early '90s any sort of instrumentation equipment that said "HP" on the side was guarenteed to be the bee's knees of the product category. They were always more expensive, but it was worth it. I remember camping in my boss's office for a week so he would buy an HP scope instead of TI (probably lucky he didn't fire my ass).
Then they sold off the instrumentation division and cut research budgets. I don't know how you'd quantify it, but I wonder how much value the company has lost through tarnish on the previously shiny "HP" nameplate.
You're overlooking the real value here, which was pretty much all accomplished before the aircraft left the ground. The materials science and engineering done to create an aircraft for this mission is the practical purpose. The actual flight was just to show that (1) it all worked, and (2) to provide the sponsors with incentive to foot the bill.
Excellent point, although the flight is a good way to keep hubris from creeping in. I mean, yes, it worked, but somebody's been burning the midnight oil to try to figure out where that extra fuel went.
Reread what I wrote. I never implied this project would be the end of comsats, but a quick google search would give you enough info to support my point. But you're just my personal moonbat troll, aren't you?
Yeah. The problem for me is, from what I understand, the pilot was just a passenger/backup system. The computer flew the plane. And anyway these kind of records are getting more... shall we say "incremental". Around-the-world fligts have been done. Around-the-world flights without refeuling have been done. The problem with this kind of record is there are too many dependent clauses to make it exciting.
Sadly, this kind of project is likely to make space programs less likely to be funded. As expensive as they are, rockets would be far more expensive if manufacturers couldn't depend on comsats to help amortize development costs. As super-efficient high-altitude aircraft become more advanced, some of those satellites will be replaced with solar-powered aircraft. So that $10B mission will end up costing $11B, making it less likely to be funded at all.
Yeah, that's the key observation. The problem here is the music companies are pooling their clout in order to maintain control of the distribution of pre-recorded music. This is really no less slimy than what they used to do with mom-and-pop music stores - "guarantee us 99% of your shelf-space or we won't give you the "discount" we give everybody else". So either you don't do indie music or that's all you do.
The big question is: if Jobs refuses, will the labels start to defect from iTMS? Apple will have planned for this scenario and their response is going to be very interesting--it will tell us pointedly where the power truly lies.
I think Jobs has quite a bit more leverage than is apparent at first glance. If all his suppliers raise their prices at once they're likely to end up in court. In any event iTunes/iPod has reached critical mass, and you need bothe ends to make it work.
Worst case - Apple could go into the music business, either directly or by buying up some smaller labels. Most of the money these days is in focus-grouped "product" bands anyway, and it's hard to believe Apple couldn't do that as will as existing players. They could even sell CDs at Apple stores. And I'm sure Walmart wouldn't mind stocking Apple music as lever against the RIAA.
So when I come out in the morning and find my car on blocks I'll be puttin' my tires back in the gastank instead of buying them back at the swap meet. Great.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I would consider both the Columbia (7 dead) and Soyuz-11 (3 dead) "recorded deaths in space". Of course, you can quibble about definitions (i.e. is a death at launch a death in space?) - you might count as many as 22. This article is pretty definitive.
Look, it's perfectly simple. The more countries sign up, the better. Yes, it would be preferable to get every country in the world to sign up and adhere to the treaty, but that's not going to happen right away. Failing that, the more the better. Even if a couple of major polluters don't sign up, those that do can still make a positive difference.
But it's a political nonstarter. Americans are already concerned about a 30-year slide in manufacturing as a result of wage disparities. You might be able to convince the average Joe to go along with a treaty that spreads the woe around, but the first report that shows jobs moving to another country because they don't have restrictions on CO2 will result in the entire US Congress hitting the unemployment line. They're smart enough to know it.
Add to that the fact that there's no compliance mechanism. Lots of countries have announced emissions targets and then failed to meet them. If people in my family are getting laid off in a Kyoto-induced economic slump and I read about other countries not fulfilling treaty obligations, what would a reasonable response be?
Look at how much trouble the EU is having getting countries to live up to budgetary promises (which should have triggered large fines). This would be the same thing in spades. The only way this treaty is ever going to work is if offending coutries are nuked.
I can't tell if you're joking or not. Do you recall the 54-bit/128-bit browser encryption fiasco? At the time (I don't know if this is still true), encryption technology was considered an "armament" under US law, so you were up for some pretty harsh treatment from the Attourney General if you, say, posted code for a reasonably secure encryption program (the author of PGP looked to be in some trouble for awhile, as I recall).
