Virgin's the furthest ahead here, and has a small fleet of Scaled Composite's SpaceShipTwo currently in testing. It's an aircraft-launched rocket plane, derivative of the Boeing X-20. The earlier SpaceShipOne was derivative of the Bell X-15.
Max altitudes:
- SS2: 110km (est.)
- SS1: 112km
- X-15: 108km
- X-20: 160km (est.)
- Silbervogel: 145km (est.) (WWII German design the X-20 is derived from)
- Me-263 Komet: 14km (WWII German fighter the X-15 is derived from)
(Yes, the "Sputnik moment" of using German technology strikes again)
The ISS is parked at about 186km.
The rocket plane design is cheap, but I'm not sure it's possible to actually get the necessary altitude with it. I don't know if the X-20 would've gotten that altitude or not, but Scaled Composite's estimate of 110km seems more sane given their design carries 7 more people than the X-20.
The ISS's problem isn't the cost involved in getting to it as the Soyuz is pretty cheap -- which is $45k per seat to NASA, or $20k/seat to space tourists -- it's that the number of personnel is limited by the escape spacecraft, which has been a single Soyuz capsule, so there can only be three astronauts there at any one time. NASA was supposed to have made an escape shuttle that would hold more for the ISS, but Congress canceled the funding before it could be completed.
I don't know that these designs are actually that practical for much as they don't achieve low-earth orbit. But if nothing else, it goes to show that Germany had some damn fine rocket engineers in the 1940s.
Do you have a cite for this? Reason I ask is, from what I read Sony tried this with PS2 Linux and their attempt at tax exemption was rejected by the EU. I could not find anything definitive on Google either way.
Some incorrectly speculate it was used as an attempt to help classify the PS2 as a computer to achieve tax exempt status from certain EU taxes that apply to game consoles and not computers (It was the Yabasic included with EU units that was intended to do that).[citation needed] Despite this, Sony lost the case in June 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2
Yeah, as I said in my post, it takes more fuel than getting to the moon. My point was "more" does not equal "physically impossible" as the GP's post claimed. Both Russia and us have solved the fundamental engineering challenges involved (lander -> orbiter return) and while Mars is harder to get to, it's not impossible. In fact, we're already planning such a mission.
Yes, that's why I said "more fuel than a moon trip for deceleration / liftoff... will require more still". I'm not disputing that getting to Mars is harder than getting to the moon, or that it requires more fuel. My point was the fundamental engineering of lander, orbiter, flight vectors etc has been done, and it is not impossible.
Yep-- I've owned a lot of cheap laptops, and laptops that weren't so cheap. My Fujitsus were made in Japan, and cost more than my 13" MBP... but surprisingly, the MBP is significantly better made out of superior materials.
Another thing people overlook in laptops is the display. The brightness, contrast ratio, black levels, and color gamut on the Apple LCDs is vastly superior to almost everything else out there. I've seen a Dell with a better screen, but Dell discontinued that screen option shortly after it was introduced. And it's like that for all the high-end PC notebook screen options I've seen on Anandtech -- you can't actually buy them. While the TN LCD isn't amazing compared to the better S-PVA and IPS panels on desktop monitors, it's almost unequaled among notebooks.
There's the little touches too, like the external LED battery check, the MagSafe power connector, backlit keyboard, glass touchpad, compact power supply, etc.
You get what you pay for. A $1200 MBP is a lot better than two $600 budget laptops.
And then we shall bomb your country and export democracy with our backyard-manufactured junk Apple computers. And take your oil. We're gonna bomb you until you bring us flowers. Haliburton all over your bitch. You might as well surrender right now, it's what the Republican Guard did.
Think of how a nice fresh coat of white phosphorous will make you look bright and shiny. And there's gonna be waterboarding. That's pretty much a given. Depleted uranium fertilizing your lawn.
You might as well just give up and start mailing us bulk fuel today. I prefer 87 octane, thx.
It's your own fault for being such a terrorist, really. You know Jack Bauer is right.
A small start-up company hardly changes the fact that rocketry is very expensive, and going to other planets and returning is crazy complex. There's no cheap way to do it. The "big contractors" actually have skilled scientists, engineers, and experience... and bid against each other to win the contract. No one is stopping little venture capital dot-com start-ups from trying to compete in this process. It's just that rocket science is... well, rocket science. It's a lot different from programming a hit website and making an IPO.
Yeah, that Wernher von Braun... always concerned with profits and personally designing boondoggle after boondoggle.
The way to reduce costs is to increase flight rates so that reusability becomes worthwhile and viable, not to stick everything on top of a huge rocket that flies twice a year, costs billions of dollars every time, and destroys your entire multi-billion dollar spacecraft if it fails.
