I would have to agree with this. I have a BS in mechanical engineering & and MS in mechanical engineering. But when I started working I realized how much I love working with & learning about computers. My company has a tuition reimbursement program so I signed up at a local college (Purdue through IUPUI, go boilermakers!) to learn more about them & get some applicable knowledge.
I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to get out of it besides general knowledge. I have found that I am learning little to no programming/networking/administration skills. It's all about theory & ideas. Which is great, because I dig it. But if you were getting a CS degree just to learn how to program & administrate you'd probably be in for a surprise. I've had to put in significant hours on my own to learn all of that stuff. Considering I'm a mechanical engineer my lack of experience means I have a huge learning curve. It's kind of fun.
I'm not sure that the nature of a CS degree is adequately explained by the degree offices. Or at least, general perception doesn't seem to be catching on. It's like the difference between being a PhD chemist and a lab technician (sort of).
I, like most I assume, have never really gotten a firm grasp of the reality of time dilation. Basically, here's my own practical implementation: The faster you go, the longer it seems that you take to people that aren't going with you (stayed on Earth).
So, you get to make the choice: 1) Get there fast so that it doesn't take your whole life. 2) Get there slow so that someone you know might be around when you get back.
Here's an interesting question for you physicists out there:
Is there an "optimal" speed for minimizing the time that Earth would perceive you as being gone?
If you're doing a science mission for Earth, that would seem to be the time that would matter for the greater good.
IANAD but I have many friends that are doctors. Aside from some specialities such as Anastesia (sp?), some Surgeons, or Dermatology, most doctors really don't make what they're worth. They go through pure hell for at least 7 years. They get paid nothing for the first 4, and $40,000 a year after that until they finish residency. I have heard many a doctor say that there is no way they would do it all over again. If they had only known what it would be like, they would run away screaming.
Health care is expensive because we feel like it's worth it. Every new cure or treatment or test costs more money, not less. Improvement increases costs & we'd rather live longer than not so we're willing to pay the premium for improvement.
My point? Doctors are underpaid, especially primary care physicians. They should be paid a premium because they are doing such an important job and have to go through hell to get there. Regardless of whether they do it for the money or "love of life", they deserve to be compensated. So please don't rag on doctors for high health care costs.
Speaking of clueless, when I said "parent" I was referring to the parent poster. But yes, I agree that "parents" work very, very hard. And they're doing a much more important job than some tech job.
Yup, that's what happens. As people bitch about not having a job, someone like you comes along and works their arse off to make something of themself. Imagine that, working hard to improve your life and that of your family.
You know what folks, the parent is the real American. He/she realizes that noone hands anything to you. They work their butt off to make something of themself and if the job market turns bad (here's a thought) they work harder.
Funny, I'm a young engineer and my company is laying people off. Yet, somehow they keep me around. I wonder if it's because I EARN MY KEEP.
You've got to remember it's a college. Heck, give a guy enough beer and he/she will definitely pedal their butt off for a while a 3 meters. Heck, I was subjected to much worse than a 3-meter, gyro-slowed decent in college. I survived. Although many brian cells unfortunately did not.
Actually, it all depends on how you use it. Most of the Hummers I see are just doing city driving. (Of course, I live in the city). Since these don't tend to get over 30 or 40 mph very often, you could definitely save some gas using a hybrid system. Heavy wouldn't matter, because regenerative braking would regain most of that energy.
Now, 60 mpg is probably a bit high. But I'm guessing 40 or even 50 mpg is possible. Very, very expensive though.
Well, I'm betting that DARPA wants to develop this technology for the USA & the USA only. That means training & educating US engineers & not foreign ones. Sure, they could just buy the technology off of a foreign winner, but part of this is getting the US tech industry to excel in this area.
It's not about driving a car through the desert, it's about developing technologies for military applications. Those technologies are better kept in the US (from DARPA's point of view) with US workers & companies. Plus, it's their tax money so they should probably give it back to their own citizens.
