There sure is a lot of misinformation in this thread. Here are some ideas I noticed that seem blatantly wrong.
1) There are private companies out there who can do what NASA is doing: If you RTFA, you'll notice that currently only the Shuttle and the Russian Progress and Soyuz ships can make it to the ISS. There may be a possibility of a JAXA craft or an ESA craft in the future. Both government built craft.
2) NASA is afraid/against private industry building space craft: Actually, NASA is highly in favor of a private company building a space ship to go to the ISS. They are actively funding two companies to help them build such a craft. In their current architecture, the CEV/CLV is not really going to be used for ISS. They would rather use a COTS solution for that.
3) We should leave all of space exploration up to private industry: Private industry will only do something if they know they can get money for it. Can you show me the business plan to make money off of trips to the moon? Trips to the ISS? Remember, you have to have a net profit on these endeavors. Until the cost and risk are reduced to manageable levels, the private industry will not do this on their own. The Russians did not get a net profit from their space tourists. They got a little extra money from a mission that had to happen anyway. Virgin Galactic may actually be able to make money by sending people into space, but that is sub-orbital. A huge difference between that and going to the ISS. The reason for government funding into areas like this is to promote activity in areas that are too costly or too risky for a company to do.
4) A magazine can take people to space: No, a Russian Soyuz capsule can take people to space.
I would be really disappointed if the Novell and IBM cases are finally resolved because SCO ran out of money. I would much rather see a final resolution on whether or not Linux has any sort of IP conflict with SCO. Bankruptcy skirts the issue. I would rather see a clean bill of health. Perhaps Microsoft now wants SCO to go bankrupt so that clean bill of health never comes.
"Again, like the point above. When the majority of people in the country refuse to take the necessary steps to make their voices heard, this is the result. We can blame it all on the Bush administration if we want, but they're only doing what the people are allowing them to do."
"More crying about civil liberties that were supposedly taken from us when in fact they were given away"
So it's not Bush's (or Congresses) fault. It's our fault for electing them? I guess I can't argue with that.
Yes, Microsoft R&D labs. I don't know about other fields, but in the field of computer graphics they have a very large group. In the late 80s, early 90s, they hired quite a lot of significant researchers in the field. Their directory looks like a "who's who" of researchers who established the field of CG. It seems like all the legendary researchers went there.
Nevermind that I have not seen a single research paper from any of these people since they went to Microsoft. I suppose I could've missed it, but I doubt it. I haven't seen anything in their products that show the results of this research either. I honestly have no idea what they are doing there. Better pie charts in Excel? Shader rendering in Halo? DirectX? These are not things you expect from the researchers that took CG from primitive line drawings to globally illuminated photo-realistic renderings.
This is true. There are differences in the language depending on your sex. Words, expressions, grammars, pronunciationss, and mannerisms can all be different. Anything taught in a book or class will almost certainly be gender neutral. But you have to be careful of anything you pick up from listening/reading. To make it harder, for some unknown reason, it seems to be easier to understand females than males. So if you try to learn by talking to others, there is a tendency to speak like a girl because you understand them better. Constant Vigilance!
Oddly enough, Japanese is very similar to a computer language. Just a few simple rules, and (almost) no exceptions to the rules. If I really thought about it, perhaps I could even create a fairly simple BNF for it. Here is an off-the-cuff attempt. I can never remember the exact BNF punctuation, so I will make up one.
sentence:= <expression>* <verb conjugate>. expression:= <noun clause> | <sub-sentence> noun clause:= noun <particle> particle:= wa | ga | o | ni | na | de | kara | made | aida | NULL | others I forget right now. (as a side note, each particle gives an indication to the part of the sentence. Subject, direct object, indirect object, adverb, etc. sub-sentence:= sentence <conjunction> conjunction:= yoni | mae | ato | kara | nara | NULL | etc. (with a little bit of thought perhaps the conjunction and the particle rule could be the same rule) verb conjugate:= verb base <conjugate> conjugate:= a | i | u | e | o | te | ite
And there you have it. Now that I think about it, it is a little bit oversimplified. But what do you expect for free and in five minutes...
