The parent mentions flaws and the article mentions "powertrain 1.5."
The development of the Tesla wasn't quite smooth sailing. They're asking for a lot of performance out of a relatively lightweight power supply and motor. At some point in the last year or so, Tesla ran into some durability problems with their two speed transmission. They were never clear about what the problem was, but it became apparent when they started talking about changes.
They switched from a 2-speed transmission to a single speed. Obviously, this takes them outside the ideal operating ranges of the motor at the high and low ends of the rated performance (115 and 0 mph respectively). It also meant a redesign of a major component, which is probably a significant part of the delay of these vehicles that were supposed to be shipping late last year.
What they have shared, however, is that they plan to build vehicles with the 2 speed transmission and more restrictive motor governing (read: lower performance than originally advertised) while they finish development on the single speed transmission. At that point, they'll change over to the single speed in the factory and refit the vehicles already in customer hands at no extra charge.
To match the original performance promises, they changed to a higher-rated motor controller, and made a few other changes in the electronics. A side benefit they are claiming to have achieved is slightly higher efficiency from better electronics, although the range on an EPA test cycle is still a little bit below what they initially planned to achieve and were touting two years ago (235 miles on a full charge, IIRC).
Overall, an exciting sports car, but I'll hold back from calling it a breakthrough until I start to see the same technology applied to lower performance, more practical cars that fit the budgets of ordinary people. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing the Stig take it around the track on Top Gear.
PS - the Tesla Roadster uses Lithium batteries, not NiMH like the Prius or Civic hybrid, so others ramping up production doesn't directly affect costs for Tesla.
Yes. Coal plants don't get built on publicly-owned land.
This isn't about all solar plants. It's only about solar plants being built on land managed by BLM. Beggers can't be choosers. If these investors want ultra-cheap land leases for their already tax-deducted project, they have to go through the same hoops everyone else does.
So they're not comparing solar power to coal plants. They're comparing solar power to the undeveloped land these companies want to build on. Also, as they said, once they've developed a rigorous, consistent, and streamlined process, it will speed up the future approval of new plants.
Besides which, the article says there's already 20 million households worth of projects in the pipeline that will not be delayed. Now a household is an even more ridiculous unit of power than a Volkswagen Beatle (25-40 kW, depending on the year), so assuming the 1 kW/household average normally used (for coal plants...realistically you mutliply by 3-4 for solar), they're talking about 20 GW of power.
In 2007, the US only produced 0.2 GW of PV solar. Now granted that's expected to nearly double this year, and a significant portion of these projects are solar thermal, not PV, but it's clear that environmental impact studies are going to be at worst a minor holdup on the proposals beyond those ~20 GW that will be affected by this. If production is able to continue doubling every year, then between now and 2011 (an extra year, just for generosity's sake), cumulative PV production will be only 2.8 GW, or 14% of the planned capacity...not subtracting the portion of that installed on private land.
That's probably also why the moratorium is for 2 years. It will take them that long to both process the 130 proposals and lay out a streamlined process that properly accounts for factors and interests.
Not to mention, I'd put money down that at least 3/4 of these proposals will run out of money and fall flat on their faces before a single shovelful of dirt is moved.
Assuming adiabatic conditions (Not typical, but can occur) and walls with a specific heat of zero (obviously bogus) in a 12 x 12 x 8 foot closed room, a system drawing 200 Watts will raise the temperature of the air by over 30 degrees F per hour (further assuming I didn't totally botch the math).
Of course, even if you were adiabatic to begin with, raising the temperature is going to undo that (thankfully), meaning your computer just keeps things a few degrees warmer than if it were off, but it can definitely have a noticeable effect in the summer. It's like turning on a 1000 W portable heater for 12 minutes out of every hour.
A good air conditioner typically has a coefficient of performance of around 3.5, so the extra 200 Watts of heat from the computer theoretically requires an average of 60 Watts from the A/C unit.
Seriously, why spend all the money to design a new space suit, when all they can come up with is what we already have. Same bubble shaped head. Same giant backpack.
NASA managed to waste several million dollars, and paid someone to give us what we already had. Oh, but I guess the artists drawings give it a pretty blue color...
I don't really agree with modding this down. It's a mostly fair question, albeit rather snide and ignorant. He might as well ask why Boeing would bother designing the new 787, since it has the same round engines and is roughly the same size as planes they already build. Form follows function, but that doesn't tell you much about what's inside.
This really is not very much like the current suits. NASA currently has two models:
The first is the Advanced Crew Escape Suit, or ACES (I always like the fact that it shared its acronym with a type of ejection seat). This is not really a space suit, but a cross between a pressure suit and an ocean-survival suit. It's designed for escape protection up to about 50,000 feet and includes a parachute, 30 minutes of oxygen, a simple cooling system, and a survival pack with a radio and life raft. It weighs about 80 pounds.
The second is the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU. This 200 pound suit is practically a one-man spacecraft with 8 hours of life support, attachments for a cold-gas rescue jetpack, and even micrometeorite protection and glove heaters (hands can get pretty cold during the 45 minute orbital night periods). These suits are designed for long 0g operations, not walking on the moon. They're definite overkill (too bulky and heavy) for launch, landing, and quick transfers between vehicles, and not well-suited for walking on the moon. They're also quite hard to manuever in.
The Apollo EVA suits are a little outdated and no longer available. They were also pretty awkward.
This new suit will provide more protection than the ACES in the first configuration, and more versatility and hopefully flexibility than the EMU in the second configuration.
Thanks for following up. Your comments here are pretty fair, I think.
Overall, the ISS is a (mixed) folly from the past we are now stuck with (and have the opportunity to utilize). As I understand it, we've spent something like $130 billion on it so far, and expect to spend another $20-30 billion on it through 2016. Perhaps it wasn't worth the entire $150+ billion, but I would personally contend that for the use we should be able to get out of it between now and the end of current plans, we will get our money's worth out of that $20-30 billion, and should therefore keep it now that we have it. I'm not sure about beyond 2016, but given their investments, I think our partners will lobby pretty hard for us to keep the station going beyond then.
A couple specific comments:
The shuttle isn't equipped to perform a simple reboost mission, especially not with just a fuel payload. Although the OMS engines have about 24,000 pounds of fuel at launch, much of this is typically used for launch and de-orbit, especially when going to the 51.6 degree orbit and when carrying a non-trivial payload. Also, for purposes of reboost planning, the shuttle includes over 5 times as much deadweight as the ATV. It's very hard to compare costs for shuttle reboosts to ATV reboosts, but for what the shuttle can provide during a typical mission, the cost is higher. Plus, the Europeans typically pay for ATV missions in exchange for astronaut slots. Depending how you account for it, an astronaut seat for a planned launch costs NASA quite a bit less than an ATV.
Loss of crew/mission projections are admittedly, just that: projections. But I wouldn't compare SpaceX's failures with brand new hardware and more limited ground testing to Ares 1 or Soyuz. Ares 1 uses a large amount of known hardware, and Soyuz almost exclusively so. I don't think SpaceX had even attempted to make detailed LOM projections for either flight. Regarding the ground risk, the LOM numbers may have been very high overall, but acceptably low for such a failure occuring at moments that might drop debris in populated areas. Honestly, any launch vehicle has these risks.
I would not, and NASA is not counting on SpaceX or any COTS participant to save the day. COTS is a bonus to save money if possible and encourage development of commercial launch services. I added that comment because it has potential to add extra value, not because COTS is a fix for any expected problems with Ares/Soyuz/ATV.
The parent post is overrated. It's not entirely correct and it's not very coherent.
I worked on Space Station in the early 1990s and still haven't recovered from the bad taste that experience has left in my mouth.
That is before any of the hardware had been launched. But it's unsurprising that the OP could be dissatisfied with the experience. Aside from being a government program and all the cliches that entails, the ISS has gone through many redesigns, and the effort of cooperating internationally has been an added source of delay and cost. He's not alone in such criticisms and the ponderous nature of government programs is one of NASA's biggest problems.
ISS was DESIGNED for Shuttle resupply during its lifetime and that resupply was first strangled and then totally cut off. Soyuz and Orion taking astronauts to this thing is a joke, and doing resupply by Jules Verne is a criminal waste.