I remember thinking at the time "well, that just means all the new stuff will get researched and implemented in other countries, since most of the grad students who are capable of grinding through this kind of math are from other countries anyway."
So the fact this news comes from China is no surprise. If there was ever a case of the government putting US-approved ammunition in it's own collective foot, this is it.
There's been some interesting comments based on your posts and even though I don't agree with it, I thought I'd post and let you know that I read and respect it.
Yes, I've been raked over the coals for my mistakes. But that's as it should be, provided it doesn't get personal.
Maybe I'm too cynical but I don't believe in the "principled opposition". Well, I do for many of the grass roots supporters, but for the people running the Republican party it has always seemed to me to be just another mechanism to distract the average person from meaningful issues. For previous example see communism in the 50's and "state's rights" in the 60's and 70's as a code word for "keepin' the n****r down". (As a side note, the Democrats didn't "lose the South for a generation" based on their stand on the capital gains tax). If the left were to roll over tomorrow and let the Republicans win on the issues of abortion and gay marriage and prayer in school and all these other issues, by Thursday Rev. Spongebob would be on the air demanding that condoms, birth control pills, and Telletubbies be outlawed. And, I fear, a preponderance of the Republican leadership would pander to these positions to further their own political end. In the end, as an atheist, you'd be in as deep as shit as the rest of us.
That whole "code word" argument always bothers me. It's just too easy to misunderstand what people are saying if you assign new meanings to their words. I don't know any conservative who speaks in code words - have you considered the possibility that sometimes people actually mean what they say? That they consider the injustice to be rule from the outside? Does gun control make as much sense in Montana as it does in New York?
As far as the abortion debate is concerned, the worst thing that could happen to the Republicans is for the left to roll over and abortion made illegal. The electorate is actually in the middle on this: a small percentage think it should be legal in all cases, a small percentage think it should never be legal, and the vast majority of Americans are somewhere in the middle. The Dems made a critical error by supporting so-called "partial birth abortion", which almost all Americans view as infanticide. As I said, in my opinion the right thing to do would be to return it to the state level. The hardliners on both sides would end up being marginalized, as they were before Roe.
You, of course, know the standard response to this. Either human beings are worthy of inalienable rights or they are not. If they are, then any delay is unconscienable.
Yes, but the catch is what you consider inalienable rights. The Constitution clearly leaves that (other than those specifically enumerated) to state legislatures, not to federal judges. I can't imagine what else they would have had in mind with the tenth amendment.
Oh, and speaking of "activist judges", I hope that 30 years from now we're not still bitching about the first appointment of Bush II like we are about Roe v. Wade.
But that's the crux, for me. If Bush appoints a strict constructionist it's likely you'll be bitching about your state legislature. And that, in my opinion, is a much more workable system. If he appoints a religious nut bent on expanding federal power, then, well... I'll be surprised. And sorry I supported him. Like I said, I'm not a die-hard Bushie. At some level you have to make judgements about what you think people will do, and you can be wrong.
I don't entirely disagree with you, that's why I say bring back a divided government. In my opinion, the primary reason we had surpluses in the 90's was because Congress and the Executive branch were in opposite hands most of the time under both Bush and Clinton. Don't get me wrong, I will still support candidates from the left in the hope of nudging our country slighty back towards the center from the far right where we have drifted, but I'd be happy with a 50/50 split.
In general, states have used their rights wisely and well. However, some decisions made by a certain group of states following the Civil War were so idiotic and, to borrow a term from the younger folks, uncool, that the federal government felt it necessary to step in and remove states' ability to make those decisions.
And yet there was a constitutional basis for doing so in the 14th amendment. I wasn't trying to argue states should have absolute soverignty. I have no problem, for example with Brown v Board of Education. What I was arguing against was the distortions the judiciary has introduced, like inventing rights that aren't there (as in Roe), widening the commerce clause to include any possible whim of Congress, and completely ignoring the 10th amendment.
You make some good arguments. But the way the law works is not on your side
I agree the law isn't on my side. But I think the Constitution is. We may have to disagree on that.
I'm just as offended by the constant barrage of abuse coming towards me and my liberal compatriots from such folks as Bob Jones, Ann Coulter, Limbaugh, etc. It's been completely uncalled for, savagely divisive, and not helpful to the national discourse. Furthermore, just as it has with the left of today, it's going to come back and bite the right savagely in the ass a few years from now.
