According to the Media Research Center, CNN's major advertisers include:
Alfa Romeo American Petroleum Institute Audi BMW Cars.com Exxon Mobil Infiniti Lexus Mini Cooper Mercedes
That represents a fairly substantial block of their revenue who all make their profits from non-electric automotive sources. Could all that advertising revenue color CNN's views a bit?
Also, lets not forget:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." â" Theodore Roosevelt
NASA need to test the system under failure conditions to generate shutdown procedures which 'safe' an engine in failure modes. For satellite launches, it doesn't matter much *how* it fails, just *that* it fails.
For manned flights you need to know exactly how the engine reacts when it does give up, because you want a crew to survive any failures. So destructive testing is a big part of man-rating.
There's also an issue with responsibility. If a Delta-IV satellite launcher engine were to go bang, Pratt & Whitney, Rocketdyne would be blamed for the failure. If a crew were lost on the same vehicle *NASA* would get the blame.
So, if the buck stops with them, they want their own independant test program to their own, very particular, standards.
But having an engine which has passed satellite launcher testing, puts it well ahead of the game for manned use too.
Single-flight Lunar missions in the same style as Apollo are planned - mainly to be used for Crew Rotation to the planned Lunar science base.
Also potentially for some near-Earth asteroid visits if there's any money available (Griffin spoke at GRC recently and said the US won't have any spare money and needed International investment to really use the new program).
But there's nothing Ares-V can do which DIRECT couldn't also do, without the huge development cost.
The moon is just a testbed for Mars. It's three days away, not 9 months away. Lets make sure we can survive that long locally before just setting off...
And don't forget that the Shuttle will be retired in about three years. If NASA doesn't make *something* very soon, the US drops out of the list of nations capable of exploiting space, at just the time when China and India are building their programs up, and churning out many more engineers and scientists from their universities.
A robust US space program may help inspire a new generation of US engineers, mathematicians, chemists and physicists. That would be invaluable on its own.
Thats just an optional upper stage with aero shroud on top in the picture on the right.
The Core vehicle and SRB's are actually identical on both of those launchers.
The Proposal on the site explains it.
The RS-68 only needs an extra layer of redundancy in systems such as the actuators. And an independant NASA qualification program. The engine already has a max burn time somewhere around 8000seconds, so it's well proven already.
And NASA's already planning on using RS-68 for the *man-rated* Ares-V "big brother" - assuming it is ever built.
The limit is that the US can't afford to make a 'clean sheet' booster anyway. So re-use is all there is.
The true limit is whether the second vehicle gets cancelled and strands us all in Low Earth Orbit for the next 30 years, while China plods on towards the moon anyway.
I spoke with a guy from the Mission Management Team (MMT) tonight here in Cape Canaveral. He confirmed that such small pieces of gap filler are not expected to affect the creation of the barrier layer during re-entry, and so do not pose a threat to the orbiter.
The real reason for this 'repair' is because this whole mission is to "test orbiter repair techniques" - and these virtually irrelevant pieces of gap filler provide an unexpected, but very fortunate opportunity to try a real repair technique out in a relatively safe and controlled fashion.
NASA doesn't yet know if it's even possible to have an astronaut perform repair-type work on the underbelly of the orbiter - they think it would be possible, but they have no hard data to say it can be done.
But these small bits sticking out give them the perfect excuse to go test it and get some real-world experience on the issue.
If it looks like the astronaut might damage some of the Thermal Protection System tiles down there, they'll just terminate the repair attempt and fly home as-is. If not, they'll demonstrate that astronauts can go under an orbiter and perform repair tasks down there safely and without harming the TPS.
But I'll bet you'll hear the popular press making too much out of this as usual...
Why not provide TV programs for legal download?
on
TV Piracy is Next
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· Score: 2, Informative
Like the music industry is finding out, if they provide the content themselves, most people would rather pay a small fee and avoid legal complications - but right now there is no alternative.
I'd be interested in buying the latest episode of my favorite programs for a buck or two if I miss it's broadcast premier.
I'll buy the DVD's of a lot of stuff (babylon 5, stargate, trek, farscape, buffy etc), and I'll video record other stuff for viewing later, but I want copies of all the programs on my favorite TV station's website, pay a small fee and just grab it permanently and legally.
Right now the only way to get these things (without poxy adverts!) before the DVD release is illegally.
Please can we have an alternative Mr. Studio executive? Oh, and might mention it would be another way to make money from us...
I don't have much of an issue with the rest of the bill, but making the skipping of adverts illegal is crazy talk.
All it will do is make people look for versions of their films without the adverts at all - and illegal copiers would exploit that demand.
All the film companies are doing is driving their customers away.
Its an old rule of business - annoy your customers enough, and they're no longer your customers.
