I read the CIAB document when it came out as I was disappointed about the failures the Shuttle and Manned space flight had and wanted to learn more. When I finished a couple of things stuck out that I wondered about (If anyone out there knows).
1)When the tanks were still being painted white, were the impact incidents on the orbiter less than or greater than before. Reason being I've noticed when I have painted Urethane paints thats the primer is porus to allow the paint to properly bind to the surface, is it possible that water is doing the same thing and compromising the insulation materials' grip on the surface of the tank?
2)I see from the article that the sheilding is one of the things they are addressing. When I looked at the photos of the foam ramp it looked really square I would have thought a any sheilding of the pipes outside of the tank be shaped like an extended upside down teardrop with rounded edges to minimise turbulane and be more aerodynamic. Are these the types of modifications that are proposed?
Throughout the development of the orbiter it makes you wonder, since something as fundamental as engineers safety concerns were dismissed in both cases of losing an orbiter, if the engineers have ever got to recommend and carried out refinements to the design of the external tank.
One of the most striking statements from the CAIB document was that 'Management turned a memory of failure into one of success', when refering to the sheer number of impact incidents that occured to the orbiter in the past being refered to as 'in family' thus never been a problem before. In addition the Orbiter being declared as an 'operational vehicle' instead of 'in development' seems to me like an organisational excuse, surely there is a middle ground that recognises the reality of operating the Orbiters.
While radon gas may kill many people each year, it is not due to Uranium mining, it is due to naturally occuring radon in the ground which accumulates in people's homes.
So radon gas kills 20000 people per year, they are still dead. Over here where they DO mine uranium it pollutes the water table. These are two points not one. Uranium mining STILL releases Radon gas, and radon gas STILL kills people.
This is entirely false. Light water reactors used in the west do not have this capability. In order to get weapons grade plutonium from a reactor, the fuel must be removed and the Pu-239 extracted before too much of it becomes Pu-240.
Yes, but heavy water reactors do. We could argue forever about the economic and political reasons the current generation of nuclear reactors were engineered and how much heavy water and light water reactors contribute to nuclear weapons production but it still would'nt change that fact that light water reactor produce huge amounts of transuranics and are grossly inefficient. That's not that ludicrous is it?
You say you are worried about plutonium production, yet you want to build breeder reactors? Huh? What do you think breeders do? They intentionally turn uranium-238 into plutonium-239 to burn for power.
Just because it's a fast reactor dosen't mean it's a breeder reactor. IFR is in fact the opposite it uses the TRANSURANICS for energy production.
They would still require uranium mining to operate, as they require uranium-235 to run and this must still be optained from the earth.
No, they can use the waste of the current generation of reactors as fuel. Yes they CAN use U-235 as a fuel, but they don't need to use U-235. They can also use weapons grade Pu as a fuel. That is why they are so appealing.
They are no more closed-system then current U.S. reactors, which store all of the waste they produce on-site.
You seem to be missing the point, IFR does not need to store the same volume of waste as it uses 99% of the element. It simply does not produce the transuranics that the Cold-War reactors produce. Put it this way, if 100 grams of element goes into a cold war reactor 97 grams of element is waste, if 100 grams of element goes into an IFR 1 gram is waste and that waste has a maximum half life of 500 years as opposed to 97 grams for 25000 years.
They are just as suseptible to terrorism as current reactors as well.
No,no,no,no they are not
The IFR pyroprocess was designed to be 'proliferation resistant'. Simply put, this means that fuel recycled with IFR technology can't be easily used as material for nuclear weapons. Attempts to extract material to produce a nuclear weapon would require a huge, easily detectable, investment in the same type of facilities and equipment that would be required to produce the material directly from spent fuel from any type of reactor.It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of using breeder reactors, but not for the same reasons as you espouse.While I commend your pro-nuclear attitude, you do need to get your facts straight.
I am not pro-nuclear in the form you are describing as there is no future in the inefficient fuel cycle that throws away the most usable part of the element(s) calls it "Waste" and leaves it for the next 25000 years of future generations to deal with. I am pro-evolution, I am pro-susta
Now I'm not against Nuclear, but the reality is that current generation of nuclear reactors generate plutonium waste that lasts for 25000 years, thats a really bad long term investment in terms of future generation of human beings simply because we don't have the imagination or will power to implement energy systems that are economically and ecologically sustainable.