This may be an optimum design methodology in some cases, but designing in this way designs for the maximum case. In other words, the impeller always spins quickly enough so that it can fully supply a fully-open valve. However, we all know that a very small percentage of your time throughout the day is spent in full-open mode. Most of it is in low-mode, especially when you're sleeping.
I would think that this particular application would lend itself more to a variable speed impeller than a fixed speed impeller coupled with a variable sized outlet orifice. First, we would like to minimize power usage and thereby maximize battery life. Being able to run at the low-mode for most of the day would help this. Second, including a valving system adds moving parts to the system that aren't needed. Parts that could fail. In fact, they say in the article that the lack of (frictional) moving parts is an added bonus to this system. Why remove it?
Now, here's an idea: What if we can design a way to power the device externally. How about some sort of device on the outside of the body that creates the magnetic field? The skin could still be between it and the impeller. That would possibly remove some of the risk of infection of the charging wire. Of course, anything external can be ripped off. Just a thought.
My problem with eBooks is that it is blaringly obvious when you are using them. When I grab a book & start to read, I want to get lost in the story. When I grab my PDA & start to read, I tend to get lost in the tech. I find myself thinking about scrolling correctly, wishing there was more screen, screen brightness settings, etc. In short, I find myself thinking about everything except the story.
A traditional book is the simplest technology available to get the job done. It's cheap & "platform" independent. There's nothing to think about. You just pick it up and read.
The only way I see eBooks taking off, at least for myself, is if my life somehow makes it nice to always have a book available (or multiple books). Say I take a lot of short trips in taxis or I have lots of 5-minutes breaks before meetings. Then it would be great to have a book on my PDA to fill that time.
Given that situation, I would see eBooks more as an addition than a replacement. For example, right now I'm reading two books. One at home & one at work. If I could add another "anywhere" book on my PDA that might not be a bad idea. But I still wouldn't want to replace the other two because a paper book just works so darn well.
This is actually a strength of TiVo style devices. Once you watch a couple games, you tend to learn how much of that time is commercials. Say a typical game lasts 3 hours, and watching it on TiVo takes only 2 hours. Well, that's 1 hour of crap (commercials, half-time, etc.) & 2 hours of good stuff. Now, if a game starts at 3:00 pm, you would just start watching at 4:00 pm instead. You would finish up at the same time (give or take a little) as other watchers, but you would have saved that hour.
I do this with all kinds of programming. But, with sporting events it is especially nice. I've said it to all of my friends: "With TiVo, I watch more TV, but it doesn't take nearly as much time." The cat's out of the bag, and anything the MPAA or anyone else does to try and stop it won't work in the long run, laws or not.
But what of the rise in internet-activity vs. television-watching in America's youth. I've read quite a few places that many people are turning to the internet for news/entertainment/information. Well, that's reading, at least a large part of it is. Maybe people are reading less fiction because they are reading more internet news or such. And that might not be a bad thing. Current events is probably a more relevant topic for people to engage in than fiction.
My point is, I don't necessarily think that people are lazy bums for not picking up a book. I actually read quite a bit (tackling War & Peace right now, good Lord) but others don't. That's always been the case. There seems to always be an "upper-eschelon" of intelligent folks who strive for knowledge. I don't think that's changed. The people who don't read books now probably wouldn't have 50 years ago either.
You know what, it kind of annoys me when people misspell things. But I'm not exactly Mr. Perfect Grammar. I always try and look back over my posts to see if I misspelled anything (or if it just doesn't make sense). However, as this sentence suggests, I usually don't have a clue where to put commas.
Regardless, this site isn't about spelling correctly or using correct grammar. It's about exchanging ideas & opinions on technology. The only thing proper English gains you is a little more credibility. I knew what the poster was getting at with the faulty spelling of "preliminary", and I'm guessing that everyone else did as well.
So chill out folks.
P.S. Let's remember that we're not all native English speakers, either. And I know all of you liberals out there want to give everybody a fair shot at feeling good about themselves.;^P
"...and feeds it into an electronic counter under the eye of an election judge"
So, is it possible for the judge to see your vote? It definitely seems that way to me. If not during your vote, how about seeing a "spoiled" ballot? Not that this makes it a bad system. Just curious.
