Not to belabor the point but what about the state of:
Illinois (Blagojevich, current)
New York (Spitzer, 2008)
North Carolina (Edwards, 2008)
New Jersey (McGreevey, 2004)
Connecticut (Rowland, 2004)
Arizona (Mecham, 1998)
Etc...
It seems that the quality of politicians has little relationship to voting population, geographical region, or political affiliation...
Nerds are indeed smart people. But we have nerds running all over the place and we have not achieved transparency nor security. To have "every bit of confidence" would imply some sort of religious belief in some futuristic vision (of something). While my first impression would be to trust a bunch of nerds over a bunch of slick-talking politicos, there is every evidence that nerds become the "enemy" when given the opportunity to do so. If you were offered millions to become an ass, wouldn't you take advantage of that? Don't ask me the same question.
Who exactly makes determines the expected life of these things?
Nobody makes a determination of the expected life, absolutely nobody.
It's all about a requirement for how long it HAS to last, not how long it WILL last.
If you start a mission with a requirement that it has to last 20 years, you will never be able to afford that mission. If you start the exact same mission with a requirement that it has to last 2 years, then you have a chance. The possible lifetime is always something people think about, and people always do there best to maximize that, but it's not a requirement.
Re:A precedent for private space exploration
on
The New Moon Race
·
· Score: 1
Yes I did misunderstand you. I thought you were talking about the whole send humans back to mars thing. The launch vehicle for that would/will be out of this world. I think your right that delta II were around $200M but from what I understand they are phasing those out. There may still be some available but nobody that I know is talking about a $120M launch any more. The number shot up to around $400M but as expected, people don't like to talk about those things in public.
The number $500M is a lowball figure from what I understand. The Stereo mission is higher than that. SDO is why higher than that. I think that JUNO is around $600M.
As far as a European mission I don't think so. I cant give you a quote but Google on BebiColombo or SolarOrbiter and you will no doubt find cost estimations way higher than $500M.
China and Russia may indeed be able to pull of a major mission such as these for less money, but they have not done that yet. JAXA has had a number of very successful missions but I've never heard any $$$ associated with those.
I totally agree with your point that the cost of scientific missions is worth it. I'm very skeptical about the factors of 10+++ increase in manned spaceflight missions. We know far far more about the solar system and universe we live in because of the investments in scientific missions. I"m not sure what we have gained from the shuttle or the space station nor what we would really gain from another footprint on the moon.
Re:A precedent for private space exploration
on
The New Moon Race
·
· Score: 1
Your response is with decade old information.
SDO is fast approaching $1B.
The new deltas are something like $400M alone (thats of course information that the company does not want public because it's so god damn out of line with reality).
Plus it cost $500M to launch the space shuttle each and every time. If you think that the cost to develop a brand new vehicle, build it, test it, and launch it is not going to well top $500M your in la-la land.
5) Permit the patent office to require a working copy of any invention they do not believe has actually been built. If the applicant cannot provide a working copy, charge a $100,000 fee for wasting the patent office's time with nonsense inventions.
The instrument that I'm trying to patent will cost well over 40 million to build. I'm suppose to simply give one to the patent office? Who pays for that? Does the patent office fund the design, development, and fabrication of this device so that they can stick one on a shelf? Is there anyone at the patent office qualified to test my instrument to make sure it works? Do they have the equipment necessary to test the device?
6) If there is a question of whether or not the patent provides enough detail to build the patent, choose a person of ordinary skill in the art to build the invention from the patent application. The applicant would pay for all fees and costs involved.
Of course there is not enough information to actually build one! The patent office is in no way qualified to come close to assessing this. "Choose a person of ordinary skill to build one???" WTF If a person of ordinary skill can build one a patent is probably not necessary, it's already public knowledge. "Applicant pays for all fees and costs involved???" once again WTF So my company is suppose to shell out 40 million to another company to build a device that we have not build yet? We know how, we have invested millions getting it to this point, and now we are suppose to fund our competitors to build our own device? (and yes, anyone of "ordinary skill" in this biz is our competitor)
It will then become even more economically attractive to outsource manufacturing and service jobs. This is all to China and India's benefit. Thank you Hilary and the Dems for destroying the last bits of American competitiveness, and thank you to the American people for voting these imbeciles in.
Seriously dude. Could you keep a straight face while you were typing this in?
What a fantastic job of revisionist history. The totally dominated republican government for the last 6 years have screwed things up so bad that it's not necessary to get into the details.
Now all of a sudden it's Hilary's fault? Two years away from an election that she very well might not win and it's already her fault?