The shuttle is a much more expensive spacecraft to operate than the ATV. The shuttle's advantages are it's manned, it is a versatile work platform, and it can carry cargo back to earth. It's overkill for basic resupply. Although Jules Verne didn't because there was a large amount of pressurized cargo on board, the ATV can carry up to 4.7 tonnes of spare propellant...much more than either the shuttle or Progress. There may also be a commercial option available for re-supply and reboost in the next 3-4 years through the COTS program.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Soyuz or Orion performing crew rotation. Both of these craft have lower operating costs than the shuttle, and lower projected loss of crew probability.
The dirty little secret about ISS is that at full mass and max solar array deployment upon completion, this thing is going to deorbit even faster from atmospheric drag than it is now and no way can Progress or Jules Verne is keep the completed assembly reboosted - only the Shuttle could.
Total BS. The international partners are well aware of how much reboost the ISS needs and are planning accordingly. There is no secret. Progress, ATV, or the shuttle alone can't do all of the reboost, but combined they can. Also, once construction is finished, the ISS will be boosted to a slightly higher orbit to reduce the effect of drag. Lastly, the ISS is at nearly maximum drag, with only one more solar array to be added, but still growing in mass. Added mass works out net neutral. The momentum reduces the effect of drag just as well as it reduces the effectiveness of reboosts.
And secretly if not in public, NASA will breathe a sigh of relief when it splashes.
This statement, at least, is based mostly in fact. ISS is somewhat contentious at NASA, but it has its supporters and detractors. There will be quite a few glad not to have to divert resources to it, and plenty others frustrated by the loss of a unique laboratory environment and work platform. I doubt hardly anyone there would argue that it's completely without value, but many feel the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Nobody even knows anymore how much ISS costs anymore because of crooked accounting hiding the drawing of funds from everywhere within NASA, but nobody argues it's at least $100 billion dollars.
The contention of crooked accounting is unsubstantiated. If there's crooked accounting it goes on at lower levels, but the OP has provided no evidence of it. NASA funds are accounted for at the higher levels in the annual budget allocations. The problem with accounting for exact costs is that ISS draws on programs that have their own independent budgets. How much of the cost of the shuttle return-to-flight program should count towards the ISS, for example? More on cost here.
Hell, just tell me one thing we have learned on ISS th
Please note the count of experiments currently stands at 561, and the focus ranges from virology, to fluid mechanics, to relativity, to astronomy, and even engineering validation (not simply of space station components, but also of fully independent technologies). That's nothing to sneeze at.
And while a fairly large portion of them are relatively minor or PR projects like sleep habits in 0g and the Buzz Lightyear "teaching from space" program, there is an ample number of experiments designed specifically to take advantage of the unique environment the ISS offers and with a variety of potential future applications.
And don't forget the majority of these so far were conducted prior to the installation of the two primary laboratory modules on the ISS: Columbia, launched late last year, and Kibo, which is 2/3 delivered as of last week. These have also been done mainly by 2 or 3 man crews, with occassional help from shuttle crews. Once the ISS switches to a 6 man crew rotation, the rate at which science work is completed will be greatly enhanced.
But of course, carefully planned, executed, and generally useful science isn't as fun to talk about as broken toilets, so we'll just continue ignoring the successes of the ISS and focus only about the cost overruns, deleted components, and occassional operating problems.
Imagine being able to walk down the length of a 180 feet wide image. It's hard to beat that for an opportunity to experience the size and complexity of the Milky Way (except, of course, for a trip out to the desert on a clear night).
The best part is that even at 180 feet wide, 400,000 pixels yields 185 dpi. That's better than your computer monitor!
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be flying down to St. Louis and paying admission to the AAS conference just to see it...not with the price of airline tickets these days. However, if the local science museum is amenable to a new exhibit...
This was neither. It was Dr. Ballard and a retired admiral involved in the project independently describing the work to National Geographic, which Ballard now works for. Presumably they were finally cleared to reveal this, but as I understand it (I'm not with National Geographic), the accounts came from them as individuals, not in any capacity as naval officers. As others mentioned above, this cover-up was also related on the Discovery channel a few years ago, although it doesn't sound like the sources were as clear.
The timing of this particular article is related to the release of a film documentary about it on the National Geographic Channel last night. I know this because I had the fortuitious opportunity to act as a red-shirt extra (meaning I died) in the production of the documentary back in November.
In my opinion it was a decently interesting, slightly over-dramatized program. Those who regularly watch the History Channel like I do will enjoy it. If you care to watch it, keep an eye out for a sailor frantically trying to restart a scrammed reactor* during the account of the loss of USS Thresher! The program is called Undercover Titanic with Bob Ballard.
As for hiding military operations behind civil facades, that's not at all uncommon, nor do I find it particularly scandalous. In this case, the civil facade was real and actually did achieve its objective. If you want an example of a good, old-fashioned SNAFU with a totally bogus non-military cover-up, read about Project Jennifer and the Glomar Explorer. That story broke 20+ years ago, and it's partially why the Navy wanted the examinations of Thresher and Scorpion kept secret. If we could steal (or at least try to) top secret Soviet hardware from the ocean floor, they could do the same to us, if they knew where to look.
* Bonus trivia - the submarine the re-enactment portion was filmed on is a retired diesel-electric boat built the same year as USS Scorpion. The "Radiation Hazard" signs were just props to distract you from the huge diesel engines they were hung on.
I'm truly serious. The picture of Phoenix descending on parachute in front of Heimdall crater is one of the most fantastic photographs in human history. It ranks right up there with the Earthrise photo taken by Apollo 8, but is more complicated.
Think about it: The MRO, stuck in a more or less fixed orbit with a period of two hours, managed to line up its camera to capture a lander that came screaming in at initially 12,000 miles per hour (probably a few hundred mph at time of photo), with an unclear amount of uncertainty in its position, based on predictions made several days ahead of time, all within the three minutes that it was on parachute. And as a sweet bonus, it just happened to be in front of a gorgeous impact crater that perhaps better than any background imaginable portrays the puniness of human endeavors compared to the universe.
This picture isn't just tough. It's unique. To the best of my knowledge, there's not even any pictures like this of the space shuttle, Apollo, Soyuz, Mercury, Gemini, or Vostok, despite there being over 250 combined entries of those craft, and many more imaging satellites in earth orbit.
I really hope NASA caught this image through all three color filters on the HiRISE camera and simply hasn't composited them yet. I would love to have a giant color poster of this scene.
To follow up on that, the lander will continuously send back data on the soil. First of all, there is a camera on the arm that will examine the soil before they even bite into it, allowing NASA to assess the grain size and density of the soil and look for anything interesting but too small to be seen by the pancam, perhaps even frost. The camera has its own lighting and can resolve up to 23 microns per pixel, or about as fine as the hair on a person's forearm.
As they start digging, they'll continue to examine the soil for properties like cohesiveness and fine scale layering. I'd bet they'll also be able to tease out some details that will be of interest to geologists from things as mundane as current draw on the joint motors (correlates to digging force).
The most important data will come from the MECA and TEGA instruments. The scoop will deliver small samples of dirt to each one for detailed chemical analysis via spectrometry, calorimetry, microscopy, and electrochemistry. Unfortunately, these are single use instruments. MECA has four chambers, and TEGA has eight. There's no way to flush and neutralize the chambers after use, and no way to replenish their chemical reagents. I should add, however, that the MECA experiment includes a soil conductivity probe on the robotic arm and a pair of microscopes independent of these chambers. Regardless, this means NASA will have to be very careful about their selection of soil samples. Should they come from the center or the edge of a polygon? What depths should they be taken at? How much will ammonia residue from the thrusters affect their measurements of surface samples?
There's more information about these experiments on the Phoenix site.
And while doing all this, they have to be careful not to damage anything, either on the lander or from their samples. A seemingly trivial concern they're discussing right now is where to pile the dirt from their trenches. You wouldn't want to dump it in a pile in one spot only to later decide that's where you want your second hole. Between the need for care and precision, and the physical limits of the lander, it will be slow going.
It's exciting to watch, but at the same time, takes a lot of patience. You and I both want to see pictures and spectrographs now, but we'll have to wait.
There wasn't as much to see as for shuttle launches or landings, with just shots of the control room and computer animations, but it was still exciting.
Hearing the PAO announce 1000 meters, then 500 meters only a couple seconds later made my heart jump. It seemed like it was coming down so fast, but it's on the ground now!
The solar arrays should be deploying right now. They've announced that the lander even aligned itself east-west as desired so the panels will have the maximum exposure to the sun during the mission.