Not to mention that challenges like this are a great way for STUDENTS to start being real engineers. I went to Rose-Hulman, a fantastic undergraduate engineering school, and little projects like this were always where we learned the most about real-world engineering. There's this, a solar racer (now defuct), a racing cart, & various other stuff. It's a great way to learn.
Building a full-fledged, 4-door, super-safe, grocery getter is probably a bit of a stretch for schools like this. I mean, it realistically has to be able to be completed within about a year. Less if you count the "school year".
I think contests like this, even if they don't provide a whole lot of "real-world" application, are a fantastic way for students to learn.
I wasn't aware the that code was proprietary. Does that mean that even government officials can't access & verify it? If so, that's just plain stupid.
It's also just plain stupid that there isn't a paper-trail. I mean, come on, it's really the first time we've done this and they don't want a back-up plan. For the love of Pete!
Anyway, I like this post a lot. The earlier post was just a quick bash of "BushCo" with none of the explanation that goes into this one. That's more what I was calling out.
I do tend to think that DieBold is "trying" to do a good job though. You've got to admit it's a pretty big project to try and tackle this quickly. Especially with all the controversy & attention. There definitely needs to be a set of checks & balances in place though. Personally, I like the Las Vegas Slot Machine approach.
If more people expressed their views like you do in the last paragraph, perhaps we could really make some headway into getting the problems fixed.
It's funny, I would actually prefer to start off the electronic voting process a bit differently. Let me fill out a regular paper-ballot first. You know, color in circles, press-out chads (ugh), whatever. Now, let me feed that in to an electronic reader. Then let me verify that the reader has counted my vote correctly & submit. The original paper copy is saved, but the electronic counting procedure is also used.
I have always thought that the original purpose of electronic voting was to remove some of the uncertainty as to whether or not my paper-vote was correctly counted. This would do that, plus there would be a paper copy.
Then, over the years, we could develop ways to replace the paper-vote with a possible electronic one. Although I don't necessarily see the point.
However, I gotta say that many people over 50, which make up a large percentage of voters, would manage to be baffled by even the simplest electronic system. Heck, even I get a little lost trying to vote the way it is now. Too much crap going on, just count my friggin' vote!
Okay, now listen carefully. Take off the tin-foil hat, set it on the table beside you, and take a deep breath. Okay, now, look around. Is anybody looking in your window? Do you feel gamma rays penetrating the depth of your soul? If so, replace the tin-foil hat. If not, leave it off.
Where in the world do you get off ranting against "BushCo" about this? A much more simple explanation of the situation is what the others posters have been saying. Diebold overpromised (sales) & underdelivered (engineers/techies). They got themselves into a hard deadline, with unproven technology, & couldn't quite make the cut. I'm sure they're working their a$$ off trying to get the job done right, but it's apparently pretty darn hard for them.
Now, as far as BushCo, how could this possibly be worth the risk for them? The only possible benefit to them would be to somehow add votes to Bush or detract votes from Kerry (or other dems). Yeah, like that wouldn't be detected. We all know that, as intelligent as BushCo is[n't], they would probably try and insert a ++vote (snicker) just before the end of the code. Hackers? Bush? Yeah, right.
Don't be a hate-mongerer (sp?). The rest of us are here for intelligent discussion, not political rants.
At least it's a step in the right direction. A pretty big step, too. You're right though, lots of big steps still left to get to orbit.
At least let us get excited about it. We haven't had much to be excited about in the space industry of late. It's kind of a "score one for the little guy" thing. I dig it.
I had a first floor apartment with a patio. They had a rule that you couldn't mount anything on the siding but they didn't care if you mounted onto the trim of the building. So I just screwed the satellite into the trim (big wooden stuff, about 1" thick). Pretty soon a few other people did the same. Then I just drilled a couple 1" diameter holes through the trim & into my apartment. I installed a cover on the apartment side but just siliconed it up on the outside.
They were cool about it. I never officially asked them if I could screw holes through the wall but they didn't really care. When I left they took $30 of my deposit because I left the dish where it was. I was kind of surprised they didn't keep all $100. Then again, it was one of the more expensive apartments in my area so they probably got plenty of money out of me already.