Example: taberu mae ni te o aratte kudasai <expression> <expression> <verb conjugate> <expression> <expression> kudasa <conjugate> <expression> <expression> kudasai <sentence> mae ni <expression> kudasai <verb conjugate> mae ni <expression> kudasai tabe <conjugate> mae ni <expression> kudasai taberu mae ni <expression> kudasai taberu mae ni <sentence> kudasai taberu mae ni <expression> <verb conjugate> kudasai taberu mae ni <expression> ara <conjugate> kudasai taberu mae ni <expression> aratte kudasai taberu mae ni te <particle> aratte kudasai taberu mae ni te o aratte kudasai please wash your hands before you eat.
I hate getting into arguments over numbers, especially when they are speculated and hearsay. Let me just point out that according to these off-the-cuff calculations you use, the cost per launch is half a billion. The cost of the shuttle is roughly $1.3 billion (wiki), meaning that the new vehicle is almost 1/3 the cost. That's without challenging where those numbers came from. I find that significant.
Oh, and the vehicle can carry cargo too. It can carry 6 crew, or partial crew and some cargo, or no crew and a space shuttle load of cargo.
As for why this is the right way (as opposed to Apollo or Shuttle), this provides a heavy lifter to quickly build large space structures (which the space shuttle can't do), provides a cheaper way to get people into space (see above), can be reconfigured for different mission scenarios (which Apollo couldn't do), and supports more complicated missions by allowing more people to go for longer lengths of time.
Re:Innovation is obviously lacking at Nasa
on
NASA's New Shuttle
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This system takes a different attack than the shuttle. One of the biggest problems with the shuttle is efficiency. If you want to launch a large satellite, why do you need to include all the huge amounts of junk to hold the life support for 7 people. On the other hand, if you just want to get people to and from the ISS, why do you need to haul up this great big huge payload section. The shuttle tried to do everything for everybody, all at the same time. This created a huge amount of complexity and drove the price way up.
The new system would split that up into smaller sections. The CEV could be configured to hold only crew to go to the ISS. To hold only cargo, where it can carry as much as the shuttle, or to carry a mix of crew and cargo. That's not even counting the heavy lifter. This system is a much more cost effective and robust launch platform than the shuttle.
And if it isn't immediatly clear how a capsule can reenter safer than a huge glider, I'm not sure how to explain it. Other than it is easier for a parachuter to land than for a 747.
As for the old design, we've been stuck on this airplane design since the 30s. Foreward wings, rear wings, tail, big propulsion engine, etc. When are we going to see some innovation there?
Re:From the illustration...
on
NASA's New Shuttle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
And my car looks just like the car my parents drove in the '60s. Four tires, stearing wheel, combustion engine...
I haven't seen anyone comment on how much it is going to cost, per flight, but overall, this new program is expected to cost about half of the Apollo program. It seems very likely that the per flight cost will be much lower than the shuttle too, since the vehicle is less complicated than the shuttle, doesn't try to do everything for everybody all at the same time, and can be modified for each flight to only take up what is needed for that mission.
As for the permanent base or other future plans, there was nothing specified. But if you look at what is being built, the HLV and CEV form a very good infrastructure to build on. With the HLV, a new space station, moon base, or Mars vehicle could be built with just a few (~5) launches. The plan is to get to the Moon the right way, with a scalable solution for future work.
Well, by doing various sorts of failure analysis studies, they determined that the shuttle had a 1 in 200 change of failure. By doing those exact same studies on the new vehicle, they determined that it had a 1 in 2000 chance of failure. Thus, 10x safer.
This is the worst kept secret in NASA. I've seen details about this over a month ago. What is news is that Congree, the White House, and OMB have now all signed off on it so that it can be officially announced.
But this happens all the time. There are quite a number of regulations that businesses have to follow. For example, the car companies have many regulations for safety.
I'll even use your restaurant analogy. It's like if you ran a restaurant and didn't keep the floor clean. You let cockroaches run around everywhere and left the meat out for days. Flies everywhere. Saminella (sp?) everywhere. What does the government do? They bring in the health inspector and shut the place down. Is that impinging on the natural right of a restaurant to have a dirty restaurant? Why doesn't the ACLU do something about that?
