My comments were in reference to the Vega project only. Also, I didn't mean to dwell on the Beagle 2/ESA point. I was just trying to say you can't consider it an ESA failure.
But I disagree with your "competition can't hurt" point. When too many competitors enter a crowded market they all lose money. The problem with government-sponsored projects is they aren't allowed to fail, since they "create" jobs. So you end up with a situation where multiple countries are shelling out taxpayer money to outbid each other in an effort to amortize development costs.
The long-term problem is this prevents a rational market from existing - investors will forever be reluctant to bet against government projects. So companies like Armadillo Aerospace and Starchaser have no chance to develop.
Now, I can see a strategic rational for the EU to have this kind of capability. As others have pointed out, the rocket seems to be tailored for spy satellites. If that's the rationale, well, bully for you. But if it's just another job-creation scheme that will cost everybody, then I wish they hadn't done it.
And note I'm critical of much of the US space program for the same reasons. If we could get some more attention to bottom-line costs, maybe we could afford those solar power satellites and other, truly useful projects.
You're mistaking rational analysis for jingoism. you write:
First of all, I really have a hard time believing that your random slashdotter would have sufficient knowledge to make any intelligent observations about the projects involved
The reality is lots of slashdotters are in this business. This isn't about failure rates - this market is way oversaturated - nobody is making money off launches with this payload size. Launcher companies the world over grossly overestimated the size of this market (what with the spectacular failure of Iridium) and have a huge overcapacity glut.
If there's a row of ten burger joints on my street and someone opens an eleventh, don't you think "why?" is a reasonable question to ask?
So we'll have yet another government-subsidized launch vehicle soaking up dollars/euros that could go to support a rational commercial space business.
Great. If there were something special about this rocket in terms of cost or performance, I guess I could understand, but Vega is "just another rocket" in a crowded field.
By the way, as others have pointed out, Beagle 2 wasn't an ESA project.
It has nothing to do with helping Lockeed-Marting. It's a market, like any other market, and there are way too many companies offering this capability. Do they really have enough EU projects to make this worthwhile?
They will be hard-pressed to compete with the Chinese and Indians.
There really isn't any shortage of small-payload launchers. In fact, there's a glut. It doesn't make any sense to develop yet another one. The whole market is depressed.
Customers are actually pushing the envelope on the other end. Maybe a 25 ton launcher...
Some claim that Hitler's rise was nonetheless legal under the German system. The problem is that what was "legal" under the German system would not be considered legal under a truer and better-working democracy. In a democracy along the lines of the United States or Great Britain, Hitler could have never risen to power.
This article is a lot of song and dance. The fact of the matter is Hitler got more votes than anybody else in a system which had "back room deals" built into it. It was a lousy system, but that doesn't excuse the 37% of Germans who voted for the Nazis.
And I didn't imply other Europeans voted for the Nazis. They simply tried to ignore him in hopes he would go away. This is very similar to today's European, who , despite all experience to the contrary, still thinks accomodation will deter a bully.
You all live in democracies, you can vote for whichever appeaser strikes your fancy at the moment. But don't tell me who to elect in my country.
Well, the article was slashdotted, and I inferred from the other comments they were touring live facilities. But now that you mention it, that doesn't smell right, based on my experience with the military.
If what you're saying is true, this whole thing is a non-issue. What people don't seem to realize is too much security can keep you from being able to do your job...
Every time I read a post like this I start to wonder if anybody posting to this site has any contact with the real world.
The cops did exactly the right thing. They were tipped off and they looked into it. End of story.
The same people who are wont to whine about their trampled civil rights will be saying "They should have known!" after some lead doesn't get run down and a terrorist attack occurs.
And for those of you who would have made a federal case out of it, just remember who's paying the cop's salary, and the FBI/Homeland Security agent's salary. If you waste everybody's time there will be a lead to a real terrorist that doesn't get investigated.