Mining uranium releases heavy/highly soluble radon gas http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html which is highly radioactive and pollutes any nearby water table. Currently it kills more people than drunk driving per annum.
As for breeder reactors, put in 5 kg of plutonium waste to use as fuel and get 15kg of highly nuclear waste from the other 10kg of elements (pollonium and paladium i think). In other words - the tonnage of waste created by these reactors increases exponentially, why do you think they were banned?
The reason is deliberate, CURRENT GENERATION NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE ENGINEERED TO PRODUCE PLUTONIUM FOR WEAPONS AS THIER MAIN PRODUCT and electricity as a by-product. Consequently they are heavily subsidised to make them appear economically viable.
The only realistic future for nuclear is the INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR, liquid metal cooled, uses 99% of the radioactive elements U238/U239 (vs less than 3% for cold war reactors)and current nuclear waste becomes a useable fuel. No need to mine uranium any more as there is enough spent fuel to use for many thousands of years, and no need to worry about those pesky terrorist spoiling your day because of the pyro-process closed loop feul re-processing. These are the types of reactors that we need to invest in around the world because they virtually eliminate waste transuranics, the volume of waste decreases and the remaining fissile radioactive material (the plutonium ash) is reduce to a half life of a mere 500 years.
Cold War reactors, should all be left to run out thier remaining lifespan and decommisioned in favour of these new generation reactors, in every way Integral Fast Reactors are safer and are engineered to produce electricity as a main product.
Sure it's easy to accept the rhetoric about Cold-War nuclear power but it's all been said before (power to cheap to meter etc), however SAFER NUCLEAR ALTERNATIVES EXIST. This is a no-brainer and I'm suprised how many people get duped into thinking that we stopped being able to come up with any new methods for generating energy since the 1950's. You think patents are only used to stop software being developed? What do you think these industry's lobby groups are doing, influencing politicians to make introducing alternative enery sources easier? Do you think these industries care that they pollute the air, make greenhouse gasses or kill generations that aren't even here yet? Public opinion must FORCE goverments and corporations to invest in better technology or we face a bleak future.
The reality is our economies are heavily dependant on oil and coal and we have reached a point where it is obvious that this economic model is not sustainable. Cold War Nuclear (including pebble bed) power is no better than these because it to produces deadly wastes from the raw material stage to the spent feul stage, and lets not forget the millions of litres of radioactive water that is also produced.
There is no future in somthing that kills our kid's kids kids kids kids.... It's time for you 'Cold War'-nuke jocks AND anti-nuke types to take a pragmatic approach, look at the facts and evolve your thinking. A sustainable nuclear alternative exists and now is the time for people to get thier heads out of the sand and relegate coal, oil and cold-war-nuclear to where they belong - history.
Integral Fast Reactor is a considerably safer option (by design) than the 'Cold War' reactors currently in service, and I think you will find an IFR was operating (the prototype) at the Argonne National Laboratory http://www.anlw.anl.gov/ within the Experimental Breeder Reactor facility. The same laboratory that designed the Cold War reactors as well.
To summarise Cold War reactors were designed to produce Plutonium (for weapons) with electricity as a byproduct, whereas IFR is designed to produce electricity. It produces half the waste and no plutonium or weapons grade material.
The main differences is Cold War reactors make the isotope into a ceramic and attempt to cool it with water where IFR uses the isotope as metal cooled with liquid metal. As ceramic is generally an insulator and water the coolant the fundamental design limitations become obvious (as the metal coolant can absorb much more energy where the water becomes steam).
However the really good thing about IFR technology is that it can use plutonium as fuel. This is the very waste product of Cold War reactors that cause the greatest concern as it has a half life of roughly 25,000 years. I believe this would be a win-win situation for many countries with large stockpiles of nuclear waste (you know those really big tanks with blue glow in them) as the current waste would become fuel and new waste products would have dramatically shorter half lives (in the hundreds of years).
Unfortunatley politicians are not very good at picking winners when it comes to these things and I think it was the current U.S administration that cut the funding to this promising facility. From what I learned about IFR, the best way to build a facility is complete complete with Fuel Reprocessing Facility. Lets just hope the French have it available as an option.