I don't see what the uproar is in this? As far as I can see, the law just says that the ISPs need to provide a way to block porn. Nevermind the details for the moment, the point is that it is ADDING options, not taking them away. Nowhere is it taking away anyones rights. It is guaranteeing that the "block porn" option will be available. It doesn't say you have to use that option. How does this hurt you?
The details? Who decides what porn is? How do the ISPs block it? Just details.
That was a lovely rant. I do love to hear a good rant about saving NASA. I just wished it had some facts behind it. These admins being canned ARE the MBAs and accountants and lawyers and bean counters. Griffin, the NASA administrator who is doing the canning, IS the engineer/scientist with a PhD and 5 masters degrees, mostly in technical areas. I don't know who is going to fill those positions, but chances are they will be good engineers who know how to handle the technical side. In this case, I think this is the RIGHT step for NASA.
Make NASA more military-centric? Most of the people being canned are ex-military generals. The stated plan of Griffin is to make NASA more engineering and science driven. If anything, it sounds the opposite.
These people really have little to do with the detailed running of these programs. I'm sure that those efforts will continue on just fine.
BTW: The article didn't mention it, but most of the people named have only been there for a year or two. The were all put there by the previous administrator, O'Keefe. It's not like Griffin is destroying decades of experience. Many of these people were bean counters, appointed by a bean counter.
"Ask any merchant sailor how he feels about the navies of the world as opposed to pirates, to have your eyes opened. There is no free access to anything without the ability to protect it."
My mind is having a wonderful time imagining pirates trying to board the space shuttle. Do you think the robotic arm can be equipped with a very long sword?
This may make a good scene for Episode 0 of Star Wars.
* You fundamentally have failed to understand that protection of that free access sometimes necessitates, well, actually protecting it, and planning for such a contingency in advance.
So the point is that America needs to get weapons in space before anyone else does? Whether it is called protecting free access or called a preemptive strike, it's still the same thing.
Very similar to America's stand against WMDs. America wants to prevent other countries from having WMDs when America has more WMDs than any other country. I choose not to be deluded by a moral high ground. It is plain and simple that America wants more guns than everyone else.
I knew it was only a matter of minutes until someone posted a comment like this about why we don't need to waste money to go to the moon when we have other things that could use the money.
Here are a couple facts for you. The NASA budget is approximatly $16 billion dollars a year. The great big huge increase that Bush and others are talking about will be less than $1 billion dollars a year. Sounds like a lot of money right? A couple years ago the Space Station had a budget overrun of a couple billion dollars and asked Bush for more money. He told them no, and appointed a bean counter as the head of NASA to get them in shape. You see, the government just doesn't have enough money for an unexpected couple billion dollar overrun.
For the second consecutive year, however, Bush has asked congress for some additional money for the war in Iraq. This is not budgeted DoD money, this is in addition to what the DoD is already getting, which was supposed to be enough. Both times he asked for around $85 billion. Both times congress gave Bush all he asked for, and a little more.
For the money overrun being spent in Iraq, we could have 5 more NASAs.
As for the other ways you want to spend that money, well guess what happens to the money that goes to NASA. It gets used to develop technology in various areas, including your alternative energy. The money goes to support high school and college kids trying to get and education in engineering. It also provides a number of good jobs to help people pay into Social Security.
Putting money into NASA benefits the US economy. Putting money into Iraq benefits other countries economy, while being a big drain on the US economy.
I have the same experience. Whenever I do work in OO that needs to be sent to others using Word, I always run it through Word first to make sure it works fine. I typically find small formatting differences. In particular, the pages break in different places. I think this just has to do with the font being used. In some situations this is a small point, but there are many times where the layout has to be perfect, so I can't afford a small glitch to make the document look bad.
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There sure is a lot of misinformation in this thread. Here are some ideas I noticed that seem blatantly wrong.