And for all you Europeans: Don't tell us who to vote for. Remember, Hitler was elected by Europeans and then appeased by other Europeans until he became too big of a problem for you to handle. If you don't mind, I'll elect a leader who wants to handle the problem before it turns into WWIII. My security is more important to me than the personal profits corrupt European and Russian leaders were pocketing during the "oil for fraud" program.
It's not that simple. The whole point of the MAD theory was an attacker could be damn sure he would receive the ultimate punishment for an attack. Anything that detracts from that certainty, even today, makes everyone less safe.
For ground-based missiles to be an effective deterrent, the attacker has to know a "decapitation" strike will not prevent payback. If you centralize a secret interlock all your adversary has to do is destroy the source of the code or your communications structure before the code is transmitted.
Remember, there's no way you can launch before the first bombs arive. Assuming the first bomb isn't simply snuck into Washington and detonated immediately before the main attack, SLBMs can arrive in about 90 seconds.
On the other hand, I agree physical security has to be maintained at any cost. Tours are dumb.
Not true at all. Everybody knew the Germans were going to attack, even the French. They were planning to fight the war in Holland, and when the Dutch declined they were ill prepared to fight in France.
However, they had a bigger army than the Germans, plus higher quality, more numerous tanks. They simply didn't fight as well as the Germans, both at the command level and the individual soldier level.
Yeah, they'll have to settle for bridges here, since we don't have a reasonable train system for them to blow up like France does.
What's that you say, you're not involoved in Iraq? And they're still attacking? Hmmm... maybe it's the head-scarf thing. Or maybe time hasn't completely washed the Algerian blood from French hands. Or maybe they respond to weakness by attacking.
Who cares?
Re:No way. Unfortunately. Way too much drag
on
Blimps... In... Space...
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· Score: 3, Informative
You are assuming this thing is going to be a bigger, thinner Goodyear blimp. According to what I've read (and look at the picture), part of the idea here is the shape of the craft is supposed to generate lift. So by the time it's going 5000 fps it'll be far above its original altitude with very little drag.
Yes, I know you won't get aerodynamic lift without air, so there will be some drag, but your back-of-envelope calculation doesn't tell enough of the story to know if it's a showstopper.
My question is how the heat gets dumped on the way back. I guess it has so much surface are the heat load at any given point is small, but we're not talking about titanium here.
OK, before we all run out and dig a big pond in the backyard, I'm curious about the cost estimates. Every time I see a cost estimate from academia it turns out to be a tiny fraction of the real cost.
The government is even worse - remember the space shuttle was supposed to get us into orbit for $50/lb instead of $10000.
Everybody who remembers solar the solar tower in California raise their hand... Produces electricity fine if you don't mind paying $370,000/year for your own personal (one household) use. And that was supposed to be in the same ballpark as wind and PV cells.
Yeah, sure, unionization works so well for holding on to jobs. There's a reason companies don't make many cars or much steel in the US anymore. And those industries have large fixed plants (it's expensive to move a steel mill). Where are you going to picket when your software job goes away?
Why do they want to make the age requirement public? This can be discretely discussed with the HR department and just filter anyone over xx age out automatically.
It probably isn't illegal in India. I'd like that better than what we have here - at least you don't have to waste your time applying for a job you won't get. In the US you still won't get the job, but they'll go through all the motions of considering you so as not to get sued.
Yeah, about as much as we'd all love to see 60s-style Apollo capsules again.
In both cases I'd say that's better than the "new and improved version". The "Enterprise" crew is completely lacking in personality, and the Space Shuttle (when it actually flies) costs more than building a ramp to orbit out of $100 bills.
It will be very difficult to garner any sympathy for these sickos from myself or the/. community.
Or any community for that matter.
Yes, that's true. It will be so difficult there will be scant consideration of the long-term consequences of allowing our government to snoop internet traffic.
Also, the fact that you don't have another person to point and say "he did something illegal to me" makes it easy to plant this kind of evidence on a political enemy. Recall how many purported gang members were framed by the LAPD crash unit.
Every time something bad happens the Monday-morning quarterbacks come out of the woodwork. If you read the article you see they don't have any idea what went wrong, but they have all sorts of expensive ideas on how to fix the problem.