It all just depends if there is more science to be done with the Rovers. The original mission can be set aside once it is accomplished. After that, NASA must then decide whether it is more cost effective to use the rovers for more scientific missions on Mars, or direct that money toward a new project.
If the scientists feel that there isn't much more to gain in the rover's area, then it might not be a bad idea to shut them down & chalk it up as a great success. However, I doubt that's the case. I imagine that it would be much more cost-effective to continue using the rover's to explore & measure. Especially since any further money spent is a virtually guaranteed return on investment (it's already there & working, & the staff is trained).
It's a similar argument that is occuring with the Hubble thing right now. Is it a better investment to fix/upgrade Hubble, or make a new telescope? Maybe a hard question to answer in either case.
I'm beginning to think a more staged approach to sending humans to Mars is needed.
What I mean is, we are standing at the edge of what could be a revolution in space flight. We've got private industry right there waiting to take a large role in near-Earth space travel. I think spending some of the NASA budget on incubating this phenomenon would be very wise. First, for every $1 NASA spends, somebody else (or many others) will throw in some of their own cash. Second, bringing private industry along for the ride will result in the development of key technologies & processes that NASA wouldn't be able to get on their own. Especially in the areas of cost savings. Third, encouraging an increases amount of activity in space engineering only increases the knowledge base & talent pool that NASA could pull from.
In the meantime, NASA could continue to support & innovate in the near-Earth human spaceflight area. They could also continue to perform long distance robotic missions, something they've been very successful at of late.
I do think a NASA return to the moon would fit into this plan. It lets NASA stay ahead of private industry, developing on the cutting edge things they will need for a future trip to Mars. Further, by developing base technologies in a near-Earth area, we remove some of the risk of trying things out & figuring out what the heck we are going to do when we go further out in the solar system.
I do think that the private spaceflight industry can be leveraged very effectively by NASA to further their mission.
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I would have to agree with this. I have a BS in mechanical engineering & and MS in mechanical engineering. But when I started working I realized how much I love working with & learning about computers. My company has a tuition reimbursement program so I signed up at a local college (Purdue through IUPUI, go boilermakers!) to learn more about them & get some applicable knowledge.
I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to get out of it besides general knowledge. I have found that I am learning little to no programming/networking/administration skills. It's all about theory & ideas. Which is great, because I dig it. But if you were getting a CS degree just to learn how to program & administrate you'd probably be in for a surprise. I've had to put in significant hours on my own to learn all of that stuff. Considering I'm a mechanical engineer my lack of experience means I have a huge learning curve. It's kind of fun.
I'm not sure that the nature of a CS degree is adequately explained by the degree offices. Or at least, general perception doesn't seem to be catching on. It's like the difference between being a PhD chemist and a lab technician (sort of).
So, you get to make the choice: 1) Get there fast so that it doesn't take your whole life. 2) Get there slow so that someone you know might be around when you get back.
Here's an interesting question for you physicists out there:
If you're doing a science mission for Earth, that would seem to be the time that would matter for the greater good.
IANAD but I have many friends that are doctors. Aside from some specialities such as Anastesia (sp?), some Surgeons, or Dermatology, most doctors really don't make what they're worth. They go through pure hell for at least 7 years. They get paid nothing for the first 4, and $40,000 a year after that until they finish residency. I have heard many a doctor say that there is no way they would do it all over again. If they had only known what it would be like, they would run away screaming.
Health care is expensive because we feel like it's worth it. Every new cure or treatment or test costs more money, not less. Improvement increases costs & we'd rather live longer than not so we're willing to pay the premium for improvement.
My point? Doctors are underpaid, especially primary care physicians. They should be paid a premium because they are doing such an important job and have to go through hell to get there. Regardless of whether they do it for the money or "love of life", they deserve to be compensated. So please don't rag on doctors for high health care costs.
The real evil lies in the insurance industry.
Speaking of clueless, when I said "parent" I was referring to the parent poster. But yes, I agree that "parents" work very, very hard. And they're doing a much more important job than some tech job.