Hopefully the first pictures from the polar surface will be showing up on NASA TV within an hour.
Since I basically just put words into people's mouths for a laugh, I figured I'd google up some actual quotes by these people related to their work.
MIT coworker on Percy Spencer: "Like Edison, he will cut and fit and try and throwaway and try again."
James Watt on one of his designs: "It is very defective."
Alfred Nobel: "If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied."
Vladimir Titov after his Soyuz rocket exploded beneath him: "We were swearing."
Werner von Braun (memory from childhood): "Selecting half a dozen of the biggest skyrockets I could find, I strapped them to the wagon. It performed beyond my wildest dreams. The wagon careened crazily about, trailing a tail of fire like a comet. When the rockets burned out, ending their sparkling performance with a magnificent thunderclap, the wagon rolled majestically to a halt. The police who arrived late for the beginning of my experiment, but in time for the grand finale, were unappreciative."
Yang Liwei: "I did not see the Great Wall from space."
Yet-Ming Chiang (MIT chemist): "The unstable materials release oxygen, oxidizing other materials in the battery, which in turn produces more heat. The cycle continues in a process called "thermal runaway," which in some cases can lead to a violent explosion."
The best projects usually have a development report buried somewhere in their history that contains the phrase, "...and then it exploded."
Percy Spencer (microwave oven): "...and then the egg exploded."
James Watt (steam engine): "...and then the boiler exploded."
Alfred Nobel (dynamite): "...and then the nitroglycerin-soaked soil exploded."
Vladmir Titov (Russian cosmonaut): "...and then the Soyuz rocket exploded."
Werner von Braun (NASA engineer): "...and then the Jupiter rocket exploded."
Yang Liwei (Chinese Taikonaut): "...and then the Long March rocket exploded."
Sony test engineer: "...and then the battery exploded."
J. Robert Openheimer: "...and then the Trinity device exploded"...oh wait, that was supposed to happen.
A more personal anecdote:
Someone in the shop at work needed a simple room-temperature dryer for a special project, so he got some large diameter PVC pipe that was handy, filled it with a desiccant, put the material in that needed drying, and screwed the cap on. Then he left it alone for a few hours.
Apparently some sort of gas-producing chemical reaction took place, probably helped by the sun shining through the open door, (...wait for it...) and then the drying chamber exploded, blasting the plastic lid through the ceiling 25 feet overhead and covering the work bay with the tiny pellets of desiccant.
First of all, this is not a formal pronouncement of the church. It's not doctrine or anything like that. It's a theological musing. That said, it's a wholly reasonable musing. I don't think very many Catholic theologians would debate it, much less argue that it's flat-out wrong (ie, heresy). I also know he's not the first Vatican official to consider the question, even dating back to Lewis' time. Heck, it's something I myself wondered about, and came to the same conclusion. Alternately, a lot of theologians have fancied a pagan alien, who like mankind, is redeemed by Christ's act in Jerusalem (on earth), but not yet heard the Gospels. The Native Americans would be an example of a similar case.
The statement amounts to "we don't know." Is it really "catching up to the Protestants" to say, "we don't know.?" If you're suggesting this as a measure of the legitimacy of a religion, I suggest you re-examine your values.
However, the Lewis angle got my memory churning. I don't know what other works he might have had on the topic, but the Space Trilogy is a very good set of science fiction fantasy books Lewis wrote to explore the idea of aliens from a theological standpoint.
He presents first a civillization created before humanity, met by a human space traveler. They went through their own sinful fall from grace, and God performed some unspecified act of redemption. Since then, they've as a society gotten past many of the turmoils humanity is going through related to violence and greed. In the second book, he presents a newly created civillization...a new Adam and Eve. As before, they have the free will to choose God's way or their own. They again face a temptation from a smooth-talking demon, but in this case the space traveler sees their plight and plays angel-on-the-shoulder.
The third book returns back to earth and bounces around abuse of power and technology. It's kind of an odd fit into the trilogy, but still interesting on its own merits.
I remember talking to one agnostic who enjoyed the trilogy, as like the Chronicles of Narnia, it's not overtly Christian. At the same time, it gives a lot of food for thought about Christian doctrines, in this case, original sin.
I also read it with interest. This was in the local news when it happened, because the local Coast Guard station responded, and the ship put into Portland for its initial repairs and to offload the cars.
At the time, it was thought that Mazda was going salvage title the cars, which would allow them to be sold as "totalled and rebuilt," no warranty, as-is. I'm flabbergasted by the WSJ report that they weren't simply junked, but outright destroyed. A major waste if you ask me, and I'm not typically the sort to muse over corporate waste.
It sounds like the two main factors were Mazda's concerns about brand dilution, and the insurance company playing money games and missing an opportunity to recover part of their payout. They could have cooperated in salvaging, if not the cars, at least parts that were easy to qualify as safe to resell, and the could have reasonably controlled the resale channels to address their brand image concerns. The wheels and tires alone would have grossed about $2 million. Think of all the parts that could have been salvaged very easily: hubcaps, spares, jacks, seats, catalytic converters, mufflers, shocks, CV joints, transmissions, etc. It sounds like the catalytic converters are the only parts being recovered.
First of all, no this is not the same experiment the Viking landers did in the 1970's. The Viking landers carried cameras, meterology instruments, a sampling arm, a seismometer, and a small biology experiment. You're probably thinking of the last one. The results were inconclusive because they realized after the fact there were factors they didn't control for that more than likely spoiled the results. This does not mean that these factors can't be effectively controlled for.
But that doesn't matter, because the article isn't talking about looking for life now (although I'm not sure the author realizes that). Neither Mars Exploration Rovers currently on Mars nor the Mars Science Laboratory due to launch at the end of next year will really be looking for life.
The instrument (alphachron) referred to in the article is used to date mineral deposits. The MER's established with a fairly high degree of confidence that liquid water existed on Mars in the past, based partially on the presence of certain types of minerals. If alphachron is flown on a mission, it will be used to determine the age of these deposits, thereby constraining when liquid water, and perhaps providing some key insights over how Mars evolved.
I'm almost certain the article is off-base in suggesting this instrument might fly on the Mars Science Laboratory, which will launch towards the end of 2009 and arrive in 2010. It's not currently manifested, and since assembly is taking place right now and instruments have already been eliminated to keep the project under-mass and not too far over-budget, I can't believe there's any chance of it flying on MSL.
It's also not currently listed on the manifest for Europe's ExoMars rover, to launch in 2013, but I don't think its payload is currently set in stone. The next NASA opportunity under the current plans is the 2016 Mars Astrobiology Field Lab, but Alphachron doesn't sound very complementary to the goals of that mission.
Sadly, a lot of good instruments get developed, but never fly due to priorities and engineering constraints. This may end up being such a case, but at least it has commercial applications outside the space program.
Only 2 years late on this story. *sigh* I remember when I could read Popular Mechanics and learn new things.
The most recent detail in that article dates back to three months ago when NASA re-awarded to Orbital Sciences the funds that Rocketplane Kistler forfeited when they failed to meet their milestones.
Also, it's not like NASA has been closed to private industry before. The true story of the Fisher space pen is a small, but great example. NASA just doesn't typically provide open-ended opportunities like this, much less with discretionary development funding.
In-flight calls or data are a poor example. You're talking about putting in equipment that costs more than typical network equipment because of requirements like low EMI, light weight, minimal maintenance, ground stations to handle the data, programming to manage handoffs at 500+ mph, and the process of getting FAA approval when you integrate it with a jillion other systems on a commercial airliner. It genuinely is expensive. Even at $10/hour that Boeing was charging for their Connexion internet service, they lost huge amounts of money on it (I think partially because they over-engineered the system, but I'm not very familiar with the details).
The cost of using it are very low, but the costs to initially add the feature are very high. Then you add in the fact that usage rates are typically low (only a handful of passengers buy it, only "full-service" airlines install the equipment), it can be hard to make it pay for itself.
Of course, they do add a high margin on top of their projected costs because they can without affecting the demand much, but the fixed costs still dominate (at the moment...data services will be much better integrated in the coming generation of airliners, and we may be moving towards allowing cell phones in flight, too).
SMS is the opposite. They aren't seeing low usage on new, expensive infrastructure. They're seeing high usage on existing, paid-for infrastructure.