Space missions are risky and expensive. You can spend lots of extra money and have the mission fail anyway. And there's a danger of it getting cancelled altogether if you spend too long testing.
Such nonsense! Just who were we "bombing the fuck out of" on September 10th, 2001? If this is your idea of "bombing the fuck out of people", you need to hit the library and learn some history. In fact, our comparative lack of retaliation has invited more attacks, since in the Middle East you are assumed to be too weak to retaliate if you don't.
No amount of European-style cowering will make these people go away. Did that work after the embassy bombings in Africa? Did it work after the attack on the USS Cole? It was the "lob a couple of tommahawks at them and call it even" strategy which encouraged Bin Laden to dream of bigger and better things.
We take the fight to them or live in a police state, trying in vain to cover all of our myriad vulnerabilities. This is choice facing Americans, whether we accept it or not.
...protects nothing. We would be far better off not worrying about the small and mid-level threats and concentrating on the big threats, like dams. If someone sliced through fiber networks it would be profoundly annoying, but nobody would die.
If we spread our attention and resources too thinly, though, any target becomes accessible.
Terrorists have to have large-scale loss of life to generate the headlines they need for fundraising. I wouldn't worry about infrastructure (even vital infrastructure), since it's too hard to explain to uneducated fundamentalists why snarling up internet traffic is a victory for Allah.
Are you mad? This is the company with more money than most countries. The have more than fifty billion dollars in the bank along with a very positive cash flow. They could release longhorn a decade from now and not have any cash problems whatsoever.
So the major RAM producers decided they would push a standard which wasn't burdened with Rambus's patent portfolio.
So what?
Industries players negotiate standards all the time, and they're entitled to change their minds. If management at Rambus was a little more intelligent, it would have released the patent torpedoes a little later when it would be too expensive for memory makers to retool.
In any case, it would be a mistake for the courts to reward extortionists by limiting what industries can do to respond to this kind of unethical behavior.
Also, for an antitrust case to be successful, they have to prove the consumer was harmed, which will be hard to do given the cost of Rambus license fees. Antitrust law isn't focused on protecting companies.
The deadline is 7 months away and we have yet to see an actual unmanned test launch.
Not true. Check out these tests . They have a 40 second manned burn under their belts and could probably win the X-prize tomorrow if the paperwork were squared away.
The chance of a global nuclear war occuring is much less than it was during the 80's because of pro-active action, not by saying "those bombs will eventually be integrated into society"
Nonsense. The reduced chance of global nuclear war was a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was not the result of pro-active action, but rather an inevitability. For a time, the Russians simply couldn't afford the upkeep on their nuclear arsenal. In fact, I'm not sure what you mean by pro-active action. Treaties? Sure, some warheads were destroyed, but that's mostly symbolic, since there are thousands left. Surely you don't mean dope-smoking peaceniks with hand-painted signs and no access to power?
That time is past, by the way. Russia is in the process of rolling out new ICBMs as we speak. And Putin isn't any less dangerous than his predecessors, he's just more diplomatic.
Also, with about twenty nations in the "nuclear club", the decision to drop the bomb is in the hands of at least twenty people, instead of just two. Think about that.
Of course robotic repair makes sense. In fact, it's a better option than the shuttle in any case. There ins't a lot you can't get a robot to do to hubble for the $1.2B a shuttle flight would cost you.
NASA's made a science out of trying to prove manned spaceflight makes some kind of sense, and it just doesn't.
Slashdot Mirror
But I disagree with your "competition can't hurt" point. When too many competitors enter a crowded market they all lose money. The problem with government-sponsored projects is they aren't allowed to fail, since they "create" jobs. So you end up with a situation where multiple countries are shelling out taxpayer money to outbid each other in an effort to amortize development costs.
The long-term problem is this prevents a rational market from existing - investors will forever be reluctant to bet against government projects. So companies like Armadillo Aerospace and Starchaser have no chance to develop.