Those people don't speak for me. I was talking about the discussion on slashdot. I was talking about people who accuse other people of being trolls because they have a difference of opinion.
I'm not sure what you mean by slandering your party. The point I was trying to make is the people at the top don't seem to have a grasp of what mainstream Christians believe. Until they do the party's doomed to being a regional party. As to Moyers specifically, how can a rational person write this? Moyers is hardly a fringe player, and his article isn't full of invective as much as just plain ignorance.
If he's really a loudmouth who can't keep it together, then the party leadership needs to get the message out.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. And it's kinda sleezy too, since hairdryers consume quite a lot of power.
Because she's representing the interests of her constituents at the expense of other taxpayers. In a perfect world, all these kinds of decisions would be based on the science and what's practical. Of course, that isn't the world we live in, but that doesn't make it "OK". The economy is running well enough that the government doesn't need to create make-work jobs with federal funds.
Now, having said that, I will say if Congress has allocated funds to fix Hubble, by law that's how NASA must spend them.
Whaaaah? Congress's primary purpose it to raise taxes and allocate funds. The government simply wouldn't work at all if every agency was free to disregard Congress once the money arrived. It's Congress's job to "meddle in NASA's affairs.
That link doesn't address my point. I know the X-43A was a success in that it proved the scramjet can work (although the Aussies had one working a bit earlier, as I recall). But the X-43 is more of a missile than a spacecraft. The question is can you design a spacecraft that goes to orbit with live people and brings them back (alive). I did extensive googling when the project was going and all I ever found was this same press release regurgitated by whoever was doing science reporting that week.
Does this make sense to you: NASA, having received direction from the president to prepare for a manned mars shot, scuttles the only ongoing program with a chance to reduce the cost (and thus make it more palatable financially) of said mars mission?
Or, does this make more sense: NASA, having received direction from the president to prepare for a manned mars shot, scuttles programs that aren't working out and blames the mars directive. Particularly since they haven't spent much money on mars, and won't until after Bush leaves office (i.e. it'll never happen).
Enough drag to offset a *fourfold* increase in ISP?
I don't understand why you think the drag is so insignificant. I believe it offsets the ISP increase and then some, particularly if you intend to have large enough wings for a horizontal landing.
The X-43A worked on paper. It worked the same in real-world testing (actually slightly better). The X-43C works on paper. Undoubtedly, it would work equally well in the real world. Compressible flow simulations have gotten pretty darn good with modern turbulence models - and they show scramjets as performing quite nicely.
Again, I'm not saying the engine doesn't work. I'm just saying the increase in efficiency doesn't offset the drag. Do you remember the "Orbital Space Plane"? Cancelled after millions were wasted when it became clear the thing didn't even work on paper. Not because they didn't think scramjets would work, but because they couldn't make the numbers work for the platform.
I'm not seing it ever get done. I mean, you shouldn't be changing propellants about half a dozen times during the course of development ;) I wish him the best, and have always been a big fan of his (even just from the programming standpoint alone), but I think his development methodology equates to a big waste of money.
The old joke in the space industry is "if you want to have a billion dollars, take 10 billion and start a rocket company..."
Also, the concept of Carmack getting to orbit in anything like anything he's worked with is just silly. His ISP and craft mass make SpaceShipOne look like the Space Shuttle. When your craft is coming in as denser and with much lower ISP than the V2, you've got serious problems.
In Carmack's defense, I'd like to point out the H2O2 engine would have had sufficient ISP to claim the X-prize, provided they were able to solve their quenching problems, and had they been able to secure sufficient quantities of 90% peroxide the catalyst wouldn't have been necessary (a problem not technical in nature). The project was supposed to be a one-trick pony that could claim the prize (and would have netted him (+)$8 million, by the way, vice Rutan's -$10 million).
If you read his site he readily admitted the engine was in no way efficient, but "good enough" was, well, good enough. The H2O2 engine burned with a much lower temperature than the biprops he's investigating now. That would have meant a much cheaper, more reliable engine (no regenerative cooling, no frozen valves from LOX, etc). When it was clear he didn't have any chance to win the prize he switched to a biprop. I don't think he ever intended to build an orbital craft with the monoprop.
By the way, part of the reason people are down on Carmack is t
Where did you get that? My understanding was the X-43C was in grave jeopardy before the president announced the mars stuff (for the reasons I outlined). Is that from a technical publication?(not being hostile here, I really would like to see the whole article). I realize what the purpose of the project was, and I realize the engine worked. The fact that it works doesn't mean it's usefull for hauling cargo to orbit - you still have to design it into a launch system.