Reality in my world is strange enough, but reality in your world must be totally gonzo!!!
A man on mars would do more science in 2 days than the rovers have done in 3 years.
After we dusted the surface with the first few manned missions where insertion didn't quite work as planned (like many of the robotic missions have done), then perhaps. Just start with the cost of the rovers and start multiplying by tens, lots of tens. I doubt your "science" advancements as well. I think we would be looking at golf balls being hit off the Valles Marineris, numerous flag-postings, and speak-with-a-scientist-live-on-Mars photoshoots before one stitch of science was even contemplated.
You don't send men until you know for sure that there is something there, and know for sure exactly where it is. Then and only then can you justify the (powers of ten) cost.
I don't argue that dispersion is a real effect but if it were a "significant" effect when we looked up into the nighttime sky we would see nothing but a blur of light. I'm no astrophysicist so correct me when I'm wrong.
I still think that pointing is the bug-a-boo of laser telecom.
as opposed to all of the other bloated governments out there?
then it communicates back data by laser
Please sit down and do the math. Do you realize the pointing requirements for what you suggest. With the best tech we have the laser would be swinging between Pluto and the Sun thinking it was right on target.
still, this is within the realm of practicality, and if it returns promising results it could usher in a new era of colonization.
right... and I might bang three supermodels this weekend (number selected only based on a low prime number).
Science fiction is a wonderful thing to contemplate but keep your pants on. No such mission is feasible within the lifetime of anyone on this planet.
Please....(/sarcastic)...
Obviously science cannot say there is no god. This is a completely unprovable concept. Science cannot say there is no Santa, no tooth fairy, and no easter bunny, or as you would put it ("at least for now").
My guess is you would make a distinction between the tooth fairy and God. You cannot prove one exists and the other does not. Neither can science.
Am I "confused"? Well, "like everyone else who holds this view", you can continue to believe in the tooth fairy, 70 virgins, reincarnation, god, or whatever else you choose to believe in, and I'll do the same. We will both be long dead before we have an answer to any of these questions so neither of us will ever know.
Religion and Science aren't opposites, and don't nullify each other.
Yes they are and no they don't
Science says there is no god. Religion says there is a god. How can there be a more opposite point of view?
My guess is you are one of those who think that science and religion will converge some day, right?
But in your mind it will be that science bends towards a god, and that your point of view remains unchanged. Obviously religion cannot afford (literally $$$) to claim there is no god.
As far as nullify each other you are certainly correct. They cannot and never will nullify each other. One starts from the fundamental principal that there is a god. Any additional arguments are secondary at best and insignificant to the argument. The other side will move with the times, change the point of view, modify as is needed, and adapt as new observations are added to the debate. In other words one side admits they don't know everything and the other side demands that some dude who wrote a book thousands of years ago had everything figured out. We all choose which of these two arguments makes the most sense.
Man... I guess that all of these scientists are really dumb and they should start taking your opinion seriously... right?
You do not launch a god dam cell phone camera on a billion dollar mission and hope to hell that it works.
Do you have any idea at all what it costs to qualify flight hardware?
Take your cost, no matter what it is, and add a couple of million to it. That is at best a starting point. That includes the fact that your cell phone would not work in a high radiation environment. The CCD would be blasted by the radiation environment.
Remember that the launch cost alone is outrageous. The instrument costs are a very small part of the total cost of the mission. A typical instrument costs around 15 million. That includes the design, development, construction, qualification, and scientific analysis of the data.
Before you pass judgment on what is and is not acceptable, please acknowledge that you are not qualified to pass such judgment.
Slashdot Mirror
Shouldn't the conclusion be, the quality of the voting population sucks pretty much everywhere?
Perhaps
I honestly don't know what the conclusion is. It could be that the voting population really doesn't have much to choose from.
Funny
Not to belabor the point but what about the state of:
Illinois (Blagojevich, current)
New York (Spitzer, 2008)
North Carolina (Edwards, 2008)
New Jersey (McGreevey, 2004)
Connecticut (Rowland, 2004)
Arizona (Mecham, 1998)
Etc...
It seems that the quality of politicians has little relationship to voting population, geographical region, or political affiliation...
Nerds are indeed smart people. But we have nerds running all over the place and we have not achieved transparency nor security. To have "every bit of confidence" would imply some sort of religious belief in some futuristic vision (of something). While my first impression would be to trust a bunch of nerds over a bunch of slick-talking politicos, there is every evidence that nerds become the "enemy" when given the opportunity to do so. If you were offered millions to become an ass, wouldn't you take advantage of that? Don't ask me the same question.