The SMS scheme really isn't a very good one. SMS messages get multiplexed into the control channels on the mobile phone network, and it's really a 2nd generation technology. The size of the control channels is fundamentally limited, but each slot is big enough for a text message. So the providers squeeze the SMS into it because it fits and it doesn't require re-engineering their protocols to fit it in the voice channels. This is also why SMS is limited to so few characters: That's what fits in a time-division on the control channel.
Unfortunately, it proved to be a popular service. The limited extra space fills up quickly. In fact, it's theoretically possible to launch a relatively wide-area DDoS attack by sending only a couple hundred messages per second from zombie clients. To get the best return on their existing capacity, providers raise the price to discourage excessive use.
The puzzling thing in my opinion is that it's taking so long for this service to shift from being side-banded in the 2G scheme to being normal data packets on 3G networks. As that happens, the capacity for text explodes (text is way more compact than voice, pictures, video and other planned 3G content) and the providers can leverage the genuinely low cost of text to undersell their competitor's plans. A pricewar ensues and the consumers win.
But it hasn't happened yet. My best guess is because the companies realize that the first one to make a substantial move in this direction will only enjoy success for a short time before the others all catch up. Then the competitive advantage is gone and profits have dropped close to zero.
No, I haven't sourced much of this. It's mostly conclusions from discussions with friends who work in the mobile industry. Feel free to correct the parts I got wrong.
The ISS costs about $2 billion per year, a nontrivial part of which is related to ongoing construction. I think the post-construction budget is about $1.5 billion per year for six astronauts and several hundred experiments. The two Mars rovers cost about $80 million together this year (pays for a couple hundred engineers, planners, and scientists, as well as the facilities needed to operate and communicate with them), not counting the $820 million spent up to the end of the year or the several hundred million spent on operations in subsequent years. So the ratio is about 25:1 now and 19:1 later. By number of units, (6 people versus 2 robots) the ratio is about 6:1.
Whether you get more bang for your buck depends on what want to get out of it. There are lots of things a human on Mars could do that Spirit and Opportunity couldn't come close to do. Combining the capabilities of the MER's, the under construction MSL, and the soon-to-land Phoenix, you can dig a trench 3 feet deep, travel about 10 kilometers over slopes up to 30 degrees and obstacles a foot tall (but sand invokes a penalty), chemically analyze about a dozen soil samples in single-use lab cells, and operate a lightweight drill, three steerable cameras, and a couple of spectrometers.
A human could do all that in a week (a day if you don't count the 10 kilometers of wandering). He or she could also select targets of interest autonomously, subjectively evaluate them, manipulate them in complex ways, and apply a myriad of tools to their study far beyond what a robotic lander could bring to bear. They can improvise functions with their hands a robotic tool would have to be purpose-built for if it could be done at all. When their rock abrasion tool wears out, they can grab a nice chunk of basalt to use instead. They could repair equipment onsite. While a team of robotic planners spend an entire day studying hundreds of photographs within 25 meters to pick the most interesting targets for the next day's work, a human onsite could survey the landscape personally, walk to half a dozen sites within a few hundred meters of their starting position and choose the most interesting for detailed study before lunchtime.
Of course, that alone is not a sufficient reason for sending a man into space. The science targets aren't going to disappear in the time it takes to send 1000 unique probes to reach the equivalent $100 billion cost of a manned Mars program and approximate the countless different competetancies of a well-trained astronaut.
But when you combine that with the human desire to explore and to expand, the hypothetical survival imperative for leaving earth, and the "PR angle" (I think national, or even global pride is a fair translation), plus the tangential benefits like a better understanding of the human body in different environments, technologies developed for the mission, and the jobs and potential new markets created (I personally don't think it's the government's duty to create jobs, but it is still a tagential benefit), a strong case can be made for manned space exploration.
Of course, then the question is how far do you try to go, but that's a trickier question. At the same time, you don't want to ignore the robotic aspect because they do produce genuinely useful results. We wouldn't even contemplate sending a man to Mars without the knowledge we've gained since the Mariner program. And it would be crazy to talk about sending a man to Saturn when we're still working on getting back to the moon, but probes like Cassini can tell us a lot of interesting things in the meantime, which will help us make decisions down the road about how much further study Saturn and other objects are worth.
That just limits the applicability of the results. It's not flawed, just short-sighted.
Also, the end of the article says they are planning to conduct a follow-up study to answer questions raised by this first round. Your criticism may well be addressed in that.
Another possible criticism is the fact that the participants apparently know the point of the study (at least in the case of the follow-up, which is linked to from the article). Could this affect the results? I wouldn't tend to think so, but perhaps. There's plenty of people on here who are seem to strongly favor striping who might participate, and either intentionally or subconsciously apply a less dedicated mindset to reading the non-striped sets.
Also, I was disappointed the researcher doesn't appear to have examined for statistical significance, although perhaps it's in the paper. I only read the article. A small improvement is an improvement nonetheless. The more telling question is, "are the results real, or are we being misled by natural variability?" However, that's just a lack of thoroughness in the analysis, not a flaw in the method.
On the plus side, it looks like she did take the time to create at least a partially balanced experiment, making sure each question was asked equally of both striped and non-striped tables and randomly assigned. I would consider the data basically useless without that measure.
It's doesn't look like a great experiment, but it's more rigorous in some ways than anything you'll find on Tom's Hardware.
Iran has had frequent offers from Russia to sell them enriched, reactor-grade uranium, probably for much cheaper than they can produce it on their own since Russia produces non-trivial volumes of it and has already covered the cost of developing the enrichment facilities. They consistently turn it down in favor of developing their own enrichment facilities. They're only reason for doing so is "because we have a right to."
Additionally, contrary to your assertions Iran has violated the NPT, albeit to the best of public knowledge in relatively minor ways, such as not releasing details of their centrifuge designs to the IAEA and not declaring up front that they were importing uranium hexafluoride for enrichment. They haven't pulled a North Korea.
Those nations already possessing nuclear weapons are not required by the NPT to disarm, only to make negotiations regarding disarmament in good faith (ie, to reduce the overall threat, not to gain strategic advantage, etc). You may rightfully hold the opinion that this is unfair, but those were the terms of the treaty, and to say that the big 5 are violating the treaty because of that is flat-out wrong.
I am not in the least saying we should attack Iran over this, but the facts should be kept clear.
It is disingenuous to refer to suggestions of nuclear weapons use from the cold war in regards to the responsibility of nuclear states today (especially when they never went beyond suggestions). And for the record, Geoff Hoon did not threaten Iraq with a nuclear strike, he said that the UK would be justified in doing so "under the right circumstances." Specifically "Speaking on BBC One's Breakfast with Frost Mr Hoon said the UK reserved the right to use the weapons "in extreme self defence." He did not say that this case imminently appeared to apply to Iraq. Indeed the whole character of the war would have changed if there was believed to be an immediate threat of Iraq retaliating to invasion by using nuclear weapons out of theatre (ie, on US or UK soil).
I don't think the Iranians realistically believe the US will use nuclear weapons against them, except of course in case of "extreme self-defense," a case which only Iran themselves could precipitate. We know and they know both that the political and likely economic (trade) fallout from doing so would be nasty. Furthermore, we both know that the US military could systematically dismantle the Revolutionary Guards in conventional warfare, so there's little reason to.
To use your analogy, our nuclear weapons policy is to keep the gun licensed and in it's holster. The other folks out there know we have it, but that when push comes to shove, it stays there and we use our hands. The way you put it makes it sounds like we're asking Iran if they want the bombs delivered via B-2 or ICBM.
The interesting thing is, lately NASA has been primarily using relatively common digital SLR cameras. I'm not sure what modifications, if any, they've made. They do have thermal protection covers for EVA's, which are left off for photography from inside the station or shuttle.
Most of the photos seem to be taken with Kodak DSC760's, a 6 MP camera dating back to 2001 that is limited to ISO400. Lately they've also started to use the newer 12 MP Nikon D2Xs.
Granted, these are nicer than most ordinary Joe's own, but they are nothing extraordinary. However, just look at the detail they get during shuttle dockings at the ISS.
For the record, this isn't a winged spacecraft. It's a winged first stage. The article didn't catch on to it, but if you look up info on the Ares-Falcon proposal the Air Force has been mulling around for years, you'll see this is probably the same project. Weight is much less of a premium (still somewhat, however) on the first stage, because it spends less of the flight attached. Generally the first stage only contributes less 25% of the delta-V, meaning it only contributes 1/16 of final kinetic energy of the payload. So the weight of the wings doesn't hurt much.