Incorrect. Scramjets produce ample net thrust, as was demonstrated by the X43, which was still accelerating at Mach 7, despite being designed to simply be able to maintain speed. Full-scale simulations show benefits up to almost orbital velocity.
I wasn't talking about thrust at all - I was talking about efficiency. I've no doubt you can get enough thrust from a scramjet. The question is can you build a real spacecraft with a low enough drag that you'll use less fuel than you would by including the oxidizer and having no drag. I haven't seen even pipe-dream type designs that work on paper.
And you seem not to be aware of how much of a propellant mass benefit you get; it's around a fourfold reduction in propellant if using hydrogen (ignoring drag), which gets multiplied many times over in terms of payload fraction.
I'm aware - this is the purpose of using an airbreathing engine. It's just that I don't think it's enough to make up for the energy you lose to drag plus the extra weight of the engines. Also, let's say you actually get up to a high enough speed to get into orbit. Wouldn't you end up in an elypical orbit? So you'd need a rocket engine to put yourself into a circular orbit, plus you need some way to deorbit. You're going to build a ship with rockets and scramjets with low enough weight and drag to be more efficient than just rockets?
It better be able to deal with it anyways, or you'll burn up on reentry. The only difference is that you need a different distribution - you need more on the leading edges.
But it's not the same. Look at the shuttle's angle of attack when it enters the atmosphere. They try to get as much heat over the "belly" as they can, so it's not all concentrated on the leading edges. You wouldn't be able to do that with a scramjet. "more on the leading edges" is quite a thorny materials problem.
No - too low, and you don't accelerate up to speed. What, are you picturing the scramjet climbing up, and then suddenly dipping down 10km after it's gained speed higher up? It's a flight trajectory; this is nothing new. Conventional rockets have to follow proper flight trajectories as well.
As I understand it the physical configuration of the intake is relatively specific to a speed/altitude combination. In other words, you'll need different engines at different phases of the flight or an engine that can reconfigure the shape of the intake.
It's not about fuel - at all. It's about structural integrity. The larger you make your rocket, the harder it is for it to bear its own weight. As rockets are build larger, you have to add more and more structural supports, which are really bad for your payload fraction. It's the same sort of problems that you encounter when building a skyscraper: the larger you make it, after a point it starts to become more expensive per square foot.
Additionally, once parts get big enough, they start becoming very expensive to build as you have to r
Law. The coming years will be happy hunting for lawyers with technical backgrounds as companies savage each other in patent wars.
Err... no. The program was cancelled because scramjets are useless for launching cargo into orbit. The problem is, as you pointed out earlier in your post, the majority of the energy you need to get to orbit is in the "horizontal" direction. Most orbital flight profiles expend only 10% of energy getting into space and 90% gathering enough speed for orbit.
What that means, in practical terms, is you lose too much energy to drag friction to make accelerating in the atmosphere worthwhile. You're better off just bringing the oxidizer with you.
And there are three more practical problems to deal with. The first is all the extra complexity you need to get up to speed. A scramjet doesn't work until the craft is already moving reasonably fast (OK, that's weaseling, but "reasonably" depends on the design). So you'll need some kind of rocket booster to get it going even if you're at altitude. No big deal, right? Well, it turns out separating from a booster in the atmosphere is a big deal (I believe that's what caused the first scramjet test failure). This would be a major source of complexity (and thus cost).
The second problem is materials. All that drag is gonna create a lot of heat, and your craft had better be able to deal with it. On top of that can you imagine going through an air pressure differential at mach 20? So your ship has to be able to withstand plasma temperatures and it has to be incredably tough.
Also, the intake configuration of your scramjet is heavily dependent on air density. So it only works in a very narrow range altitude range. Too high and you don't have enough oxygen for combustion, too low and you burn up from the air friction.
As near as I can figure, scramjets have only one application: long range, high altitude air-to-air missiles.
And the point here is what? To build a smaller rocket. Why not just build a bigger rocket? The price of the fuel is just a tiny fraction of your launch cost, so just use more of it. The cost driver for rockets is complexity, not materials.
The best solution would be a reusable VTOL rocket (not rebuildable, like the shuttle) It would require a very large rocket, since the ratio of fuel to cargo is large. But that would allow you to use the same rocket over and over without rebuilding it, since landing is virtually stress-free (from an engineering perspective) compared to the shuttle. See here for details.