1) There are private companies out there who can do what NASA is doing: If you RTFA, you'll notice that currently only the Shuttle and the Russian Progress and Soyuz ships can make it to the ISS. There may be a possibility of a JAXA craft or an ESA craft in the future. Both government built craft.
2) NASA is afraid/against private industry building space craft: Actually, NASA is highly in favor of a private company building a space ship to go to the ISS. They are actively funding two companies to help them build such a craft. In their current architecture, the CEV/CLV is not really going to be used for ISS. They would rather use a COTS solution for that.
3) We should leave all of space exploration up to private industry: Private industry will only do something if they know they can get money for it. Can you show me the business plan to make money off of trips to the moon? Trips to the ISS? Remember, you have to have a net profit on these endeavors. Until the cost and risk are reduced to manageable levels, the private industry will not do this on their own. The Russians did not get a net profit from their space tourists. They got a little extra money from a mission that had to happen anyway. Virgin Galactic may actually be able to make money by sending people into space, but that is sub-orbital. A huge difference between that and going to the ISS. The reason for government funding into areas like this is to promote activity in areas that are too costly or too risky for a company to do.
4) A magazine can take people to space: No, a Russian Soyuz capsule can take people to space.
That will do for now.
I would be really disappointed if the Novell and IBM cases are finally resolved because SCO ran out of money. I would much rather see a final resolution on whether or not Linux has any sort of IP conflict with SCO. Bankruptcy skirts the issue. I would rather see a clean bill of health. Perhaps Microsoft now wants SCO to go bankrupt so that clean bill of health never comes.
"Again, like the point above. When the majority of people in the country refuse to take the necessary steps to make their voices heard, this is the result. We can blame it all on the Bush administration if we want, but they're only doing what the people are allowing them to do."
"More crying about civil liberties that were supposedly taken from us when in fact they were given away"
So it's not Bush's (or Congresses) fault. It's our fault for electing them? I guess I can't argue with that.
Yes, Microsoft R&D labs. I don't know about other fields, but in the field of computer graphics they have a very large group. In the late 80s, early 90s, they hired quite a lot of significant researchers in the field. Their directory looks like a "who's who" of researchers who established the field of CG. It seems like all the legendary researchers went there.
Nevermind that I have not seen a single research paper from any of these people since they went to Microsoft. I suppose I could've missed it, but I doubt it. I haven't seen anything in their products that show the results of this research either. I honestly have no idea what they are doing there. Better pie charts in Excel? Shader rendering in Halo? DirectX? These are not things you expect from the researchers that took CG from primitive line drawings to globally illuminated photo-realistic renderings.
This is true. There are differences in the language depending on your sex. Words, expressions, grammars, pronunciationss, and mannerisms can all be different. Anything taught in a book or class will almost certainly be gender neutral. But you have to be careful of anything you pick up from listening/reading. To make it harder, for some unknown reason, it seems to be easier to understand females than males. So if you try to learn by talking to others, there is a tendency to speak like a girl because you understand them better. Constant Vigilance!
Oddly enough, Japanese is very similar to a computer language. Just a few simple rules, and (almost) no exceptions to the rules. If I really thought about it, perhaps I could even create a fairly simple BNF for it. Here is an off-the-cuff attempt. I can never remember the exact BNF punctuation, so I will make up one.
:= <expression>* <verb conjugate>. := <noun clause> | <sub-sentence> := noun <particle> := wa | ga | o | ni | na | de | kara | made | aida | NULL | others I forget right now. (as a side note, each particle gives an indication to the part of the sentence. Subject, direct object, indirect object, adverb, etc. := sentence <conjunction> := yoni | mae | ato | kara | nara | NULL | etc. (with a little bit of thought perhaps the conjunction and the particle rule could be the same rule) := verb base <conjugate> := a | i | u | e | o | te | ite
:)
sentence
expression
noun clause
particle
sub-sentence
conjunction
verb conjugate
conjugate
And there you have it. Now that I think about it, it is a little bit oversimplified. But what do you expect for free and in five minutes...