Additionally, a first stage doesn't need a real thermal protection system. It's one less element to lift and greatly simplifies reuse. Those pointy wings on the Lockheed demonstrator would be terrible from a heat-flow standpoint anyway.
The tradeoff of weight allows controlled flyback, which makes recovery of the first stage far simpler than fishing it out of the water and cleaning it (surviving that requires parachutes and flotation provisions anyway, which although lighter than wings, are still a mass penalty). Getting a structurally intact first stage is a lot simpler than a structurally intact orbiter.
So Lockheed actually is persuing an alternative approach to reusability here.
By the way, SpaceX claims they plan to recover, refurbish, and reuse the first stage of both their Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, and the second stage of the Falcon 9. I'm honestly not sure how they intend to do the second stage, but the first stage parachutes to the ocean and is picked up by a recovery ship. Their one attempt at doing it so far failed.
Slashdot Mirror
The parent mentions flaws and the article mentions "powertrain 1.5."
The development of the Tesla wasn't quite smooth sailing. They're asking for a lot of performance out of a relatively lightweight power supply and motor. At some point in the last year or so, Tesla ran into some durability problems with their two speed transmission. They were never clear about what the problem was, but it became apparent when they started talking about changes.
They switched from a 2-speed transmission to a single speed. Obviously, this takes them outside the ideal operating ranges of the motor at the high and low ends of the rated performance (115 and 0 mph respectively). It also meant a redesign of a major component, which is probably a significant part of the delay of these vehicles that were supposed to be shipping late last year.
What they have shared, however, is that they plan to build vehicles with the 2 speed transmission and more restrictive motor governing (read: lower performance than originally advertised) while they finish development on the single speed transmission. At that point, they'll change over to the single speed in the factory and refit the vehicles already in customer hands at no extra charge.
To match the original performance promises, they changed to a higher-rated motor controller, and made a few other changes in the electronics. A side benefit they are claiming to have achieved is slightly higher efficiency from better electronics, although the range on an EPA test cycle is still a little bit below what they initially planned to achieve and were touting two years ago (235 miles on a full charge, IIRC).
Overall, an exciting sports car, but I'll hold back from calling it a breakthrough until I start to see the same technology applied to lower performance, more practical cars that fit the budgets of ordinary people. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing the Stig take it around the track on Top Gear.
Tesla article on Powertrain 1.5
PS - the Tesla Roadster uses Lithium batteries, not NiMH like the Prius or Civic hybrid, so others ramping up production doesn't directly affect costs for Tesla.
Yes. Coal plants don't get built on publicly-owned land.
This isn't about all solar plants. It's only about solar plants being built on land managed by BLM. Beggers can't be choosers. If these investors want ultra-cheap land leases for their already tax-deducted project, they have to go through the same hoops everyone else does.
So they're not comparing solar power to coal plants. They're comparing solar power to the undeveloped land these companies want to build on. Also, as they said, once they've developed a rigorous, consistent, and streamlined process, it will speed up the future approval of new plants.
Besides which, the article says there's already 20 million households worth of projects in the pipeline that will not be delayed. Now a household is an even more ridiculous unit of power than a Volkswagen Beatle (25-40 kW, depending on the year), so assuming the 1 kW/household average normally used (for coal plants...realistically you mutliply by 3-4 for solar), they're talking about 20 GW of power.
In 2007, the US only produced 0.2 GW of PV solar. Now granted that's expected to nearly double this year, and a significant portion of these projects are solar thermal, not PV, but it's clear that environmental impact studies are going to be at worst a minor holdup on the proposals beyond those ~20 GW that will be affected by this. If production is able to continue doubling every year, then between now and 2011 (an extra year, just for generosity's sake), cumulative PV production will be only 2.8 GW, or 14% of the planned capacity...not subtracting the portion of that installed on private land.
That's probably also why the moratorium is for 2 years. It will take them that long to both process the 130 proposals and lay out a streamlined process that properly accounts for factors and interests.
Not to mention, I'd put money down that at least 3/4 of these proposals will run out of money and fall flat on their faces before a single shovelful of dirt is moved.
I've noticed this too.
Assuming adiabatic conditions (Not typical, but can occur) and walls with a specific heat of zero (obviously bogus) in a 12 x 12 x 8 foot closed room, a system drawing 200 Watts will raise the temperature of the air by over 30 degrees F per hour (further assuming I didn't totally botch the math).
Of course, even if you were adiabatic to begin with, raising the temperature is going to undo that (thankfully), meaning your computer just keeps things a few degrees warmer than if it were off, but it can definitely have a noticeable effect in the summer. It's like turning on a 1000 W portable heater for 12 minutes out of every hour.
A good air conditioner typically has a coefficient of performance of around 3.5, so the extra 200 Watts of heat from the computer theoretically requires an average of 60 Watts from the A/C unit.
I don't really agree with modding this down. It's a mostly fair question, albeit rather snide and ignorant. He might as well ask why Boeing would bother designing the new 787, since it has the same round engines and is roughly the same size as planes they already build. Form follows function, but that doesn't tell you much about what's inside.
This really is not very much like the current suits. NASA currently has two models:
The first is the Advanced Crew Escape Suit, or ACES (I always like the fact that it shared its acronym with a type of ejection seat). This is not really a space suit, but a cross between a pressure suit and an ocean-survival suit. It's designed for escape protection up to about 50,000 feet and includes a parachute, 30 minutes of oxygen, a simple cooling system, and a survival pack with a radio and life raft. It weighs about 80 pounds.
The second is the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU. This 200 pound suit is practically a one-man spacecraft with 8 hours of life support, attachments for a cold-gas rescue jetpack, and even micrometeorite protection and glove heaters (hands can get pretty cold during the 45 minute orbital night periods). These suits are designed for long 0g operations, not walking on the moon. They're definite overkill (too bulky and heavy) for launch, landing, and quick transfers between vehicles, and not well-suited for walking on the moon. They're also quite hard to manuever in.
The Apollo EVA suits are a little outdated and no longer available. They were also pretty awkward.
This new suit will provide more protection than the ACES in the first configuration, and more versatility and hopefully flexibility than the EMU in the second configuration.
Thanks for following up. Your comments here are pretty fair, I think.
Overall, the ISS is a (mixed) folly from the past we are now stuck with (and have the opportunity to utilize). As I understand it, we've spent something like $130 billion on it so far, and expect to spend another $20-30 billion on it through 2016. Perhaps it wasn't worth the entire $150+ billion, but I would personally contend that for the use we should be able to get out of it between now and the end of current plans, we will get our money's worth out of that $20-30 billion, and should therefore keep it now that we have it. I'm not sure about beyond 2016, but given their investments, I think our partners will lobby pretty hard for us to keep the station going beyond then.
A couple specific comments:
The shuttle isn't equipped to perform a simple reboost mission, especially not with just a fuel payload. Although the OMS engines have about 24,000 pounds of fuel at launch, much of this is typically used for launch and de-orbit, especially when going to the 51.6 degree orbit and when carrying a non-trivial payload. Also, for purposes of reboost planning, the shuttle includes over 5 times as much deadweight as the ATV. It's very hard to compare costs for shuttle reboosts to ATV reboosts, but for what the shuttle can provide during a typical mission, the cost is higher. Plus, the Europeans typically pay for ATV missions in exchange for astronaut slots. Depending how you account for it, an astronaut seat for a planned launch costs NASA quite a bit less than an ATV.
Loss of crew/mission projections are admittedly, just that: projections. But I wouldn't compare SpaceX's failures with brand new hardware and more limited ground testing to Ares 1 or Soyuz. Ares 1 uses a large amount of known hardware, and Soyuz almost exclusively so. I don't think SpaceX had even attempted to make detailed LOM projections for either flight. Regarding the ground risk, the LOM numbers may have been very high overall, but acceptably low for such a failure occuring at moments that might drop debris in populated areas. Honestly, any launch vehicle has these risks.
I would not, and NASA is not counting on SpaceX or any COTS participant to save the day. COTS is a bonus to save money if possible and encourage development of commercial launch services. I added that comment because it has potential to add extra value, not because COTS is a fix for any expected problems with Ares/Soyuz/ATV.
The parent post is overrated. It's not entirely correct and it's not very coherent.