Who exactly makes determines the expected life of these things?
Nobody makes a determination of the expected life, absolutely nobody.
It's all about a requirement for how long it HAS to last, not how long it WILL last.
If you start a mission with a requirement that it has to last 20 years, you will never be able to afford that mission. If you start the exact same mission with a requirement that it has to last 2 years, then you have a chance. The possible lifetime is always something people think about, and people always do there best to maximize that, but it's not a requirement.
Yes I did misunderstand you. I thought you were talking about the whole send humans back to mars thing. The launch vehicle for that would/will be out of this world. I think your right that delta II were around $200M but from what I understand they are phasing those out. There may still be some available but nobody that I know is talking about a $120M launch any more. The number shot up to around $400M but as expected, people don't like to talk about those things in public.
The number $500M is a lowball figure from what I understand. The Stereo mission is higher than that. SDO is why higher than that. I think that JUNO is around $600M.
As far as a European mission I don't think so. I cant give you a quote but Google on BebiColombo or SolarOrbiter and you will no doubt find cost estimations way higher than $500M.
China and Russia may indeed be able to pull of a major mission such as these for less money, but they have not done that yet. JAXA has had a number of very successful missions but I've never heard any $$$ associated with those.
I totally agree with your point that the cost of scientific missions is worth it. I'm very skeptical about the factors of 10+++ increase in manned spaceflight missions. We know far far more about the solar system and universe we live in because of the investments in scientific missions. I"m not sure what we have gained from the shuttle or the space station nor what we would really gain from another footprint on the moon.
Your response is with decade old information. SDO is fast approaching $1B. The new deltas are something like $400M alone (thats of course information that the company does not want public because it's so god damn out of line with reality). Plus it cost $500M to launch the space shuttle each and every time. If you think that the cost to develop a brand new vehicle, build it, test it, and launch it is not going to well top $500M your in la-la land.
Shouldn't there be some kind of Moore's Law in effect with regard to space travel.
There is, the cost.
Do you think that you could do it for $5 million?
Oh please...
You cant even design the landing camera for $5M
The launch vehicle alone will be way more than $500M, probably by a factor of 2 or more.
Some of your points are valid, others are absurd.
5) Permit the patent office to require a working copy of any invention they do not believe has actually been built. If the applicant cannot provide a working copy, charge a $100,000 fee for wasting the patent office's time with nonsense inventions.
The instrument that I'm trying to patent will cost well over 40 million to build. I'm suppose to simply give one to the patent office? Who pays for that? Does the patent office fund the design, development, and fabrication of this device so that they can stick one on a shelf? Is there anyone at the patent office qualified to test my instrument to make sure it works? Do they have the equipment necessary to test the device?
6) If there is a question of whether or not the patent provides enough detail to build the patent, choose a person of ordinary skill in the art to build the invention from the patent application. The applicant would pay for all fees and costs involved.
Of course there is not enough information to actually build one! The patent office is in no way qualified to come close to assessing this. "Choose a person of ordinary skill to build one???" WTF If a person of ordinary skill can build one a patent is probably not necessary, it's already public knowledge. "Applicant pays for all fees and costs involved???" once again WTF So my company is suppose to shell out 40 million to another company to build a device that we have not build yet? We know how, we have invested millions getting it to this point, and now we are suppose to fund our competitors to build our own device? (and yes, anyone of "ordinary skill" in this biz is our competitor)
go back to the drawing board.
The article left out a lot of details.
Where did this statistic come from?
From U.S. Journals?
I frequently publish in European Journals. Are they counted as European publications?
From U.S. Institutions?
Three quarters of the scientists at my institution are not U.S. citizens. Are those publications counted as U.S. or other?
We need to know how these statistics were generated before we can comment on a cause.
We shall paint our bodies with solar cells as we jog through the desert!
I find your concept disturbing.
Dude... Your preaching to the choir.
The arrogance of thinking that we're the only possible form of life is ludicrous.
I'm sure that Ludacris's response to that would be your too white and nerdy
The thin Martian atmosphere makes an Earthly parachute as much use as an anvil
Shhh. Don't tell those guys at JPL that the rovers parachutes could have been substituted by an anvil.
It will then become even more economically attractive to outsource manufacturing and service jobs. This is all to China and India's benefit. Thank you Hilary and the Dems for destroying the last bits of American competitiveness, and thank you to the American people for voting these imbeciles in.
Seriously dude. Could you keep a straight face while you were typing this in?
