How about finding a way to mounting it to the ISS?
Same problem: the Hubble is in low earth orbit, nowhere near the ISS's relatively high orbit. You would have to put some kind of booster on it to get it up to the ISS.
One other problem is that in the PC industry, hardware product lifespans are 2-3 years.
Unfortunately, game console lifespans are 5-7 years.
This means that after a couple years, your supply of those "cheap PC parts" starts drying up, and your costs start rising again because you're the only ones still buying 700 mhz Pentium 3's.
For things like IDE DVD-ROM drives, it's a simple fix to replace the part with a newer equivalent unit. For your CPU, GPU, ethernet chips, etc, though, you're stuck either paying to keep an assembly line open, or redesigning the console.
John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace group have also been doing vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) work. Both they and the Japanese group are concentrating on going lots of unmanned testing of subscale vehicles, so they're getting lots of experience and data at a fairly low cost.
Though, the Black Armadillo X Prize vehicle will use parachute recovery. I think that was because A) it's simpler and B) they were concerned about whether or not they would have the VTVL working on the big rocket in time. Maybe John Carmack will comment if he reads this.
I never thought I would say this about a Masamune Shirow manga, but GITS2 sucked!
Instead of brilliant mecha design and architecture, we get variations on "butt floss girl floating in cyberspace." Which I guess is his new variation on "butt floss girl climbing out of mecha." It's like "Cable Porn: The Manga."
I actually cancelled my order at the local comic shop after issue 3 came out.
I've talked to other people whe have also been turned off of Shirow recently because of the cheese. It's kind of sad, he's still a talented artist, but he seems to have lost all perspective on reality.
The REX 6000 was a similarly sized PDA that came out shortly after the Palm Pilot. I recall it had the serious limitation that you couldn't input data on it, but it was very tiny.
This one seems a little more powerful, and can probably do data input.
Once the word about click death got out, Zip was dead in the water. You just can't use a backup medium that could kill the drive, that will in turn kill any new disk put int he drive. No freaking way.
Plus, that was about the time that CD-R got really cheap, and every computer in the world had a CD-ROM drive already, so the whole reason to use Zip disks (moving big files) totally evaporated. Why use a medium that self-destructs violently, is limited in size, and costs more?
That being said, I just bought a Treo 90 after looking at the Palm OS 5 stuff. I wanted the thumbboard, and the only OS 5 devices that have it are way too expensive.
If they have to do this, they should seriously consider the Alphasmart Dana. It's a Palm OS device in a laptop-like configuration. It has a normal sized keyboard, a much larger screen than most Palms (5x wide), USB for printer output, and is available with optional wireless to boot.
Plus, it's much tougher than any laptop, and has no hard drive to crash. And, it costs under $500.00 US. TCO should be low as well, there's just not as much to go wrong with a Palm device. Lastly, people won't be as likely to steal them, because there isn't a black market for them.
The sticking point might be software, but Alphasmart has made a business out of supporting this market, so I know some options are available.
It's not going to do as much as a full-fledged laptop, but it should be able to do the basics just fine.
I'm thinking you can view this as either a mini-laptop with mobile or a super-PDA.
As a mini-laptop, I'd start just below entry level for a new laptop, and add the value of wireless. New laptops start in the $600-700 range, so we'll say 550 plus $100 for wireless is $650.
As a super-PDA, you might be able to justify it as a step up from a Sharp SL-C7xx series, which would take you into the $800-900 range.
The rumors of a thousand ill-informed people do not add up to the knowledge of a single well-informed person. So be careful to verify what you read before accepting it as Truth.
Amen. The information on the Internet is broad, but shallow. Learning about something in depth still requires a good book, maybe several of them. And you can't beat browsing the shelves of a decent college-level library.
I have read novels on-line, but usually only because hardcopy versions were not readily available.
I do find out about a lot of the books I read on-line, though.
Seriously. This year at Otakon was especially bad. Way more pandhandlers, and more security incidents.
It made an impression when a parking lot attendant told me that for my own protection I really needed to leave my car in a garage if I was going to leave it overnight. The parking lots aren't safe, apparently, and there certainly were lots of street people hanging around.
Everything you are saying abotu the 1960's-era rockets is correct, and particularly your reference to the N-1 is spot on.
OTOH, it's not the 1960's any more. In particular, the DC-X program, and programs that follow in its footsteps at Armadillo Aerospace and the Japanese National Aerospace lab have demonstrated a great deal of success getting multiple engines to work together, balance out and provide VTVL capability. The improvements in computers since then make a big difference.
It's still not an "easy" problem, though, and it's not clear that lots of smaller engines is a good way to go.
Berke Breathed is at best a competent artist, though I'll give him points for having his own style.
As for Doonesbury, Trudeau hasn't drawn the strip in years (probably more than a decade). He hires assistants to draw in his style, which is why the strip is so bland.
Artistically, neither of them are any great shakes. They get the job done, that's about it.