Now, I can see a strategic rational for the EU to have this kind of capability. As others have pointed out, the rocket seems to be tailored for spy satellites. If that's the rationale, well, bully for you. But if it's just another job-creation scheme that will cost everybody, then I wish they hadn't done it.
And note I'm critical of much of the US space program for the same reasons. If we could get some more attention to bottom-line costs, maybe we could afford those solar power satellites and other, truly useful projects.
First of all, I really have a hard time believing that your random slashdotter would have sufficient knowledge to make any intelligent observations about the projects involved
The reality is lots of slashdotters are in this business. This isn't about failure rates - this market is way oversaturated - nobody is making money off launches with this payload size. Launcher companies the world over grossly overestimated the size of this market (what with the spectacular failure of Iridium) and have a huge overcapacity glut.
If there's a row of ten burger joints on my street and someone opens an eleventh, don't you think "why?" is a reasonable question to ask?
So we'll have yet another government-subsidized launch vehicle soaking up dollars/euros that could go to support a rational commercial space business. Great. If there were something special about this rocket in terms of cost or performance, I guess I could understand, but Vega is "just another rocket" in a crowded field.
By the way, as others have pointed out, Beagle 2 wasn't an ESA project.
They will be hard-pressed to compete with the Chinese and Indians.
Customers are actually pushing the envelope on the other end. Maybe a 25 ton launcher...
Some claim that Hitler's rise was nonetheless legal under the German system. The problem is that what was "legal" under the German system would not be considered legal under a truer and better-working democracy. In a democracy along the lines of the United States or Great Britain, Hitler could have never risen to power.
This article is a lot of song and dance. The fact of the matter is Hitler got more votes than anybody else in a system which had "back room deals" built into it. It was a lousy system, but that doesn't excuse the 37% of Germans who voted for the Nazis.
And I didn't imply other Europeans voted for the Nazis. They simply tried to ignore him in hopes he would go away. This is very similar to today's European, who , despite all experience to the contrary, still thinks accomodation will deter a bully.
You all live in democracies, you can vote for whichever appeaser strikes your fancy at the moment. But don't tell me who to elect in my country.
Oh, yes, and see if you can summon up the proper attitude. Looking down your nose will help.
If what you're saying is true, this whole thing is a non-issue. What people don't seem to realize is too much security can keep you from being able to do your job...
The cops did exactly the right thing. They were tipped off and they looked into it. End of story.
The same people who are wont to whine about their trampled civil rights will be saying "They should have known!" after some lead doesn't get run down and a terrorist attack occurs.
And for those of you who would have made a federal case out of it, just remember who's paying the cop's salary, and the FBI/Homeland Security agent's salary. If you waste everybody's time there will be a lead to a real terrorist that doesn't get investigated.
And for all you Europeans: Don't tell us who to vote for. Remember, Hitler was elected by Europeans and then appeased by other Europeans until he became too big of a problem for you to handle. If you don't mind, I'll elect a leader who wants to handle the problem before it turns into WWIII. My security is more important to me than the personal profits corrupt European and Russian leaders were pocketing during the "oil for fraud" program.
For ground-based missiles to be an effective deterrent, the attacker has to know a "decapitation" strike will not prevent payback. If you centralize a secret interlock all your adversary has to do is destroy the source of the code or your communications structure before the code is transmitted.
Remember, there's no way you can launch before the first bombs arive. Assuming the first bomb isn't simply snuck into Washington and detonated immediately before the main attack, SLBMs can arrive in about 90 seconds.
On the other hand, I agree physical security has to be maintained at any cost. Tours are dumb.
However, they had a bigger army than the Germans, plus higher quality, more numerous tanks. They simply didn't fight as well as the Germans, both at the command level and the individual soldier level.
What's that you say, you're not involoved in Iraq? And they're still attacking? Hmmm... maybe it's the head-scarf thing. Or maybe time hasn't completely washed the Algerian blood from French hands. Or maybe they respond to weakness by attacking.
Who cares?
Yes, I know you won't get aerodynamic lift without air, so there will be some drag, but your back-of-envelope calculation doesn't tell enough of the story to know if it's a showstopper.