Hey, it might be all fantasy, but so far it the closest thing we have to a pragmatic and workable future for Nuclear energy that addresses the question of spent isotope waste products in a practical way (producing electricity) as opposed to letting future generations deal with it.
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the IFR project and while IANANP, my brother is.
In closed discussions politicians decided open formats were required to open closed data exchanges. M$ offered a closed word format opposed to the open 'open office' format as they were closed to an open format, thus opening an opportunity for M$ to close the open exchange of data. They could not open thier closed format and they wern't open to implementing an open format so they offered a closed open format. This has closed out the open format and keeps the closed format close to the open closed document format.
It seems fairly obvious to me and my friends that the weather has changed dramatically just by looking outside. Hotter summers, warmer winters, much much dryer (I'm in australia) and less frequent but more violent storms when the rain finally decides to (thankfully) fall.
So I wonder, putting aside for one moment all the useful things that are made with oil derivities, if we will be able to utilise (burn) all this extra carbon based energy before the consequences of using it take effect? Or, put another way, how much of these gasses can the atmosphere actually absorb before our weather becomes so violent that we can't use these energy sources anymore?
Then there is the question of heat dissapation from our cites, surely it's in the gigawatt/terrawatt range by now? Maybe not much compared to the sun, but certainly extra, it must have some sort of effect on the weather, look at the fury of the hurricanes and tornados that always appear to be in the news in the U.S. All that energy has to go somewhere and if the gases we are pumping into the atmosphere delay/halt it going into space, then how do we expect this energy to disappate?
The irony is that oil IS a really useful product, but our current day consumption of this resource is simply unrealistic and by now, obviously unsustainable, certainly selfish wrt our decendants.
Unfortunatley both our countries are sadly lacking in any political will in this department and until the reality smacks us in the face like the ground embraces a skydiver whose parachute has failed, I can't really see it changing.
I, for one, would prefer a more controlled decent!
makes you wonder why they didn't learn the lesons the first time and how long it will take for the administratium element and manager speak to creep into 'The new Nasa' again.
Hate to be pessimistic but after read the CAIB document, I still don't see engineering decisions overriding management decisions. Mitigation of the risk is the critical factor. Nasa appear to be full of too much smooooozy manager speak.
Until Nasa introduce properly structured orginisational changes that places engineering over management Nasa is destined to repeat it's mistake again (but I hope not).
The factors that contributed to all Nasa accidents so far (from apollo to columbia) have been because of how Nasa is arranged as an orginisation. Acknowledgment of the Shuttles Development status as opposed to Operational status should be reflected by dropping STS from the mission moniker. The 'Shuttle Transport Service' does not exist - it is still in development until it is retired.
This minor clue to the internal mindset of nasa management reveals that nothing has really changed and Nasa management is in PR mode again.
However it is a good sign that Nasa is looking into using existing launcher technology for the new series of launchers.but even that decision is driven by economic not engineering.
It's not worth the effort to create a >32Gb FAT32 filesystem due to performance reasons.
I found this out in the early days of my DAW (for audio work). From memory the FAT32 I made was 40Gb and the write performance degraded severely after 32GB.
The first thing to remember is that a Corporation, like IBM, is legally bound to put profit ahead of ALL other considerations. Executives may have the same considerations as employee's but they are legally bound to behave in the shareholders interest.
The second thing to remember is that the operational basis of for profit, liability limited companies and corporations is minimising risk to shareholder return by externalising it.
Or simply put "A corporations first loyalty is to profit and considers only minimising risk of losing profit"
For example if the projected amount of available work over the next, say two years, is in decline or an indian/chinese outsourcing option is available then the directors are legally bound to maintain profitability (for the next 8 quarters), shed 13000 workers and let the former employees shoulder that risk (and also all citizens through unemployment benefits paid) - it's has nothing to do with thier ability, it's all about externalising risk.
If something changed that risk equation, for example the government of EU imposed a "mass unemployment levy" where the company had to contribute some percentage of the projected unemployment benefits to the government then the decision may be different as the risk to profit equation changes.