That is before any of the hardware had been launched. But it's unsurprising that the OP could be dissatisfied with the experience. Aside from being a government program and all the cliches that entails, the ISS has gone through many redesigns, and the effort of cooperating internationally has been an added source of delay and cost. He's not alone in such criticisms and the ponderous nature of government programs is one of NASA's biggest problems.
The shuttle is a much more expensive spacecraft to operate than the ATV. The shuttle's advantages are it's manned, it is a versatile work platform, and it can carry cargo back to earth. It's overkill for basic resupply. Although Jules Verne didn't because there was a large amount of pressurized cargo on board, the ATV can carry up to 4.7 tonnes of spare propellant...much more than either the shuttle or Progress. There may also be a commercial option available for re-supply and reboost in the next 3-4 years through the COTS program.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Soyuz or Orion performing crew rotation. Both of these craft have lower operating costs than the shuttle, and lower projected loss of crew probability.
Total BS. The international partners are well aware of how much reboost the ISS needs and are planning accordingly. There is no secret. Progress, ATV, or the shuttle alone can't do all of the reboost, but combined they can. Also, once construction is finished, the ISS will be boosted to a slightly higher orbit to reduce the effect of drag. Lastly, the ISS is at nearly maximum drag, with only one more solar array to be added, but still growing in mass. Added mass works out net neutral. The momentum reduces the effect of drag just as well as it reduces the effectiveness of reboosts.
This statement, at least, is based mostly in fact. ISS is somewhat contentious at NASA, but it has its supporters and detractors. There will be quite a few glad not to have to divert resources to it, and plenty others frustrated by the loss of a unique laboratory environment and work platform. I doubt hardly anyone there would argue that it's completely without value, but many feel the money would be better spent elsewhere.
The contention of crooked accounting is unsubstantiated. If there's crooked accounting it goes on at lower levels, but the OP has provided no evidence of it. NASA funds are accounted for at the higher levels in the annual budget allocations. The problem with accounting for exact costs is that ISS draws on programs that have their own independent budgets. How much of the cost of the shuttle return-to-flight program should count towards the ISS, for example? More on cost here.
For all the naysayers of ISS science, here is the list of past and present experiments for your review:
ISS Experiments by Expedition
Please note the count of experiments currently stands at 561, and the focus ranges from virology, to fluid mechanics, to relativity, to astronomy, and even engineering validation (not simply of space station components, but also of fully independent technologies). That's nothing to sneeze at.
And while a fairly large portion of them are relatively minor or PR projects like sleep habits in 0g and the Buzz Lightyear "teaching from space" program, there is an ample number of experiments designed specifically to take advantage of the unique environment the ISS offers and with a variety of potential future applications.
And don't forget the majority of these so far were conducted prior to the installation of the two primary laboratory modules on the ISS: Columbia, launched late last year, and Kibo, which is 2/3 delivered as of last week. These have also been done mainly by 2 or 3 man crews, with occassional help from shuttle crews. Once the ISS switches to a 6 man crew rotation, the rate at which science work is completed will be greatly enhanced.
But of course, carefully planned, executed, and generally useful science isn't as fun to talk about as broken toilets, so we'll just continue ignoring the successes of the ISS and focus only about the cost overruns, deleted components, and occassional operating problems.
Imagine being able to walk down the length of a 180 feet wide image. It's hard to beat that for an opportunity to experience the size and complexity of the Milky Way (except, of course, for a trip out to the desert on a clear night).
The best part is that even at 180 feet wide, 400,000 pixels yields 185 dpi. That's better than your computer monitor!
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be flying down to St. Louis and paying admission to the AAS conference just to see it...not with the price of airline tickets these days. However, if the local science museum is amenable to a new exhibit...
This was neither. It was Dr. Ballard and a retired admiral involved in the project independently describing the work to National Geographic, which Ballard now works for. Presumably they were finally cleared to reveal this, but as I understand it (I'm not with National Geographic), the accounts came from them as individuals, not in any capacity as naval officers. As others mentioned above, this cover-up was also related on the Discovery channel a few years ago, although it doesn't sound like the sources were as clear.
The timing of this particular article is related to the release of a film documentary about it on the National Geographic Channel last night. I know this because I had the fortuitious opportunity to act as a red-shirt extra (meaning I died) in the production of the documentary back in November.
In my opinion it was a decently interesting, slightly over-dramatized program. Those who regularly watch the History Channel like I do will enjoy it. If you care to watch it, keep an eye out for a sailor frantically trying to restart a scrammed reactor* during the account of the loss of USS Thresher! The program is called Undercover Titanic with Bob Ballard.
As for hiding military operations behind civil facades, that's not at all uncommon, nor do I find it particularly scandalous. In this case, the civil facade was real and actually did achieve its objective. If you want an example of a good, old-fashioned SNAFU with a totally bogus non-military cover-up, read about Project Jennifer and the Glomar Explorer. That story broke 20+ years ago, and it's partially why the Navy wanted the examinations of Thresher and Scorpion kept secret. If we could steal (or at least try to) top secret Soviet hardware from the ocean floor, they could do the same to us, if they knew where to look.
* Bonus trivia - the submarine the re-enactment portion was filmed on is a retired diesel-electric boat built the same year as USS Scorpion. The "Radiation Hazard" signs were just props to distract you from the huge diesel engines they were hung on.
I'm truly serious. The picture of Phoenix descending on parachute in front of Heimdall crater is one of the most fantastic photographs in human history. It ranks right up there with the Earthrise photo taken by Apollo 8, but is more complicated.
Think about it: The MRO, stuck in a more or less fixed orbit with a period of two hours, managed to line up its camera to capture a lander that came screaming in at initially 12,000 miles per hour (probably a few hundred mph at time of photo), with an unclear amount of uncertainty in its position, based on predictions made several days ahead of time, all within the three minutes that it was on parachute. And as a sweet bonus, it just happened to be in front of a gorgeous impact crater that perhaps better than any background imaginable portrays the puniness of human endeavors compared to the universe.
This picture isn't just tough. It's unique. To the best of my knowledge, there's not even any pictures like this of the space shuttle, Apollo, Soyuz, Mercury, Gemini, or Vostok, despite there being over 250 combined entries of those craft, and many more imaging satellites in earth orbit. I really hope NASA caught this image through all three color filters on the HiRISE camera and simply hasn't composited them yet. I would love to have a giant color poster of this scene.
To follow up on that, the lander will continuously send back data on the soil. First of all, there is a camera on the arm that will examine the soil before they even bite into it, allowing NASA to assess the grain size and density of the soil and look for anything interesting but too small to be seen by the pancam, perhaps even frost. The camera has its own lighting and can resolve up to 23 microns per pixel, or about as fine as the hair on a person's forearm.
As they start digging, they'll continue to examine the soil for properties like cohesiveness and fine scale layering. I'd bet they'll also be able to tease out some details that will be of interest to geologists from things as mundane as current draw on the joint motors (correlates to digging force).
The most important data will come from the MECA and TEGA instruments. The scoop will deliver small samples of dirt to each one for detailed chemical analysis via spectrometry, calorimetry, microscopy, and electrochemistry. Unfortunately, these are single use instruments. MECA has four chambers, and TEGA has eight. There's no way to flush and neutralize the chambers after use, and no way to replenish their chemical reagents. I should add, however, that the MECA experiment includes a soil conductivity probe on the robotic arm and a pair of microscopes independent of these chambers. Regardless, this means NASA will have to be very careful about their selection of soil samples. Should they come from the center or the edge of a polygon? What depths should they be taken at? How much will ammonia residue from the thrusters affect their measurements of surface samples?
There's more information about these experiments on the Phoenix site.
And while doing all this, they have to be careful not to damage anything, either on the lander or from their samples. A seemingly trivial concern they're discussing right now is where to pile the dirt from their trenches. You wouldn't want to dump it in a pile in one spot only to later decide that's where you want your second hole. Between the need for care and precision, and the physical limits of the lander, it will be slow going.
It's exciting to watch, but at the same time, takes a lot of patience. You and I both want to see pictures and spectrographs now, but we'll have to wait.
There wasn't as much to see as for shuttle launches or landings, with just shots of the control room and computer animations, but it was still exciting.
Hearing the PAO announce 1000 meters, then 500 meters only a couple seconds later made my heart jump. It seemed like it was coming down so fast, but it's on the ground now!
The solar arrays should be deploying right now. They've announced that the lander even aligned itself east-west as desired so the panels will have the maximum exposure to the sun during the mission.