Example:
taberu mae ni te o aratte kudasai
<expression> <expression> <verb conjugate>
<expression> <expression> kudasa <conjugate>
<expression> <expression> kudasai
<sentence> mae ni <expression> kudasai
<verb conjugate> mae ni <expression> kudasai
tabe <conjugate> mae ni <expression> kudasai
taberu mae ni <expression> kudasai
taberu mae ni <sentence> kudasai
taberu mae ni <expression> <verb conjugate> kudasai
taberu mae ni <expression> ara <conjugate> kudasai
taberu mae ni <expression> aratte kudasai
taberu mae ni te <particle> aratte kudasai
taberu mae ni te o aratte kudasai
please wash your hands before you eat.
QED
In fact, we never should have left the Caves. And I will never forgive those ancients that originally left the water to live on the land.
I hate getting into arguments over numbers, especially when they are speculated and hearsay. Let me just point out that according to these off-the-cuff calculations you use, the cost per launch is half a billion. The cost of the shuttle is roughly $1.3 billion (wiki), meaning that the new vehicle is almost 1/3 the cost. That's without challenging where those numbers came from. I find that significant.
Oh, and the vehicle can carry cargo too. It can carry 6 crew, or partial crew and some cargo, or no crew and a space shuttle load of cargo.
As for why this is the right way (as opposed to Apollo or Shuttle), this provides a heavy lifter to quickly build large space structures (which the space shuttle can't do), provides a cheaper way to get people into space (see above), can be reconfigured for different mission scenarios (which Apollo couldn't do), and supports more complicated missions by allowing more people to go for longer lengths of time.
This system takes a different attack than the shuttle. One of the biggest problems with the shuttle is efficiency. If you want to launch a large satellite, why do you need to include all the huge amounts of junk to hold the life support for 7 people. On the other hand, if you just want to get people to and from the ISS, why do you need to haul up this great big huge payload section. The shuttle tried to do everything for everybody, all at the same time. This created a huge amount of complexity and drove the price way up.
The new system would split that up into smaller sections. The CEV could be configured to hold only crew to go to the ISS. To hold only cargo, where it can carry as much as the shuttle, or to carry a mix of crew and cargo. That's not even counting the heavy lifter. This system is a much more cost effective and robust launch platform than the shuttle.
And if it isn't immediatly clear how a capsule can reenter safer than a huge glider, I'm not sure how to explain it. Other than it is easier for a parachuter to land than for a 747.
As for the old design, we've been stuck on this airplane design since the 30s. Foreward wings, rear wings, tail, big propulsion engine, etc. When are we going to see some innovation there?
And my car looks just like the car my parents drove in the '60s. Four tires, stearing wheel, combustion engine...
I haven't seen anyone comment on how much it is going to cost, per flight, but overall, this new program is expected to cost about half of the Apollo program. It seems very likely that the per flight cost will be much lower than the shuttle too, since the vehicle is less complicated than the shuttle, doesn't try to do everything for everybody all at the same time, and can be modified for each flight to only take up what is needed for that mission.
As for the permanent base or other future plans, there was nothing specified. But if you look at what is being built, the HLV and CEV form a very good infrastructure to build on. With the HLV, a new space station, moon base, or Mars vehicle could be built with just a few (~5) launches. The plan is to get to the Moon the right way, with a scalable solution for future work.
Well, by doing various sorts of failure analysis studies, they determined that the shuttle had a 1 in 200 change of failure. By doing those exact same studies on the new vehicle, they determined that it had a 1 in 2000 chance of failure. Thus, 10x safer.
This is the worst kept secret in NASA. I've seen details about this over a month ago. What is news is that Congree, the White House, and OMB have now all signed off on it so that it can be officially announced.
My Sys Admins blocked the site. It was listed as a gambling site. So that's what they do when they stay late to work...
But this happens all the time. There are quite a number of regulations that businesses have to follow. For example, the car companies have many regulations for safety.
I'll even use your restaurant analogy. It's like if you ran a restaurant and didn't keep the floor clean. You let cockroaches run around everywhere and left the meat out for days. Flies everywhere. Saminella (sp?) everywhere. What does the government do? They bring in the health inspector and shut the place down. Is that impinging on the natural right of a restaurant to have a dirty restaurant? Why doesn't the ACLU do something about that?