It's situations like these that illustrate one of the many flaws in the first industrial revolution. All employees suffer the same threats (not just IT workers) where first world countries with established pay and working conditions are now competing with third world countries that do not have those conditions. Implementation of free (mercantile in reality) trade agreement's do not include creating the same legal framework for third world workers that exists for first world workers.
The downside of all this is that it is inevitable that working conditions in first world countries will continue to deteriorate until the contracts that make global trade possible factor in those conditions. This decision is another symptom of that problem.
I can definatley tell you that writing to politicians is worth the effort - it's the only way that people can weild direct influence with politicians. I have done this several times and have even been invited by policy makers to be an advisor to them. I am not an EU citizen.
Hopefully these points will assist anyone who wants to write to you politicians.
1. Keep it to ONE page only - any more than that and it won't get read.
2. Stick to the point, do not indulge yourself by expressing emotion, your letter will not be as effective.
3. Illustrate why it is a problem - politicians need only be educated about the fact to realise that they will be causing problems for their constituents and likely raise the ire of the public.
4. Be respectful, address the Member by thier proper title.
5. Use a dead tree snail mail first, fax second, email last - most politicians ignore email.
6. Give the politician oppotunity to get political mileage from your suggestions - if they look good and can be seen to be doing good it is more likely they will adopt your position(human nature - whats in it for me).
7. Use mailmerge but sign each letter personally. You can use the same letter to address all politicians on all sides of politics in your country, or in the case of the EU, other MEPs - it will just demonstrate the level of concern for this issue. You may consider changing the letter in some way to deliberatly target politicians who DON'T agree with your position, they may change thier mind.
8. Start immediatley, these things move quickly and other "entities" will be lobbying as well, before you know it it becomes law.
9. If you are really concerned READ the proposed act AND suggest changes. I have done this and it has worked.
10. THINK about your position, WHAT reasons are there for the member to adopt your position eg. the economy will suffer because small business will be locked into monopoly offerings.
The bottom line is Politicians are people to and they need to be educated regarding the issues. The good thing about this is one letter from Joe Bloggs == One letter from M$. A corporation maybe able to get direct access to the politician but if thier office is full of letters from people with a dissimilar position it wont be all that effective.
More than likely if Star Trek is cancelled now - it will never come back. Why - because Enterprise sucked and so did Voyager. What makes you think Paramount will bring back a show that didn't rate, and people thought it sucked.
I like Star Trek as sci fi. When it was being totally unplausibley nice - blech - I felt somehow violated (actually I wanted to claw my eyes out).
It's Rick Berman J.O.B to make Star Trek episodes. This is not enough - anything less than a passion for the Science Fiction won't work. Try as Mr Berman might he just dosen't seem talented at sci-fi.
Consequently the attempt at getting Paramount to keep Enterprise is doomed for that reason.
The smart move for him would be to get writers circulating around Enterprise universe that have that passion for sci-fi.
If someone with a passion for sci fi like JMS wants to do it - why not - even if he were to advise Berman.
But here's a thought what if Enterprise was being directed by someone like James Cameron.
It's interesting STORIES that keep me watching. What about TALENTED writers like Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card and fan submitted stories.
If Enterprise does'nt have kick ass sci fi episodes there really isn't any point continuing with it - and you may as well kiss the whole thing goodbye.
Slashdot Mirror
1)When the tanks were still being painted white, were the impact incidents on the orbiter less than or greater than before. Reason being I've noticed when I have painted Urethane paints thats the primer is porus to allow the paint to properly bind to the surface, is it possible that water is doing the same thing and compromising the insulation materials' grip on the surface of the tank?
2)I see from the article that the sheilding is one of the things they are addressing. When I looked at the photos of the foam ramp it looked really square I would have thought a any sheilding of the pipes outside of the tank be shaped like an extended upside down teardrop with rounded edges to minimise turbulane and be more aerodynamic. Are these the types of modifications that are proposed?
Throughout the development of the orbiter it makes you wonder, since something as fundamental as engineers safety concerns were dismissed in both cases of losing an orbiter, if the engineers have ever got to recommend and carried out refinements to the design of the external tank.
One of the most striking statements from the CAIB document was that 'Management turned a memory of failure into one of success', when refering to the sheer number of impact incidents that occured to the orbiter in the past being refered to as 'in family' thus never been a problem before. In addition the Orbiter being declared as an 'operational vehicle' instead of 'in development' seems to me like an organisational excuse, surely there is a middle ground that recognises the reality of operating the Orbiters.