The DC-X project was our best hope for cheap access to space. The project had demonstrated the technology involved with vertical landing, and would have evolved into a vehicle you could use over and over with only minor inspections between flights (as opposed to tearing it all apart, inspecting everything, and putting it back together).
But NASA killed it because they couldn't fund both it and the shuttle, and the shuttle was already proven technology in the sense you could already fly it to orbit and land it, while DC-X would have required a few iterations to make it work properly.
It's no coincidence Carmack chose the design he did, and he could probably get to orbit reasonably soon if he wasn't trying to fund the whole thing out-of-pocket.
Sure, but as I point out in my response to another poster, none of that is funded to the level you would need to fix Hubble.
They are now servely cash stripped and its impossible with a mere 8 billion dollar budget to put man on mars. The figure could be ten times that.
But yes this killed Hubble since it would make it expensive and distract for Nasa's new mission.
I doubt it. I don't think Hubble or the mars mission will be funded. The real money for Mars is supposed to be spent after Bush leaves office, so I can virtually gaurentee you it'll never happen. I think the whole thing is kind of a dodge to defund everything but ISS and the Space Shuttle, since doing otherwise would cause a reallocation in jobs across congressional districts.
Nasa does risk assesments for everything. Its odd nasa would make such a quick decision if it were not political.
But that's the point. Politics is the major component of every decision at (or about) NASA. Did you ever wonder why the space shuttle has windows?
OK, first of all, the white house doesn't make budget choices. They gin up a budget request, but all the decisions get made by congress. That's in the document. In fact, congress can completely ignore the president in budgetary matters, provided they're willing to override a veto. I real life that doesn't happen, but the truth is GWB can't do squat on his own.
the "other places" are the comparatively pointless mars and dangerous militarization of orbital space missions, which are both bush pet projects.
This displays a stunning lack of understanding of how things really work. NASA's budget has nothing to do with the military budget or even what NASA does. The whole reason NASA isn't a fraction of its current size is it creates jobs in key congressional districts, and since the manned space program generates the most publicity that's what gets fully funded. Politics and NASA are absolutely inseperable. I'm sure we could all find a more efficient way to spend that money, but the reality is the taxpayers are less interested in the kind of basic science you get from hubble and more in tune with Buck Rogers and Captain Kirk. It was once said of Carl Sagan (I wish I could find the attribution) "every time he convinces someone we don't need manned spaceflight where robots will suffice we lose an advocate for the space program." NASA has taken that to heart.
The mars missions were campaign fluff that will never get funded at all, never mind fully. Anytime a politician promises a program that'll be funded after he leaves office you can pretty much assume it's not serious.
no war would equal billions more a month for other purposes, like scientifically useful space missions.
Not really. They're borrowing money for the war, so the real impact of not having a war is taxes would be a little lower in ten years or so. The idea that the overall budget is a fixed size and funding one program means cutting another is naive to say the least. The only way to get "scientifically useful space missions" funded is to get the public interested in them.
i'm tired of wasting my time on you, so futher responses from you will be ignored. and as Mr. Malda apparently doesn't really care about mismoderation, i probably won't be bothering to respond to comments on mismoderated posts at all, since nobody will see them. fark off. and that goes double for the biased mismoderators, wtf you are.
In other words, "I can't make a cogent argument or back up anything I say, so I'm going to ignore you when you pick apart my incoherent ramblings." That about right? And are you really so foolish as to think Rob Malda reads every post and weighs it carefully to decide if the moderation is correct?
Also, you still never provided a link for all that "militarization of space" poppycock. The reality is space has been militarized from day one in the form of spy satellites. As far as I know, there aren't any plans to put actual weapons in space, and I'd appreciate a link from anyone who has other information. My search for space weapons came up with this link, which describes programs which are either white-paper pipe dreams or technology demonstrators. The ground-based ASAT programs have been around for decades.
And that has nothing to do with the war. No war =/= hubble funding.
Dude, start taking your meds. That tirade doesn't make any sense. You could accuse Bush of not caring whether or not the telescope lives, but you're gonna have to come up with some kind of source to make that allegation. As for the militarization stuff, that's not happening at NASA.
The reality is fixing the Hubble will be damn expensive, and there's some question as to what is the most reasonable allocation of funding. As much as I think the NASA is full of boondoggles, I'm not sure the amount of useful science in the Hubble is worth the cost of fixing it.