Now Bill Watterston, OTOH, can freaking DRAW. When he would cut loose and do a full-page Sunday spread, it was amazing. Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows) is another amazing artist who's still working, though his writing is kind of ordinary. To say nothing of the long-time greats, like Hal Foster (Prince Valiant) or Alex Toth (Flash Gordon).
The real problem that written science fiction is facing is the same one that all genres of printed fiction are currently facing: books have doubled in price in the last 10 years.
This has meant that most consumers are less willing to take risks, because if you get a Shemp, you're out twice as much cash. So they tend to stick with their favorites and not take chances on newcomers.
The publishers have played to this by pushing their A-list authors as much as possible to maximize their profits.
The problem is, this only works in the short term. Hot authors don't stay hot forever, and if you don't have a healthy mid-list of up-and-coming writers, your market will eventually hit a downturn as the A-list makes less and less money and there is no mid-list to step up and become the new A-list authors. Currently, the mid-list sucks, and being a newcomer really sucks.
One possible solution may be electronic publishing, particularly of short fiction. It would have a low cost threshold for publishing, which would allow low cost distribution while still maintaining modest profits. It could be a great way for writers to get exposure. They just have to keep it cheap (buck a story? penny a page?) and let the user wind up owning a copy in some halfway convenient open format.
It would make the foundation for a kickass Linux game distribution, since all the important hardware would be on the same board, and thus standardized.
There was an animated version of Red Planet a couple years ago that sort of did this. They basically set it on a planet in another star system that was like the old-school version of Mars.
It wasn't a bad take on the story, though the animation was fairly bland.
Job isn't a bad book, but it's not a good introduction to Heinlein. It's definitely part of the later period. For that matter, I really liked the pioneer parts of Time Enough for Love, but I woudn't recommend it as a first read.
Slashdot Mirror
How about finding a way to mounting it to the ISS?
Same problem: the Hubble is in low earth orbit, nowhere near the ISS's relatively high orbit. You would have to put some kind of booster on it to get it up to the ISS.
Jon Acheson
I just hope they aren't taking money away from everyone else in the state to pay for something that's only going to benefit the cities.
Jon Acheson
I seem to remember a Sega-branded expansion card that came with a controller.
Jon Acheson
Any stolen helicopter or airplane must be destroyed by Airwolf, not Bond, it's in the NATO charter.
Jon Acheson
I'd say that HAL was definitely a robot, but I also think HAL is a poor choice for inclusion in the hall of fame.
:)
HAL is the poster child for anthropomorphism in AI. That is not the message they should be sending, IMHO.
I don't mind R2D2 as much, because he is basically functional and non-anthropomorphic in design.
And don't get me started about Twikki...
Jon Acheson
One other problem is that in the PC industry, hardware product lifespans are 2-3 years.
Unfortunately, game console lifespans are 5-7 years.
This means that after a couple years, your supply of those "cheap PC parts" starts drying up, and your costs start rising again because you're the only ones still buying 700 mhz Pentium 3's.
For things like IDE DVD-ROM drives, it's a simple fix to replace the part with a newer equivalent unit. For your CPU, GPU, ethernet chips, etc, though, you're stuck either paying to keep an assembly line open, or redesigning the console.
Jon Acheson
Before we go anywhere else but here, we need to do a lot better job of lowering the cost of launching payloads to earth orbit.
Until we have that down, everything else, including a Moonbase, Mars, or a space elevator is just too expensive.
Jon Acheson
John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace group have also been doing vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) work. Both they and the Japanese group are concentrating on going lots of unmanned testing of subscale vehicles, so they're getting lots of experience and data at a fairly low cost.
Though, the Black Armadillo X Prize vehicle will use parachute recovery. I think that was because A) it's simpler and B) they were concerned about whether or not they would have the VTVL working on the big rocket in time. Maybe John Carmack will comment if he reads this.
Jon Acheson
I never thought I would say this about a Masamune Shirow manga, but GITS2 sucked!
Instead of brilliant mecha design and architecture, we get variations on "butt floss girl floating in cyberspace." Which I guess is his new variation on "butt floss girl climbing out of mecha." It's like "Cable Porn: The Manga."
I actually cancelled my order at the local comic shop after issue 3 came out.
I've talked to other people whe have also been turned off of Shirow recently because of the cheese. It's kind of sad, he's still a talented artist, but he seems to have lost all perspective on reality.
Jon Acheson
The REX 6000 was a similarly sized PDA that came out shortly after the Palm Pilot. I recall it had the serious limitation that you couldn't input data on it, but it was very tiny.
This one seems a little more powerful, and can probably do data input.
Once the word about click death got out, Zip was dead in the water. You just can't use a backup medium that could kill the drive, that will in turn kill any new disk put int he drive. No freaking way.
Plus, that was about the time that CD-R got really cheap, and every computer in the world had a CD-ROM drive already, so the whole reason to use Zip disks (moving big files) totally evaporated. Why use a medium that self-destructs violently, is limited in size, and costs more?
Jon Acheson
The new Zire 21 is also a Palm OS 5 device.
That being said, I just bought a Treo 90 after looking at the Palm OS 5 stuff. I wanted the thumbboard, and the only OS 5 devices that have it are way too expensive.