I don't see what the uproar is in this? As far as I can see, the law just says that the ISPs need to provide a way to block porn. Nevermind the details for the moment, the point is that it is ADDING options, not taking them away. Nowhere is it taking away anyones rights. It is guaranteeing that the "block porn" option will be available. It doesn't say you have to use that option. How does this hurt you?
The details? Who decides what porn is? How do the ISPs block it? Just details.
That was a lovely rant. I do love to hear a good rant about saving NASA. I just wished it had some facts behind it. These admins being canned ARE the MBAs and accountants and lawyers and bean counters. Griffin, the NASA administrator who is doing the canning, IS the engineer/scientist with a PhD and 5 masters degrees, mostly in technical areas. I don't know who is going to fill those positions, but chances are they will be good engineers who know how to handle the technical side. In this case, I think this is the RIGHT step for NASA.
Make NASA more military-centric? Most of the people being canned are ex-military generals. The stated plan of Griffin is to make NASA more engineering and science driven. If anything, it sounds the opposite.
These people really have little to do with the detailed running of these programs. I'm sure that those efforts will continue on just fine. BTW: The article didn't mention it, but most of the people named have only been there for a year or two. The were all put there by the previous administrator, O'Keefe. It's not like Griffin is destroying decades of experience. Many of these people were bean counters, appointed by a bean counter.
"Russia still has more nukes than the USA."
I stand corrected. I guess if Russia has more nuclear weapons than America then it DOES make sense to invade Iraq.
"Ask any merchant sailor how he feels about the navies of the world as opposed to pirates, to have your eyes opened. There is no free access to anything without the ability to protect it."
My mind is having a wonderful time imagining pirates trying to board the space shuttle. Do you think the robotic arm can be equipped with a very long sword?
This may make a good scene for Episode 0 of Star Wars.
* You fundamentally have failed to understand that protection of that free access sometimes necessitates, well, actually protecting it, and planning for such a contingency in advance. So the point is that America needs to get weapons in space before anyone else does? Whether it is called protecting free access or called a preemptive strike, it's still the same thing. Very similar to America's stand against WMDs. America wants to prevent other countries from having WMDs when America has more WMDs than any other country. I choose not to be deluded by a moral high ground. It is plain and simple that America wants more guns than everyone else.
I knew it was only a matter of minutes until someone posted a comment like this about why we don't need to waste money to go to the moon when we have other things that could use the money.
Here are a couple facts for you. The NASA budget is approximatly $16 billion dollars a year. The great big huge increase that Bush and others are talking about will be less than $1 billion dollars a year. Sounds like a lot of money right? A couple years ago the Space Station had a budget overrun of a couple billion dollars and asked Bush for more money. He told them no, and appointed a bean counter as the head of NASA to get them in shape. You see, the government just doesn't have enough money for an unexpected couple billion dollar overrun.
For the second consecutive year, however, Bush has asked congress for some additional money for the war in Iraq. This is not budgeted DoD money, this is in addition to what the DoD is already getting, which was supposed to be enough. Both times he asked for around $85 billion. Both times congress gave Bush all he asked for, and a little more.
For the money overrun being spent in Iraq, we could have 5 more NASAs.
As for the other ways you want to spend that money, well guess what happens to the money that goes to NASA. It gets used to develop technology in various areas, including your alternative energy. The money goes to support high school and college kids trying to get and education in engineering. It also provides a number of good jobs to help people pay into Social Security.
Putting money into NASA benefits the US economy. Putting money into Iraq benefits other countries economy, while being a big drain on the US economy.
Is this Free as in beer or Free as in Speech. Or Free as in Freedom from terror and oppression.
Any way you look at it, it seems hypocritical to put weapons in space to support free access to space...
I have the same experience. Whenever I do work in OO that needs to be sent to others using Word, I always run it through Word first to make sure it works fine. I typically find small formatting differences. In particular, the pages break in different places. I think this just has to do with the font being used. In some situations this is a small point, but there are many times where the layout has to be perfect, so I can't afford a small glitch to make the document look bad.