So radon gas kills 20000 people per year, they are still dead. Over here where they DO mine uranium it pollutes the water table. These are two points not one. Uranium mining STILL releases Radon gas, and radon gas STILL kills people.
This is entirely false. Light water reactors used in the west do not have this capability. In order to get weapons grade plutonium from a reactor, the fuel must be removed and the Pu-239 extracted before too much of it becomes Pu-240.
Yes, but heavy water reactors do. We could argue forever about the economic and political reasons the current generation of nuclear reactors were engineered and how much heavy water and light water reactors contribute to nuclear weapons production but it still would'nt change that fact that light water reactor produce huge amounts of transuranics and are grossly inefficient. That's not that ludicrous is it?
You say you are worried about plutonium production, yet you want to build breeder reactors? Huh? What do you think breeders do? They intentionally turn uranium-238 into plutonium-239 to burn for power.
Just because it's a fast reactor dosen't mean it's a breeder reactor. IFR is in fact the opposite it uses the TRANSURANICS for energy production.
They would still require uranium mining to operate, as they require uranium-235 to run and this must still be optained from the earth.
No, they can use the waste of the current generation of reactors as fuel. Yes they CAN use U-235 as a fuel, but they don't need to use U-235. They can also use weapons grade Pu as a fuel. That is why they are so appealing.
They are no more closed-system then current U.S. reactors, which store all of the waste they produce on-site.
You seem to be missing the point, IFR does not need to store the same volume of waste as it uses 99% of the element. It simply does not produce the transuranics that the Cold-War reactors produce. Put it this way, if 100 grams of element goes into a cold war reactor 97 grams of element is waste, if 100 grams of element goes into an IFR 1 gram is waste and that waste has a maximum half life of 500 years as opposed to 97 grams for 25000 years.
They are just as suseptible to terrorism as current reactors as well.
No,no,no,no they are not
Read this http://www.anlw.anl.gov/anlw_history/reactors/ifr. html also this is from on of the inventors of IFR who can explain things a lot better than I can http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reac tion/interviews/till.html
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of using breeder reactors, but not for the same reasons as you espouse.While I commend your pro-nuclear attitude, you do need to get your facts straight.
I am not pro-nuclear in the form you are describing as there is no future in the inefficient fuel cycle that throws away the most usable part of the element(s) calls it "Waste" and leaves it for the next 25000 years of future generations to deal with. I am pro-evolution, I am pro-susta
Mining uranium releases heavy/highly soluble radon gas http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html which is highly radioactive and pollutes any nearby water table. Currently it kills more people than drunk driving per annum.
As for breeder reactors, put in 5 kg of plutonium waste to use as fuel and get 15kg of highly nuclear waste from the other 10kg of elements (pollonium and paladium i think). In other words - the tonnage of waste created by these reactors increases exponentially, why do you think they were banned?
The reason is deliberate, CURRENT GENERATION NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE ENGINEERED TO PRODUCE PLUTONIUM FOR WEAPONS AS THIER MAIN PRODUCT and electricity as a by-product. Consequently they are heavily subsidised to make them appear economically viable.
The only realistic future for nuclear is the INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR, liquid metal cooled, uses 99% of the radioactive elements U238/U239 (vs less than 3% for cold war reactors)and current nuclear waste becomes a useable fuel. No need to mine uranium any more as there is enough spent fuel to use for many thousands of years, and no need to worry about those pesky terrorist spoiling your day because of the pyro-process closed loop feul re-processing. These are the types of reactors that we need to invest in around the world because they virtually eliminate waste transuranics, the volume of waste decreases and the remaining fissile radioactive material (the plutonium ash) is reduce to a half life of a mere 500 years.
Cold War reactors, should all be left to run out thier remaining lifespan and decommisioned in favour of these new generation reactors, in every way Integral Fast Reactors are safer and are engineered to produce electricity as a main product.