What a fantastic job of revisionist history. The totally dominated republican government for the last 6 years have screwed things up so bad that it's not necessary to get into the details.
Now all of a sudden it's Hilary's fault? Two years away from an election that she very well might not win and it's already her fault?
Reality in my world is strange enough, but reality in your world must be totally gonzo!!!
I frequently agree with your comments so I'm not trying to be derogatory but:
Manned space flight == "It's the purpose of being alive now"
is simply "pie in the sky"
I am alive because my parents were successful in procreation. My purpose is of my own making.
There is no higher power that can issue an edict declaring the purpose of my (or anyone else's) life.
I apologize if I've taken your comments beyond what you meant.
There is a fine line between the arguments for manned space flight and the definition of a Boondoggle
A man on mars would do more science in 2 days than the rovers have done in 3 years.
After we dusted the surface with the first few manned missions where insertion didn't quite work as planned (like many of the robotic missions have done), then perhaps. Just start with the cost of the rovers and start multiplying by tens, lots of tens. I doubt your "science" advancements as well. I think we would be looking at golf balls being hit off the Valles Marineris, numerous flag-postings, and speak-with-a-scientist-live-on-Mars photoshoots before one stitch of science was even contemplated.
You don't send men until you know for sure that there is something there, and know for sure exactly where it is. Then and only then can you justify the (powers of ten) cost.
Beer has been saving this planet for thousands of years. Can you imagine if people had to actually deal with their problems?
And yet we see stars as a point source!
I don't argue that dispersion is a real effect but if it were a "significant" effect when we looked up into the nighttime sky we would see nothing but a blur of light. I'm no astrophysicist so correct me when I'm wrong.
I still think that pointing is the bug-a-boo of laser telecom.
should a certain bloated government disappear
as opposed to all of the other bloated governments out there?
then it communicates back data by laser
Please sit down and do the math. Do you realize the pointing requirements for what you suggest. With the best tech we have the laser would be swinging between Pluto and the Sun thinking it was right on target.
still, this is within the realm of practicality, and if it returns promising results it could usher in a new era of colonization.
right... and I might bang three supermodels this weekend (number selected only based on a low prime number).
Science fiction is a wonderful thing to contemplate but keep your pants on. No such mission is feasible within the lifetime of anyone on this planet.
So religion is deliberately region-encoded?
Um, no.
My sarcasm flag was flying high.
Which one is right?
You know nothing of the ways of God.
God clearly wanted a geographical based religious system.
Please....(/sarcastic)...
Obviously science cannot say there is no god. This is a completely unprovable concept. Science cannot say there is no Santa, no tooth fairy, and no easter bunny, or as you would put it ("at least for now").
My guess is you would make a distinction between the tooth fairy and God. You cannot prove one exists and the other does not. Neither can science.
Am I "confused"? Well, "like everyone else who holds this view", you can continue to believe in the tooth fairy, 70 virgins, reincarnation, god, or whatever else you choose to believe in, and I'll do the same. We will both be long dead before we have an answer to any of these questions so neither of us will ever know.
Religion and Science aren't opposites, and don't nullify each other.
Yes they are and no they don't
Science says there is no god. Religion says there is a god. How can there be a more opposite point of view?
My guess is you are one of those who think that science and religion will converge some day, right?
But in your mind it will be that science bends towards a god, and that your point of view remains unchanged. Obviously religion cannot afford (literally $$$) to claim there is no god.
As far as nullify each other you are certainly correct. They cannot and never will nullify each other. One starts from the fundamental principal that there is a god. Any additional arguments are secondary at best and insignificant to the argument. The other side will move with the times, change the point of view, modify as is needed, and adapt as new observations are added to the debate. In other words one side admits they don't know everything and the other side demands that some dude who wrote a book thousands of years ago had everything figured out. We all choose which of these two arguments makes the most sense.
Man... I guess that all of these scientists are really dumb and they should start taking your opinion seriously... right?
You do not launch a god dam cell phone camera on a billion dollar mission and hope to hell that it works.
Do you have any idea at all what it costs to qualify flight hardware?
Take your cost, no matter what it is, and add a couple of million to it. That is at best a starting point. That includes the fact that your cell phone would not work in a high radiation environment. The CCD would be blasted by the radiation environment.
Remember that the launch cost alone is outrageous. The instrument costs are a very small part of the total cost of the mission. A typical instrument costs around 15 million. That includes the design, development, construction, qualification, and scientific analysis of the data.
Before you pass judgment on what is and is not acceptable, please acknowledge that you are not qualified to pass such judgment.