If I were in charge I'd send the shuttle up for its final mission to fix Hubble then scrap the shuttle and the ISS. Then I'd take the money they were soaking up and use it for robotic missions.
No kiddin'? I have a HP 41CV I've used since college to do my taxes. Might be time to sell it and get one of those free ones you get for opening a bank account.
I have to say I'm depressed about HP. In the '80s and early '90s any sort of instrumentation equipment that said "HP" on the side was guarenteed to be the bee's knees of the product category. They were always more expensive, but it was worth it. I remember camping in my boss's office for a week so he would buy an HP scope instead of TI (probably lucky he didn't fire my ass).
Then they sold off the instrumentation division and cut research budgets. I don't know how you'd quantify it, but I wonder how much value the company has lost through tarnish on the previously shiny "HP" nameplate.
Excellent point, although the flight is a good way to keep hubris from creeping in. I mean, yes, it worked, but somebody's been burning the midnight oil to try to figure out where that extra fuel went.
Reread what I wrote. I never implied this project would be the end of comsats, but a quick google search would give you enough info to support my point. But you're just my personal moonbat troll, aren't you?
Yeah. The problem for me is, from what I understand, the pilot was just a passenger/backup system. The computer flew the plane. And anyway these kind of records are getting more... shall we say "incremental". Around-the-world fligts have been done. Around-the-world flights without refeuling have been done. The problem with this kind of record is there are too many dependent clauses to make it exciting.
Sadly, this kind of project is likely to make space programs less likely to be funded. As expensive as they are, rockets would be far more expensive if manufacturers couldn't depend on comsats to help amortize development costs. As super-efficient high-altitude aircraft become more advanced, some of those satellites will be replaced with solar-powered aircraft. So that $10B mission will end up costing $11B, making it less likely to be funded at all.
Yeah, that's the key observation. The problem here is the music companies are pooling their clout in order to maintain control of the distribution of pre-recorded music. This is really no less slimy than what they used to do with mom-and-pop music stores - "guarantee us 99% of your shelf-space or we won't give you the "discount" we give everybody else". So either you don't do indie music or that's all you do.
The big question is: if Jobs refuses, will the labels start to defect from iTMS? Apple will have planned for this scenario and their response is going to be very interesting--it will tell us pointedly where the power truly lies.
I think Jobs has quite a bit more leverage than is apparent at first glance. If all his suppliers raise their prices at once they're likely to end up in court. In any event iTunes/iPod has reached critical mass, and you need bothe ends to make it work.
Worst case - Apple could go into the music business, either directly or by buying up some smaller labels. Most of the money these days is in focus-grouped "product" bands anyway, and it's hard to believe Apple couldn't do that as will as existing players. They could even sell CDs at Apple stores. And I'm sure Walmart wouldn't mind stocking Apple music as lever against the RIAA.
So when I come out in the morning and find my car on blocks I'll be puttin' my tires back in the gastank instead of buying them back at the swap meet. Great.
Drat! Serves me right for actually working today. I missed my chance for that one.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I would consider both the Columbia (7 dead) and Soyuz-11 (3 dead) "recorded deaths in space". Of course, you can quibble about definitions (i.e. is a death at launch a death in space?) - you might count as many as 22. This article is pretty definitive.
But it's a political nonstarter. Americans are already concerned about a 30-year slide in manufacturing as a result of wage disparities. You might be able to convince the average Joe to go along with a treaty that spreads the woe around, but the first report that shows jobs moving to another country because they don't have restrictions on CO2 will result in the entire US Congress hitting the unemployment line. They're smart enough to know it.
Add to that the fact that there's no compliance mechanism. Lots of countries have announced emissions targets and then failed to meet them. If people in my family are getting laid off in a Kyoto-induced economic slump and I read about other countries not fulfilling treaty obligations, what would a reasonable response be?
Look at how much trouble the EU is having getting countries to live up to budgetary promises (which should have triggered large fines). This would be the same thing in spades. The only way this treaty is ever going to work is if offending coutries are nuked.
I remember thinking at the time "well, that just means all the new stuff will get researched and implemented in other countries, since most of the grad students who are capable of grinding through this kind of math are from other countries anyway."
So the fact this news comes from China is no surprise. If there was ever a case of the government putting US-approved ammunition in it's own collective foot, this is it.