Yup, that's what happens. As people bitch about not having a job, someone like you comes along and works their arse off to make something of themself. Imagine that, working hard to improve your life and that of your family.
:^)
You know what folks, the parent is the real American. He/she realizes that noone hands anything to you. They work their butt off to make something of themself and if the job market turns bad (here's a thought) they work harder.
Funny, I'm a young engineer and my company is laying people off. Yet, somehow they keep me around. I wonder if it's because I EARN MY KEEP.
Sorry, just a little conservative ranting.
You've got to remember it's a college. Heck, give a guy enough beer and he/she will definitely pedal their butt off for a while a 3 meters. Heck, I was subjected to much worse than a 3-meter, gyro-slowed decent in college. I survived. Although many brian cells unfortunately did not.
Actually, it all depends on how you use it. Most of the Hummers I see are just doing city driving. (Of course, I live in the city). Since these don't tend to get over 30 or 40 mph very often, you could definitely save some gas using a hybrid system. Heavy wouldn't matter, because regenerative braking would regain most of that energy. Now, 60 mpg is probably a bit high. But I'm guessing 40 or even 50 mpg is possible. Very, very expensive though.
Well, I'm betting that DARPA wants to develop this technology for the USA & the USA only. That means training & educating US engineers & not foreign ones. Sure, they could just buy the technology off of a foreign winner, but part of this is getting the US tech industry to excel in this area.
It's not about driving a car through the desert, it's about developing technologies for military applications. Those technologies are better kept in the US (from DARPA's point of view) with US workers & companies. Plus, it's their tax money so they should probably give it back to their own citizens.
This may be an optimum design methodology in some cases, but designing in this way designs for the maximum case. In other words, the impeller always spins quickly enough so that it can fully supply a fully-open valve. However, we all know that a very small percentage of your time throughout the day is spent in full-open mode. Most of it is in low-mode, especially when you're sleeping.
I would think that this particular application would lend itself more to a variable speed impeller than a fixed speed impeller coupled with a variable sized outlet orifice. First, we would like to minimize power usage and thereby maximize battery life. Being able to run at the low-mode for most of the day would help this. Second, including a valving system adds moving parts to the system that aren't needed. Parts that could fail. In fact, they say in the article that the lack of (frictional) moving parts is an added bonus to this system. Why remove it?
Now, here's an idea: What if we can design a way to power the device externally. How about some sort of device on the outside of the body that creates the magnetic field? The skin could still be between it and the impeller. That would possibly remove some of the risk of infection of the charging wire. Of course, anything external can be ripped off. Just a thought.
My problem with eBooks is that it is blaringly obvious when you are using them. When I grab a book & start to read, I want to get lost in the story. When I grab my PDA & start to read, I tend to get lost in the tech. I find myself thinking about scrolling correctly, wishing there was more screen, screen brightness settings, etc. In short, I find myself thinking about everything except the story.
A traditional book is the simplest technology available to get the job done. It's cheap & "platform" independent. There's nothing to think about. You just pick it up and read.
The only way I see eBooks taking off, at least for myself, is if my life somehow makes it nice to always have a book available (or multiple books). Say I take a lot of short trips in taxis or I have lots of 5-minutes breaks before meetings. Then it would be great to have a book on my PDA to fill that time.
Given that situation, I would see eBooks more as an addition than a replacement. For example, right now I'm reading two books. One at home & one at work. If I could add another "anywhere" book on my PDA that might not be a bad idea. But I still wouldn't want to replace the other two because a paper book just works so darn well.
This is actually a strength of TiVo style devices. Once you watch a couple games, you tend to learn how much of that time is commercials. Say a typical game lasts 3 hours, and watching it on TiVo takes only 2 hours. Well, that's 1 hour of crap (commercials, half-time, etc.) & 2 hours of good stuff. Now, if a game starts at 3:00 pm, you would just start watching at 4:00 pm instead. You would finish up at the same time (give or take a little) as other watchers, but you would have saved that hour.