Jon Acheson
If they have to do this, they should seriously consider the Alphasmart Dana. It's a Palm OS device in a laptop-like configuration. It has a normal sized keyboard, a much larger screen than most Palms (5x wide), USB for printer output, and is available with optional wireless to boot.
Plus, it's much tougher than any laptop, and has no hard drive to crash. And, it costs under $500.00 US. TCO should be low as well, there's just not as much to go wrong with a Palm device. Lastly, people won't be as likely to steal them, because there isn't a black market for them.
The sticking point might be software, but Alphasmart has made a business out of supporting this market, so I know some options are available.
It's not going to do as much as a full-fledged laptop, but it should be able to do the basics just fine.
Jon Acheson
I'm thinking you can view this as either a mini-laptop with mobile or a super-PDA.
As a mini-laptop, I'd start just below entry level for a new laptop, and add the value of wireless. New laptops start in the $600-700 range, so we'll say 550 plus $100 for wireless is $650.
As a super-PDA, you might be able to justify it as a step up from a Sharp SL-C7xx series, which would take you into the $800-900 range.
Either way, it seems overpriced to me.
Jon Acheson
Back in the day, at least.
The rumors of a thousand ill-informed people do not add up to the knowledge of a single well-informed person. So be careful to verify what you read before accepting it as Truth.
And never, never trust MapQuest.
Jon Acheson
Amen. The information on the Internet is broad, but shallow. Learning about something in depth still requires a good book, maybe several of them. And you can't beat browsing the shelves of a decent college-level library.
I have read novels on-line, but usually only because hardcopy versions were not readily available.
I do find out about a lot of the books I read on-line, though.
Jon Acheson
Seriously. This year at Otakon was especially bad. Way more pandhandlers, and more security incidents.
It made an impression when a parking lot attendant told me that for my own protection I really needed to leave my car in a garage if I was going to leave it overnight. The parking lots aren't safe, apparently, and there certainly were lots of street people hanging around.
Jon Acheson
Well, yes and no, from what I understand.
Everything you are saying abotu the 1960's-era rockets is correct, and particularly your reference to the N-1 is spot on.
OTOH, it's not the 1960's any more. In particular, the DC-X program, and programs that follow in its footsteps at Armadillo Aerospace and the Japanese National Aerospace lab have demonstrated a great deal of success getting multiple engines to work together, balance out and provide VTVL capability. The improvements in computers since then make a big difference.
It's still not an "easy" problem, though, and it's not clear that lots of smaller engines is a good way to go.
Disclaimer: I am not an aerospace engineer.
Jon Acheson
Right now it's one of the three or so comics I actually bother to read in the paper.
(Get Fuzzy, Piranha Club, and sometimes Dilbert).
Jon Acheson
Berke Breathed is at best a competent artist, though I'll give him points for having his own style.
As for Doonesbury, Trudeau hasn't drawn the strip in years (probably more than a decade). He hires assistants to draw in his style, which is why the strip is so bland.
Artistically, neither of them are any great shakes. They get the job done, that's about it.
Now Bill Watterston, OTOH, can freaking DRAW. When he would cut loose and do a full-page Sunday spread, it was amazing. Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows) is another amazing artist who's still working, though his writing is kind of ordinary. To say nothing of the long-time greats, like Hal Foster (Prince Valiant) or Alex Toth (Flash Gordon).
...is another name to throw out as an up-and-coming writer.
Jon Acheson
The real problem that written science fiction is facing is the same one that all genres of printed fiction are currently facing: books have doubled in price in the last 10 years.
This has meant that most consumers are less willing to take risks, because if you get a Shemp, you're out twice as much cash. So they tend to stick with their favorites and not take chances on newcomers.
The publishers have played to this by pushing their A-list authors as much as possible to maximize their profits.
The problem is, this only works in the short term. Hot authors don't stay hot forever, and if you don't have a healthy mid-list of up-and-coming writers, your market will eventually hit a downturn as the A-list makes less and less money and there is no mid-list to step up and become the new A-list authors. Currently, the mid-list sucks, and being a newcomer really sucks.
One possible solution may be electronic publishing, particularly of short fiction. It would have a low cost threshold for publishing, which would allow low cost distribution while still maintaining modest profits. It could be a great way for writers to get exposure. They just have to keep it cheap (buck a story? penny a page?) and let the user wind up owning a copy in some halfway convenient open format.
Jon Acheson
It would make the foundation for a kickass Linux game distribution, since all the important hardware would be on the same board, and thus standardized.
Kind of like the Indrema, only real.
Jon Acheson
There was an animated version of Red Planet a couple years ago that sort of did this. They basically set it on a planet in another star system that was like the old-school version of Mars.
It wasn't a bad take on the story, though the animation was fairly bland.
Jon Acheson
Job isn't a bad book, but it's not a good introduction to Heinlein. It's definitely part of the later period. For that matter, I really liked the pioneer parts of Time Enough for Love, but I woudn't recommend it as a first read.