Yep. This ain't no group of crackpots nobody's ever heard of. I would be shocked if they didn't do what they said they did.
Yes, I've been raked over the coals for my mistakes. But that's as it should be, provided it doesn't get personal.
Maybe I'm too cynical but I don't believe in the "principled opposition". Well, I do for many of the grass roots supporters, but for the people running the Republican party it has always seemed to me to be just another mechanism to distract the average person from meaningful issues. For previous example see communism in the 50's and "state's rights" in the 60's and 70's as a code word for "keepin' the n****r down". (As a side note, the Democrats didn't "lose the South for a generation" based on their stand on the capital gains tax). If the left were to roll over tomorrow and let the Republicans win on the issues of abortion and gay marriage and prayer in school and all these other issues, by Thursday Rev. Spongebob would be on the air demanding that condoms, birth control pills, and Telletubbies be outlawed. And, I fear, a preponderance of the Republican leadership would pander to these positions to further their own political end. In the end, as an atheist, you'd be in as deep as shit as the rest of us.
That whole "code word" argument always bothers me. It's just too easy to misunderstand what people are saying if you assign new meanings to their words. I don't know any conservative who speaks in code words - have you considered the possibility that sometimes people actually mean what they say? That they consider the injustice to be rule from the outside? Does gun control make as much sense in Montana as it does in New York?
As far as the abortion debate is concerned, the worst thing that could happen to the Republicans is for the left to roll over and abortion made illegal. The electorate is actually in the middle on this: a small percentage think it should be legal in all cases, a small percentage think it should never be legal, and the vast majority of Americans are somewhere in the middle. The Dems made a critical error by supporting so-called "partial birth abortion", which almost all Americans view as infanticide. As I said, in my opinion the right thing to do would be to return it to the state level. The hardliners on both sides would end up being marginalized, as they were before Roe.
You, of course, know the standard response to this. Either human beings are worthy of inalienable rights or they are not. If they are, then any delay is unconscienable.
Yes, but the catch is what you consider inalienable rights. The Constitution clearly leaves that (other than those specifically enumerated) to state legislatures, not to federal judges. I can't imagine what else they would have had in mind with the tenth amendment.
Oh, and speaking of "activist judges", I hope that 30 years from now we're not still bitching about the first appointment of Bush II like we are about Roe v. Wade.
But that's the crux, for me. If Bush appoints a strict constructionist it's likely you'll be bitching about your state legislature. And that, in my opinion, is a much more workable system. If he appoints a religious nut bent on expanding federal power, then, well... I'll be surprised. And sorry I supported him. Like I said, I'm not a die-hard Bushie. At some level you have to make judgements about what you think people will do, and you can be wrong.
I don't entirely disagree with you, that's why I say bring back a divided government. In my opinion, the primary reason we had surpluses in the 90's was because Congress and the Executive branch were in opposite hands most of the time under both Bush and Clinton. Don't get me wrong, I will still support candidates from the left in the hope of nudging our country slighty back towards the center from the far right where we have drifted, but I'd be happy with a 50/50 split.
It's a matter of perspective
And yet there was a constitutional basis for doing so in the 14th amendment. I wasn't trying to argue states should have absolute soverignty. I have no problem, for example with Brown v Board of Education. What I was arguing against was the distortions the judiciary has introduced, like inventing rights that aren't there (as in Roe), widening the commerce clause to include any possible whim of Congress, and completely ignoring the 10th amendment.
You make some good arguments. But the way the law works is not on your side
I agree the law isn't on my side. But I think the Constitution is. We may have to disagree on that.
I'm just as offended by the constant barrage of abuse coming towards me and my liberal compatriots from such folks as Bob Jones, Ann Coulter, Limbaugh, etc. It's been completely uncalled for, savagely divisive, and not helpful to the national discourse. Furthermore, just as it has with the left of today, it's going to come back and bite the right savagely in the ass a few years from now.
Those people don't speak for me. I was talking about the discussion on slashdot. I was talking about people who accuse other people of being trolls because they have a difference of opinion.
I'm not sure what you mean by slandering your party. The point I was trying to make is the people at the top don't seem to have a grasp of what mainstream Christians believe. Until they do the party's doomed to being a regional party. As to Moyers specifically, how can a rational person write this? Moyers is hardly a fringe player, and his article isn't full of invective as much as just plain ignorance.
If he's really a loudmouth who can't keep it together, then the party leadership needs to get the message out.