Sure it's easy to accept the rhetoric about Cold-War nuclear power but it's all been said before (power to cheap to meter etc), however SAFER NUCLEAR ALTERNATIVES EXIST. This is a no-brainer and I'm suprised how many people get duped into thinking that we stopped being able to come up with any new methods for generating energy since the 1950's. You think patents are only used to stop software being developed? What do you think these industry's lobby groups are doing, influencing politicians to make introducing alternative enery sources easier? Do you think these industries care that they pollute the air, make greenhouse gasses or kill generations that aren't even here yet? Public opinion must FORCE goverments and corporations to invest in better technology or we face a bleak future.
The reality is our economies are heavily dependant on oil and coal and we have reached a point where it is obvious that this economic model is not sustainable. Cold War Nuclear (including pebble bed) power is no better than these because it to produces deadly wastes from the raw material stage to the spent feul stage, and lets not forget the millions of litres of radioactive water that is also produced.
There is no future in somthing that kills our kid's kids kids kids kids.... It's time for you 'Cold War'-nuke jocks AND anti-nuke types to take a pragmatic approach, look at the facts and evolve your thinking. A sustainable nuclear alternative exists and now is the time for people to get thier heads out of the sand and relegate coal, oil and cold-war-nuclear to where they belong - history.
IFR information is available here http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/ifr1.html
word
To summarise Cold War reactors were designed to produce Plutonium (for weapons) with electricity as a byproduct, whereas IFR is designed to produce electricity. It produces half the waste and no plutonium or weapons grade material.
The main differences is Cold War reactors make the isotope into a ceramic and attempt to cool it with water where IFR uses the isotope as metal cooled with liquid metal. As ceramic is generally an insulator and water the coolant the fundamental design limitations become obvious (as the metal coolant can absorb much more energy where the water becomes steam).
However the really good thing about IFR technology is that it can use plutonium as fuel. This is the very waste product of Cold War reactors that cause the greatest concern as it has a half life of roughly 25,000 years. I believe this would be a win-win situation for many countries with large stockpiles of nuclear waste (you know those really big tanks with blue glow in them) as the current waste would become fuel and new waste products would have dramatically shorter half lives (in the hundreds of years).
Unfortunatley politicians are not very good at picking winners when it comes to these things and I think it was the current U.S administration that cut the funding to this promising facility. From what I learned about IFR, the best way to build a facility is complete complete with Fuel Reprocessing Facility. Lets just hope the French have it available as an option.
Hey, it might be all fantasy, but so far it the closest thing we have to a pragmatic and workable future for Nuclear energy that addresses the question of spent isotope waste products in a practical way (producing electricity) as opposed to letting future generations deal with it.
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the IFR project and while IANANP, my brother is.
Some links
http://www.anlw.anl.gov/anlw_history/reactors/ifr
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99
I think I might lie down now.
So I wonder, putting aside for one moment all the useful things that are made with oil derivities, if we will be able to utilise (burn) all this extra carbon based energy before the consequences of using it take effect? Or, put another way, how much of these gasses can the atmosphere actually absorb before our weather becomes so violent that we can't use these energy sources anymore?
Then there is the question of heat dissapation from our cites, surely it's in the gigawatt/terrawatt range by now? Maybe not much compared to the sun, but certainly extra, it must have some sort of effect on the weather, look at the fury of the hurricanes and tornados that always appear to be in the news in the U.S. All that energy has to go somewhere and if the gases we are pumping into the atmosphere delay/halt it going into space, then how do we expect this energy to disappate?
The irony is that oil IS a really useful product, but our current day consumption of this resource is simply unrealistic and by now, obviously unsustainable, certainly selfish wrt our decendants.
Unfortunatley both our countries are sadly lacking in any political will in this department and until the reality smacks us in the face like the ground embraces a skydiver whose parachute has failed, I can't really see it changing.
I, for one, would prefer a more controlled decent!
Hate to be pessimistic but after read the CAIB document, I still don't see engineering decisions overriding management decisions. Mitigation of the risk is the critical factor. Nasa appear to be full of too much smooooozy manager speak.
Until Nasa introduce properly structured orginisational changes that places engineering over management Nasa is destined to repeat it's mistake again (but I hope not).
The factors that contributed to all Nasa accidents so far (from apollo to columbia) have been because of how Nasa is arranged as an orginisation.