I do this with all kinds of programming. But, with sporting events it is especially nice. I've said it to all of my friends: "With TiVo, I watch more TV, but it doesn't take nearly as much time." The cat's out of the bag, and anything the MPAA or anyone else does to try and stop it won't work in the long run, laws or not.
But what of the rise in internet-activity vs. television-watching in America's youth. I've read quite a few places that many people are turning to the internet for news/entertainment/information. Well, that's reading, at least a large part of it is. Maybe people are reading less fiction because they are reading more internet news or such. And that might not be a bad thing. Current events is probably a more relevant topic for people to engage in than fiction.
My point is, I don't necessarily think that people are lazy bums for not picking up a book. I actually read quite a bit (tackling War & Peace right now, good Lord) but others don't. That's always been the case. There seems to always be an "upper-eschelon" of intelligent folks who strive for knowledge. I don't think that's changed. The people who don't read books now probably wouldn't have 50 years ago either.
You know what, it kind of annoys me when people misspell things. But I'm not exactly Mr. Perfect Grammar. I always try and look back over my posts to see if I misspelled anything (or if it just doesn't make sense). However, as this sentence suggests, I usually don't have a clue where to put commas.
;^P
Regardless, this site isn't about spelling correctly or using correct grammar. It's about exchanging ideas & opinions on technology. The only thing proper English gains you is a little more credibility. I knew what the poster was getting at with the faulty spelling of "preliminary", and I'm guessing that everyone else did as well.
So chill out folks.
P.S. Let's remember that we're not all native English speakers, either. And I know all of you liberals out there want to give everybody a fair shot at feeling good about themselves.
I'm curious, you say:
"...and feeds it into an electronic counter under the eye of an election judge"
So, is it possible for the judge to see your vote? It definitely seems that way to me. If not during your vote, how about seeing a "spoiled" ballot? Not that this makes it a bad system. Just curious.
Not to mention that challenges like this are a great way for STUDENTS to start being real engineers. I went to Rose-Hulman, a fantastic undergraduate engineering school, and little projects like this were always where we learned the most about real-world engineering. There's this, a solar racer (now defuct), a racing cart, & various other stuff. It's a great way to learn.
Building a full-fledged, 4-door, super-safe, grocery getter is probably a bit of a stretch for schools like this. I mean, it realistically has to be able to be completed within about a year. Less if you count the "school year".
I think contests like this, even if they don't provide a whole lot of "real-world" application, are a fantastic way for students to learn.
I wasn't aware the that code was proprietary. Does that mean that even government officials can't access & verify it? If so, that's just plain stupid.
It's also just plain stupid that there isn't a paper-trail. I mean, come on, it's really the first time we've done this and they don't want a back-up plan. For the love of Pete!
Anyway, I like this post a lot. The earlier post was just a quick bash of "BushCo" with none of the explanation that goes into this one. That's more what I was calling out.
I do tend to think that DieBold is "trying" to do a good job though. You've got to admit it's a pretty big project to try and tackle this quickly. Especially with all the controversy & attention. There definitely needs to be a set of checks & balances in place though. Personally, I like the Las Vegas Slot Machine approach.
If more people expressed their views like you do in the last paragraph, perhaps we could really make some headway into getting the problems fixed.
That's why he said "versatile", not "innovative". And that's also why this Kay guy is saying we're not "innovative" enough with computers.
It's funny, I would actually prefer to start off the electronic voting process a bit differently. Let me fill out a regular paper-ballot first. You know, color in circles, press-out chads (ugh), whatever. Now, let me feed that in to an electronic reader. Then let me verify that the reader has counted my vote correctly & submit. The original paper copy is saved, but the electronic counting procedure is also used.
I have always thought that the original purpose of electronic voting was to remove some of the uncertainty as to whether or not my paper-vote was correctly counted. This would do that, plus there would be a paper copy.
Then, over the years, we could develop ways to replace the paper-vote with a possible electronic one. Although I don't necessarily see the point.
However, I gotta say that many people over 50, which make up a large percentage of voters, would manage to be baffled by even the simplest electronic system. Heck, even I get a little lost trying to vote the way it is now. Too much crap going on, just count my friggin' vote!