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According to the Media Research Center, CNN's major advertisers include:
Alfa Romeo
American Petroleum Institute
Audi
BMW
Cars.com
Exxon Mobil
Infiniti
Lexus
Mini Cooper
Mercedes
That represents a fairly substantial block of their revenue who all make their profits from non-electric automotive sources. Could all that advertising revenue color CNN's views a bit?
Also, lets not forget:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
â" Theodore Roosevelt
The SRBs which fly today on Shuttle are NOT the same ones as flew before Challenger.
They have a 100% perfect flight record since that redesign - 182 back-to-back manned flights.
NASA need to test the system under failure conditions to generate shutdown procedures which 'safe' an engine in failure modes. For satellite launches, it doesn't matter much *how* it fails, just *that* it fails.
For manned flights you need to know exactly how the engine reacts when it does give up, because you want a crew to survive any failures. So destructive testing is a big part of man-rating.
There's also an issue with responsibility. If a Delta-IV satellite launcher engine were to go bang, Pratt & Whitney, Rocketdyne would be blamed for the failure. If a crew were lost on the same vehicle *NASA* would get the blame.
So, if the buck stops with them, they want their own independant test program to their own, very particular, standards.
But having an engine which has passed satellite launcher testing, puts it well ahead of the game for manned use too.
Ares-V *is* to be fully man rated.
Single-flight Lunar missions in the same style as Apollo are planned - mainly to be used for Crew Rotation to the planned Lunar science base.
Also potentially for some near-Earth asteroid visits if there's any money available (Griffin spoke at GRC recently and said the US won't have any spare money and needed International investment to really use the new program).
But there's nothing Ares-V can do which DIRECT couldn't also do, without the huge development cost.
The moon is just a testbed for Mars. It's three days away, not 9 months away. Lets make sure we can survive that long locally before just setting off... And don't forget that the Shuttle will be retired in about three years. If NASA doesn't make *something* very soon, the US drops out of the list of nations capable of exploiting space, at just the time when China and India are building their programs up, and churning out many more engineers and scientists from their universities. A robust US space program may help inspire a new generation of US engineers, mathematicians, chemists and physicists. That would be invaluable on its own.
Thats just an optional upper stage with aero shroud on top in the picture on the right. The Core vehicle and SRB's are actually identical on both of those launchers. The Proposal on the site explains it.
The RS-68 only needs an extra layer of redundancy in systems such as the actuators. And an independant NASA qualification program. The engine already has a max burn time somewhere around 8000seconds, so it's well proven already. And NASA's already planning on using RS-68 for the *man-rated* Ares-V "big brother" - assuming it is ever built.
The limit is that the US can't afford to make a 'clean sheet' booster anyway. So re-use is all there is. The true limit is whether the second vehicle gets cancelled and strands us all in Low Earth Orbit for the next 30 years, while China plods on towards the moon anyway.
I spoke with a guy from the Mission Management Team (MMT) tonight here in Cape Canaveral. He confirmed that such small pieces of gap filler are not expected to affect the creation of the barrier layer during re-entry, and so do not pose a threat to the orbiter.
The real reason for this 'repair' is because this whole mission is to "test orbiter repair techniques" - and these virtually irrelevant pieces of gap filler provide an unexpected, but very fortunate opportunity to try a real repair technique out in a relatively safe and controlled fashion.
NASA doesn't yet know if it's even possible to have an astronaut perform repair-type work on the underbelly of the orbiter - they think it would be possible, but they have no hard data to say it can be done.
But these small bits sticking out give them the perfect excuse to go test it and get some real-world experience on the issue.
If it looks like the astronaut might damage some of the Thermal Protection System tiles down there, they'll just terminate the repair attempt and fly home as-is. If not, they'll demonstrate that astronauts can go under an orbiter and perform repair tasks down there safely and without harming the TPS.
But I'll bet you'll hear the popular press making too much out of this as usual...
Like the music industry is finding out, if they provide the content themselves, most people would rather pay a small fee and avoid legal complications - but right now there is no alternative. I'd be interested in buying the latest episode of my favorite programs for a buck or two if I miss it's broadcast premier. I'll buy the DVD's of a lot of stuff (babylon 5, stargate, trek, farscape, buffy etc), and I'll video record other stuff for viewing later, but I want copies of all the programs on my favorite TV station's website, pay a small fee and just grab it permanently and legally. Right now the only way to get these things (without poxy adverts!) before the DVD release is illegally. Please can we have an alternative Mr. Studio executive? Oh, and might mention it would be another way to make money from us...
I don't have much of an issue with the rest of the bill, but making the skipping of adverts illegal is crazy talk. All it will do is make people look for versions of their films without the adverts at all - and illegal copiers would exploit that demand. All the film companies are doing is driving their customers away. Its an old rule of business - annoy your customers enough, and they're no longer your customers.