Acknowledgment of the Shuttles Development status as opposed to Operational status should be reflected by dropping STS from the mission moniker. The 'Shuttle Transport Service' does not exist - it is still in development until it is retired.
This minor clue to the internal mindset of nasa management reveals that nothing has really changed and Nasa management is in PR mode again.
However it is a good sign that Nasa is looking into using existing launcher technology for the new series of launchers.but even that decision is driven by economic not engineering.
It's not worth the effort to create a >32Gb FAT32 filesystem due to performance reasons.
I found this out in the early days of my DAW (for audio work). From memory the FAT32 I made was 40Gb and the write performance degraded severely after 32GB.
The second thing to remember is that the operational basis of for profit, liability limited companies and corporations is minimising risk to shareholder return by externalising it.
Or simply put "A corporations first loyalty is to profit and considers only minimising risk of losing profit"
For example if the projected amount of available work over the next, say two years, is in decline or an indian/chinese outsourcing option is available then the directors are legally bound to maintain profitability (for the next 8 quarters), shed 13000 workers and let the former employees shoulder that risk (and also all citizens through unemployment benefits paid) - it's has nothing to do with thier ability, it's all about externalising risk.
If something changed that risk equation, for example the government of EU imposed a "mass unemployment levy" where the company had to contribute some percentage of the projected unemployment benefits to the government then the decision may be different as the risk to profit equation changes.
It's situations like these that illustrate one of the many flaws in the first industrial revolution. All employees suffer the same threats (not just IT workers) where first world countries with established pay and working conditions are now competing with third world countries that do not have those conditions. Implementation of free (mercantile in reality) trade agreement's do not include creating the same legal framework for third world workers that exists for first world workers.
The downside of all this is that it is inevitable that working conditions in first world countries will continue to deteriorate until the contracts that make global trade possible factor in those conditions. This decision is another symptom of that problem.
Hopefully these points will assist anyone who wants to write to you politicians.
1. Keep it to ONE page only - any more than that and it won't get read.
2. Stick to the point, do not indulge yourself by expressing emotion, your letter will not be as effective.
3. Illustrate why it is a problem - politicians need only be educated about the fact to realise that they will be causing problems for their constituents and likely raise the ire of the public.
4. Be respectful, address the Member by thier proper title.
5. Use a dead tree snail mail first, fax second, email last - most politicians ignore email.
6. Give the politician oppotunity to get political mileage from your suggestions - if they look good and can be seen to be doing good it is more likely they will adopt your position(human nature - whats in it for me).
7. Use mailmerge but sign each letter personally. You can use the same letter to address all politicians on all sides of politics in your country, or in the case of the EU, other MEPs - it will just demonstrate the level of concern for this issue. You may consider changing the letter in some way to deliberatly target politicians who DON'T agree with your position, they may change thier mind.
8. Start immediatley, these things move quickly and other "entities" will be lobbying as well, before you know it it becomes law.
9. If you are really concerned READ the proposed act AND suggest changes. I have done this and it has worked.
10. THINK about your position, WHAT reasons are there for the member to adopt your position eg. the economy will suffer because small business will be locked into monopoly offerings.
The bottom line is Politicians are people to and they need to be educated regarding the issues. The good thing about this is one letter from Joe Bloggs == One letter from M$. A corporation maybe able to get direct access to the politician but if thier office is full of letters from people with a dissimilar position it wont be all that effective.
You can be effective, Do it now
I like Star Trek as sci fi. When it was being totally unplausibley nice - blech - I felt somehow violated (actually I wanted to claw my eyes out).
It's Rick Berman J.O.B to make Star Trek episodes. This is not enough - anything less than a passion for the Science Fiction won't work. Try as Mr Berman might he just dosen't seem talented at sci-fi.
Consequently the attempt at getting Paramount to keep Enterprise is doomed for that reason.
The smart move for him would be to get writers circulating around Enterprise universe that have that passion for sci-fi. If someone with a passion for sci fi like JMS wants to do it - why not - even if he were to advise Berman. But here's a thought what if Enterprise was being directed by someone like James Cameron. It's interesting STORIES that keep me watching. What about TALENTED writers like Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card and fan submitted stories. If Enterprise does'nt have kick ass sci fi episodes there really isn't any point continuing with it - and you may as well kiss the whole thing goodbye.