Hopefully the first pictures from the polar surface will be showing up on NASA TV within an hour.
Point taken and considered while I was typing it, but just between you and me, I was going for entertainment value.
The best projects usually have a development report buried somewhere in their history that contains the phrase, "...and then it exploded."
Percy Spencer (microwave oven): "...and then the egg exploded."
James Watt (steam engine): "...and then the boiler exploded."
Alfred Nobel (dynamite): "...and then the nitroglycerin-soaked soil exploded."
Vladmir Titov (Russian cosmonaut): "...and then the Soyuz rocket exploded."
Werner von Braun (NASA engineer): "...and then the Jupiter rocket exploded."
Yang Liwei (Chinese Taikonaut): "...and then the Long March rocket exploded."
Sony test engineer: "...and then the battery exploded."
J. Robert Openheimer: "...and then the Trinity device exploded"...oh wait, that was supposed to happen.
A more personal anecdote:
Someone in the shop at work needed a simple room-temperature dryer for a special project, so he got some large diameter PVC pipe that was handy, filled it with a desiccant, put the material in that needed drying, and screwed the cap on. Then he left it alone for a few hours.
Apparently some sort of gas-producing chemical reaction took place, probably helped by the sun shining through the open door, (...wait for it...) and then the drying chamber exploded, blasting the plastic lid through the ceiling 25 feet overhead and covering the work bay with the tiny pellets of desiccant.
Engineering is fun.
First of all, this is not a formal pronouncement of the church. It's not doctrine or anything like that. It's a theological musing. That said, it's a wholly reasonable musing. I don't think very many Catholic theologians would debate it, much less argue that it's flat-out wrong (ie, heresy). I also know he's not the first Vatican official to consider the question, even dating back to Lewis' time. Heck, it's something I myself wondered about, and came to the same conclusion. Alternately, a lot of theologians have fancied a pagan alien, who like mankind, is redeemed by Christ's act in Jerusalem (on earth), but not yet heard the Gospels. The Native Americans would be an example of a similar case.
The statement amounts to "we don't know." Is it really "catching up to the Protestants" to say, "we don't know.?" If you're suggesting this as a measure of the legitimacy of a religion, I suggest you re-examine your values.
However, the Lewis angle got my memory churning. I don't know what other works he might have had on the topic, but the Space Trilogy is a very good set of science fiction fantasy books Lewis wrote to explore the idea of aliens from a theological standpoint.
He presents first a civillization created before humanity, met by a human space traveler. They went through their own sinful fall from grace, and God performed some unspecified act of redemption. Since then, they've as a society gotten past many of the turmoils humanity is going through related to violence and greed. In the second book, he presents a newly created civillization...a new Adam and Eve. As before, they have the free will to choose God's way or their own. They again face a temptation from a smooth-talking demon, but in this case the space traveler sees their plight and plays angel-on-the-shoulder.
The third book returns back to earth and bounces around abuse of power and technology. It's kind of an odd fit into the trilogy, but still interesting on its own merits.
I remember talking to one agnostic who enjoyed the trilogy, as like the Chronicles of Narnia, it's not overtly Christian. At the same time, it gives a lot of food for thought about Christian doctrines, in this case, original sin.
I also read it with interest. This was in the local news when it happened, because the local Coast Guard station responded, and the ship put into Portland for its initial repairs and to offload the cars.
At the time, it was thought that Mazda was going salvage title the cars, which would allow them to be sold as "totalled and rebuilt," no warranty, as-is. I'm flabbergasted by the WSJ report that they weren't simply junked, but outright destroyed. A major waste if you ask me, and I'm not typically the sort to muse over corporate waste.
It sounds like the two main factors were Mazda's concerns about brand dilution, and the insurance company playing money games and missing an opportunity to recover part of their payout. They could have cooperated in salvaging, if not the cars, at least parts that were easy to qualify as safe to resell, and the could have reasonably controlled the resale channels to address their brand image concerns. The wheels and tires alone would have grossed about $2 million. Think of all the parts that could have been salvaged very easily: hubcaps, spares, jacks, seats, catalytic converters, mufflers, shocks, CV joints, transmissions, etc. It sounds like the catalytic converters are the only parts being recovered.
First of all, no this is not the same experiment the Viking landers did in the 1970's. The Viking landers carried cameras, meterology instruments, a sampling arm, a seismometer, and a small biology experiment. You're probably thinking of the last one. The results were inconclusive because they realized after the fact there were factors they didn't control for that more than likely spoiled the results. This does not mean that these factors can't be effectively controlled for.
But that doesn't matter, because the article isn't talking about looking for life now (although I'm not sure the author realizes that). Neither Mars Exploration Rovers currently on Mars nor the Mars Science Laboratory due to launch at the end of next year will really be looking for life.
The instrument (alphachron) referred to in the article is used to date mineral deposits. The MER's established with a fairly high degree of confidence that liquid water existed on Mars in the past, based partially on the presence of certain types of minerals. If alphachron is flown on a mission, it will be used to determine the age of these deposits, thereby constraining when liquid water, and perhaps providing some key insights over how Mars evolved.
I'm almost certain the article is off-base in suggesting this instrument might fly on the Mars Science Laboratory, which will launch towards the end of 2009 and arrive in 2010. It's not currently manifested, and since assembly is taking place right now and instruments have already been eliminated to keep the project under-mass and not too far over-budget, I can't believe there's any chance of it flying on MSL.
It's also not currently listed on the manifest for Europe's ExoMars rover, to launch in 2013, but I don't think its payload is currently set in stone. The next NASA opportunity under the current plans is the 2016 Mars Astrobiology Field Lab, but Alphachron doesn't sound very complementary to the goals of that mission.
Sadly, a lot of good instruments get developed, but never fly due to priorities and engineering constraints. This may end up being such a case, but at least it has commercial applications outside the space program.
Only 2 years late on this story. *sigh* I remember when I could read Popular Mechanics and learn new things.
The most recent detail in that article dates back to three months ago when NASA re-awarded to Orbital Sciences the funds that Rocketplane Kistler forfeited when they failed to meet their milestones.
Also, it's not like NASA has been closed to private industry before. The true story of the Fisher space pen is a small, but great example. NASA just doesn't typically provide open-ended opportunities like this, much less with discretionary development funding.
In-flight calls or data are a poor example. You're talking about putting in equipment that costs more than typical network equipment because of requirements like low EMI, light weight, minimal maintenance, ground stations to handle the data, programming to manage handoffs at 500+ mph, and the process of getting FAA approval when you integrate it with a jillion other systems on a commercial airliner. It genuinely is expensive. Even at $10/hour that Boeing was charging for their Connexion internet service, they lost huge amounts of money on it (I think partially because they over-engineered the system, but I'm not very familiar with the details).
The cost of using it are very low, but the costs to initially add the feature are very high. Then you add in the fact that usage rates are typically low (only a handful of passengers buy it, only "full-service" airlines install the equipment), it can be hard to make it pay for itself.
Of course, they do add a high margin on top of their projected costs because they can without affecting the demand much, but the fixed costs still dominate (at the moment...data services will be much better integrated in the coming generation of airliners, and we may be moving towards allowing cell phones in flight, too).
SMS is the opposite. They aren't seeing low usage on new, expensive infrastructure. They're seeing high usage on existing, paid-for infrastructure.
The SMS scheme really isn't a very good one. SMS messages get multiplexed into the control channels on the mobile phone network, and it's really a 2nd generation technology. The size of the control channels is fundamentally limited, but each slot is big enough for a text message. So the providers squeeze the SMS into it because it fits and it doesn't require re-engineering their protocols to fit it in the voice channels. This is also why SMS is limited to so few characters: That's what fits in a time-division on the control channel.
Unfortunately, it proved to be a popular service. The limited extra space fills up quickly. In fact, it's theoretically possible to launch a relatively wide-area DDoS attack by sending only a couple hundred messages per second from zombie clients. To get the best return on their existing capacity, providers raise the price to discourage excessive use.
The puzzling thing in my opinion is that it's taking so long for this service to shift from being side-banded in the 2G scheme to being normal data packets on 3G networks. As that happens, the capacity for text explodes (text is way more compact than voice, pictures, video and other planned 3G content) and the providers can leverage the genuinely low cost of text to undersell their competitor's plans. A pricewar ensues and the consumers win.