Okay, now listen carefully. Take off the tin-foil hat, set it on the table beside you, and take a deep breath. Okay, now, look around. Is anybody looking in your window? Do you feel gamma rays penetrating the depth of your soul? If so, replace the tin-foil hat. If not, leave it off.
;^)
Where in the world do you get off ranting against "BushCo" about this? A much more simple explanation of the situation is what the others posters have been saying. Diebold overpromised (sales) & underdelivered (engineers/techies). They got themselves into a hard deadline, with unproven technology, & couldn't quite make the cut. I'm sure they're working their a$$ off trying to get the job done right, but it's apparently pretty darn hard for them.
Now, as far as BushCo, how could this possibly be worth the risk for them? The only possible benefit to them would be to somehow add votes to Bush or detract votes from Kerry (or other dems). Yeah, like that wouldn't be detected. We all know that, as intelligent as BushCo is[n't], they would probably try and insert a ++vote (snicker) just before the end of the code. Hackers? Bush? Yeah, right.
Don't be a hate-mongerer (sp?). The rest of us are here for intelligent discussion, not political rants.
On another topic, who will you be voting for?
You're right, that is OBVIOUS! Nope. Just poking fun, great summary post of the technology.
At least it's a step in the right direction. A pretty big step, too. You're right though, lots of big steps still left to get to orbit. At least let us get excited about it. We haven't had much to be excited about in the space industry of late. It's kind of a "score one for the little guy" thing. I dig it.
What's your problem with Rutan? Rocket envy?
I had a first floor apartment with a patio. They had a rule that you couldn't mount anything on the siding but they didn't care if you mounted onto the trim of the building. So I just screwed the satellite into the trim (big wooden stuff, about 1" thick). Pretty soon a few other people did the same. Then I just drilled a couple 1" diameter holes through the trim & into my apartment. I installed a cover on the apartment side but just siliconed it up on the outside.
They were cool about it. I never officially asked them if I could screw holes through the wall but they didn't really care. When I left they took $30 of my deposit because I left the dish where it was. I was kind of surprised they didn't keep all $100. Then again, it was one of the more expensive apartments in my area so they probably got plenty of money out of me already.
It all just depends if there is more science to be done with the Rovers. The original mission can be set aside once it is accomplished. After that, NASA must then decide whether it is more cost effective to use the rovers for more scientific missions on Mars, or direct that money toward a new project.
If the scientists feel that there isn't much more to gain in the rover's area, then it might not be a bad idea to shut them down & chalk it up as a great success. However, I doubt that's the case. I imagine that it would be much more cost-effective to continue using the rover's to explore & measure. Especially since any further money spent is a virtually guaranteed return on investment (it's already there & working, & the staff is trained).
It's a similar argument that is occuring with the Hubble thing right now. Is it a better investment to fix/upgrade Hubble, or make a new telescope? Maybe a hard question to answer in either case.
I'm beginning to think a more staged approach to sending humans to Mars is needed.
What I mean is, we are standing at the edge of what could be a revolution in space flight. We've got private industry right there waiting to take a large role in near-Earth space travel. I think spending some of the NASA budget on incubating this phenomenon would be very wise. First, for every $1 NASA spends, somebody else (or many others) will throw in some of their own cash. Second, bringing private industry along for the ride will result in the development of key technologies & processes that NASA wouldn't be able to get on their own. Especially in the areas of cost savings. Third, encouraging an increases amount of activity in space engineering only increases the knowledge base & talent pool that NASA could pull from.
In the meantime, NASA could continue to support & innovate in the near-Earth human spaceflight area. They could also continue to perform long distance robotic missions, something they've been very successful at of late.
I do think a NASA return to the moon would fit into this plan. It lets NASA stay ahead of private industry, developing on the cutting edge things they will need for a future trip to Mars. Further, by developing base technologies in a near-Earth area, we remove some of the risk of trying things out & figuring out what the heck we are going to do when we go further out in the solar system.
I do think that the private spaceflight industry can be leveraged very effectively by NASA to further their mission.