My question is how the heat gets dumped on the way back. I guess it has so much surface are the heat load at any given point is small, but we're not talking about titanium here.
The government is even worse - remember the space shuttle was supposed to get us into orbit for $50/lb instead of $10000.
Everybody who remembers solar the solar tower in California raise their hand... Produces electricity fine if you don't mind paying $370,000/year for your own personal (one household) use. And that was supposed to be in the same ballpark as wind and PV cells.
Yeah, sure, unionization works so well for holding on to jobs. There's a reason companies don't make many cars or much steel in the US anymore. And those industries have large fixed plants (it's expensive to move a steel mill). Where are you going to picket when your software job goes away?
It probably isn't illegal in India. I'd like that better than what we have here - at least you don't have to waste your time applying for a job you won't get. In the US you still won't get the job, but they'll go through all the motions of considering you so as not to get sued.
In both cases I'd say that's better than the "new and improved version". The "Enterprise" crew is completely lacking in personality, and the Space Shuttle (when it actually flies) costs more than building a ramp to orbit out of $100 bills.
Yes, that's true. It will be so difficult there will be scant consideration of the long-term consequences of allowing our government to snoop internet traffic.
Also, the fact that you don't have another person to point and say "he did something illegal to me" makes it easy to plant this kind of evidence on a political enemy. Recall how many purported gang members were framed by the LAPD crash unit.
Space missions are risky and expensive. You can spend lots of extra money and have the mission fail anyway. And there's a danger of it getting cancelled altogether if you spend too long testing.
No amount of European-style cowering will make these people go away. Did that work after the embassy bombings in Africa? Did it work after the attack on the USS Cole? It was the "lob a couple of tommahawks at them and call it even" strategy which encouraged Bin Laden to dream of bigger and better things.
We take the fight to them or live in a police state, trying in vain to cover all of our myriad vulnerabilities. This is choice facing Americans, whether we accept it or not.
If we spread our attention and resources too thinly, though, any target becomes accessible.
Terrorists have to have large-scale loss of life to generate the headlines they need for fundraising. I wouldn't worry about infrastructure (even vital infrastructure), since it's too hard to explain to uneducated fundamentalists why snarling up internet traffic is a victory for Allah.
Are you mad? This is the company with more money than most countries. The have more than fifty billion dollars in the bank along with a very positive cash flow. They could release longhorn a decade from now and not have any cash problems whatsoever.
So what?
Industries players negotiate standards all the time, and they're entitled to change their minds. If management at Rambus was a little more intelligent, it would have released the patent torpedoes a little later when it would be too expensive for memory makers to retool.
In any case, it would be a mistake for the courts to reward extortionists by limiting what industries can do to respond to this kind of unethical behavior.
Also, for an antitrust case to be successful, they have to prove the consumer was harmed, which will be hard to do given the cost of Rambus license fees. Antitrust law isn't focused on protecting companies.
Not true. Check out these tests . They have a 40 second manned burn under their belts and could probably win the X-prize tomorrow if the paperwork were squared away.
Nonsense. The reduced chance of global nuclear war was a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was not the result of pro-active action, but rather an inevitability. For a time, the Russians simply couldn't afford the upkeep on their nuclear arsenal. In fact, I'm not sure what you mean by pro-active action. Treaties? Sure, some warheads were destroyed, but that's mostly symbolic, since there are thousands left. Surely you don't mean dope-smoking peaceniks with hand-painted signs and no access to power?
That time is past, by the way. Russia is in the process of rolling out new ICBMs as we speak. And Putin isn't any less dangerous than his predecessors, he's just more diplomatic.
Also, with about twenty nations in the "nuclear club", the decision to drop the bomb is in the hands of at least twenty people, instead of just two. Think about that.
Of course robotic repair makes sense. In fact, it's a better option than the shuttle in any case. There ins't a lot you can't get a robot to do to hubble for the $1.2B a shuttle flight would cost you. NASA's made a science out of trying to prove manned spaceflight makes some kind of sense, and it just doesn't.