But it hasn't happened yet. My best guess is because the companies realize that the first one to make a substantial move in this direction will only enjoy success for a short time before the others all catch up. Then the competitive advantage is gone and profits have dropped close to zero.
No, I haven't sourced much of this. It's mostly conclusions from discussions with friends who work in the mobile industry. Feel free to correct the parts I got wrong.
The ISS costs about $2 billion per year, a nontrivial part of which is related to ongoing construction. I think the post-construction budget is about $1.5 billion per year for six astronauts and several hundred experiments. The two Mars rovers cost about $80 million together this year (pays for a couple hundred engineers, planners, and scientists, as well as the facilities needed to operate and communicate with them), not counting the $820 million spent up to the end of the year or the several hundred million spent on operations in subsequent years. So the ratio is about 25:1 now and 19:1 later. By number of units, (6 people versus 2 robots) the ratio is about 6:1.
Whether you get more bang for your buck depends on what want to get out of it. There are lots of things a human on Mars could do that Spirit and Opportunity couldn't come close to do. Combining the capabilities of the MER's, the under construction MSL, and the soon-to-land Phoenix, you can dig a trench 3 feet deep, travel about 10 kilometers over slopes up to 30 degrees and obstacles a foot tall (but sand invokes a penalty), chemically analyze about a dozen soil samples in single-use lab cells, and operate a lightweight drill, three steerable cameras, and a couple of spectrometers.
A human could do all that in a week (a day if you don't count the 10 kilometers of wandering). He or she could also select targets of interest autonomously, subjectively evaluate them, manipulate them in complex ways, and apply a myriad of tools to their study far beyond what a robotic lander could bring to bear. They can improvise functions with their hands a robotic tool would have to be purpose-built for if it could be done at all. When their rock abrasion tool wears out, they can grab a nice chunk of basalt to use instead. They could repair equipment onsite. While a team of robotic planners spend an entire day studying hundreds of photographs within 25 meters to pick the most interesting targets for the next day's work, a human onsite could survey the landscape personally, walk to half a dozen sites within a few hundred meters of their starting position and choose the most interesting for detailed study before lunchtime.
Of course, that alone is not a sufficient reason for sending a man into space. The science targets aren't going to disappear in the time it takes to send 1000 unique probes to reach the equivalent $100 billion cost of a manned Mars program and approximate the countless different competetancies of a well-trained astronaut.
But when you combine that with the human desire to explore and to expand, the hypothetical survival imperative for leaving earth, and the "PR angle" (I think national, or even global pride is a fair translation), plus the tangential benefits like a better understanding of the human body in different environments, technologies developed for the mission, and the jobs and potential new markets created (I personally don't think it's the government's duty to create jobs, but it is still a tagential benefit), a strong case can be made for manned space exploration.
Of course, then the question is how far do you try to go, but that's a trickier question. At the same time, you don't want to ignore the robotic aspect because they do produce genuinely useful results. We wouldn't even contemplate sending a man to Mars without the knowledge we've gained since the Mariner program. And it would be crazy to talk about sending a man to Saturn when we're still working on getting back to the moon, but probes like Cassini can tell us a lot of interesting things in the meantime, which will help us make decisions down the road about how much further study Saturn and other objects are worth.
That just limits the applicability of the results. It's not flawed, just short-sighted.
Also, the end of the article says they are planning to conduct a follow-up study to answer questions raised by this first round. Your criticism may well be addressed in that.
Another possible criticism is the fact that the participants apparently know the point of the study (at least in the case of the follow-up, which is linked to from the article). Could this affect the results? I wouldn't tend to think so, but perhaps. There's plenty of people on here who are seem to strongly favor striping who might participate, and either intentionally or subconsciously apply a less dedicated mindset to reading the non-striped sets.
Also, I was disappointed the researcher doesn't appear to have examined for statistical significance, although perhaps it's in the paper. I only read the article. A small improvement is an improvement nonetheless. The more telling question is, "are the results real, or are we being misled by natural variability?" However, that's just a lack of thoroughness in the analysis, not a flaw in the method.
On the plus side, it looks like she did take the time to create at least a partially balanced experiment, making sure each question was asked equally of both striped and non-striped tables and randomly assigned. I would consider the data basically useless without that measure.
It's doesn't look like a great experiment, but it's more rigorous in some ways than anything you'll find on Tom's Hardware.
Iran has had frequent offers from Russia to sell them enriched, reactor-grade uranium, probably for much cheaper than they can produce it on their own since Russia produces non-trivial volumes of it and has already covered the cost of developing the enrichment facilities. They consistently turn it down in favor of developing their own enrichment facilities. They're only reason for doing so is "because we have a right to."
Additionally, contrary to your assertions Iran has violated the NPT, albeit to the best of public knowledge in relatively minor ways, such as not releasing details of their centrifuge designs to the IAEA and not declaring up front that they were importing uranium hexafluoride for enrichment. They haven't pulled a North Korea.
Those nations already possessing nuclear weapons are not required by the NPT to disarm, only to make negotiations regarding disarmament in good faith (ie, to reduce the overall threat, not to gain strategic advantage, etc). You may rightfully hold the opinion that this is unfair, but those were the terms of the treaty, and to say that the big 5 are violating the treaty because of that is flat-out wrong.
I am not in the least saying we should attack Iran over this, but the facts should be kept clear.
It is disingenuous to refer to suggestions of nuclear weapons use from the cold war in regards to the responsibility of nuclear states today (especially when they never went beyond suggestions). And for the record, Geoff Hoon did not threaten Iraq with a nuclear strike, he said that the UK would be justified in doing so "under the right circumstances." Specifically "Speaking on BBC One's Breakfast with Frost Mr Hoon said the UK reserved the right to use the weapons "in extreme self defence." He did not say that this case imminently appeared to apply to Iraq. Indeed the whole character of the war would have changed if there was believed to be an immediate threat of Iraq retaliating to invasion by using nuclear weapons out of theatre (ie, on US or UK soil).
I don't think the Iranians realistically believe the US will use nuclear weapons against them, except of course in case of "extreme self-defense," a case which only Iran themselves could precipitate. We know and they know both that the political and likely economic (trade) fallout from doing so would be nasty. Furthermore, we both know that the US military could systematically dismantle the Revolutionary Guards in conventional warfare, so there's little reason to.
To use your analogy, our nuclear weapons policy is to keep the gun licensed and in it's holster. The other folks out there know we have it, but that when push comes to shove, it stays there and we use our hands. The way you put it makes it sounds like we're asking Iran if they want the bombs delivered via B-2 or ICBM.
The interesting thing is, lately NASA has been primarily using relatively common digital SLR cameras. I'm not sure what modifications, if any, they've made. They do have thermal protection covers for EVA's, which are left off for photography from inside the station or shuttle.
Most of the photos seem to be taken with Kodak DSC760's, a 6 MP camera dating back to 2001 that is limited to ISO400. Lately they've also started to use the newer 12 MP Nikon D2Xs.
Granted, these are nicer than most ordinary Joe's own, but they are nothing extraordinary. However, just look at the detail they get during shuttle dockings at the ISS.
For the record, this isn't a winged spacecraft. It's a winged first stage. The article didn't catch on to it, but if you look up info on the Ares-Falcon proposal the Air Force has been mulling around for years, you'll see this is probably the same project. Weight is much less of a premium (still somewhat, however) on the first stage, because it spends less of the flight attached. Generally the first stage only contributes less 25% of the delta-V, meaning it only contributes 1/16 of final kinetic energy of the payload. So the weight of the wings doesn't hurt much.
Additionally, a first stage doesn't need a real thermal protection system. It's one less element to lift and greatly simplifies reuse. Those pointy wings on the Lockheed demonstrator would be terrible from a heat-flow standpoint anyway.
The tradeoff of weight allows controlled flyback, which makes recovery of the first stage far simpler than fishing it out of the water and cleaning it (surviving that requires parachutes and flotation provisions anyway, which although lighter than wings, are still a mass penalty). Getting a structurally intact first stage is a lot simpler than a structurally intact orbiter.
So Lockheed actually is persuing an alternative approach to reusability here.
By the way, SpaceX claims they plan to recover, refurbish, and reuse the first stage of both their Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, and the second stage of the Falcon 9. I'm honestly not sure how they intend to do the second stage, but the first stage parachutes to the ocean and is picked up by a recovery ship. Their one attempt at doing it so far failed.