We had something like that, and it's going to cease to exist in June. It could carry quite a bit of cargo, but not enough for a lunar or martian mission. You're also going to leave stuff behind that's not reusable on any type of super-long distance space trip; "reusable" only really applies to stuff within Earth's atmosphere. You need big freaking rockets to get to Mars and back, and that's all there really is to it... throwing away your escape velocity is very inefficient, and you have to keep momentum going to slingshot.
Yeah, but is that technology going to get cheaper? The fundamentals of rocket science haven't changed since the days of Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun. There's no Moore's law in effect here.
Sure, they can buy seats on the Soyuz, which has been around forever and always been very economically efficient... or SpaceShipOne/Two which are X-15 / X-20 ripoffs (which are Me-263 and some German rocket bomber ripoffs...) anyway, the X-15 / X-20 were always relatively cheap, it's just that the rocket plane B52-launched design isn't capable of enough altitude to do anything practical except serve as a vomit comet. None of the cost structures of these things has significantly changed over time.
There's some economy of scale, but it's mostly in R&D expense, not anything that any volume of space tourists is going to effect.
Barring some major technological advancement, I don't see how space exploration can do anything but remain the purview of nation-states and alliances.
Yeah, you teabaggers really need to take a fucking macroeconomics course. Bunch of ignorant, cheap, un-American, social-security sucking parasites. Keynesian economics... look into it.
Keynesian economics dictate that direct government spending is the most efficient economic stimulus, followed closely by tax cuts. Even if you think such a project is a waste of money, it isn't -- the hiring of American engineers, American workers, American astronauts etc ultimately returns *more* tax dollars to the government than the program costs. Period. That's basic macroeconomics 101, if you don't understand that, there's the door, GTFO.
The Space Shuttle program alone employs 25,000 people *directly*. That's government workers, in addition to the thousands of other contractors and businesses it benefits. And these are skilled labor positions -- engineering and science, that improve America's technological leadership and education.
If you think the government spending $0 on everything is great idea, go build your undersea city with Andrew Ryan already. Because the only thing that's actually going to do is create further deficit by decreasing tax revenues more than the expense of the programs.
Valentina Tereshkova (first woman in space) said recently she'd be happy to volunteer for a one-way trip to Mars. I'm sure you could find other veteran astronauts and cosmonauts who feel the same. I think it's a bit ghoulish, personally... the Russian scientists who sent Laika up on a one-way trip (first animal / dog in space) regretted it. I think we'd owe it to the astronauts and/or cosmonauts to at least *attempt* to bring them home safely.
It's not terribly different than going to the moon, which we've already done, and which the Russians have already done with a robotic probe returning lunar samples. Once you get going in space, it's not like there's a lot of friction, now is it?
Mars' gravity will require more fuel than a moon trip for deceleration / liftoff, and the vectors involved will require more still, but it's hardly impossible.
Your post makes Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun cry.
It doesn't matter if they do or not. Consider Fallujah, Iraq. The chief instigators were Al Queda in Iraq, headed by Zarqawi, and miscellaneous foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia, Iran (yes, even though they're Shiite), Chechnya, etc. How did these bad dudes gain power and force the local inhabitants to work for them? They were willing to do what we weren't. They would torture and kill anyone who worked with coalition forces, such as the Iraqi National Guard headed by LtCol Suleiman (RIP), and they just straight-up mass murdered the Iraqi National Police detachment. In order to maintain power, radical clerics became more radical, and moderate ones were murdered or lost their power base. Former Baathists who were still loyal to Iraq's Saddam also got in on the action.
As one Iraqi citizen in Fallujah said, "If we help the Americans, we get killed. If we help the mujahideen, we get arrested and released."
There are tremendous politics and other forces in effect; thinking everyone will be grateful is wishful thinking.
There is absolutely NO guarantee that direct military intervention is going to result in something better, either short or long term. There are examples from history when it has worked, but there are many more examples where it has failed. Do the people of Zimbabwe, as a whole, even want our help?
And frankly, we just can't afford to keep invading and rebuilding every country in the world with a shitty government.
It would be nice if the European colonial powers took responsibility for their former colonies and the instability, violence, and poverty that colonialism and their exploitation caused -- but they haven't, and they won't.
How have sanctions ever done anything useful? All they do is hurt the residents of his country -- which are literally starving and require food aid programs to survive. Sanctions or not, Mugabe will be living large and laughing loud.
I'm not advocating military intervention, btw. I don't really see that helping much either.
Similarly, I don't see how putting trade sanctions on Libya is going to do anything but hurt your average Libyans.
Yep. Countdown to someone calling you a racist in 5... 4.... anyway, Rhodesia wasn't perfect, but under Mugabe's "enlightened" slaughter of the white man, things went from being Africa's breadbasket as Rhodesia to widespread starvation that aid programs struggle to meet. The murdered whites' land was given to his cronies that didn't know the first thing about farming -- they were soldiers, thugs, and death squads, not agriculturalists.
Mugabe has been doing this sort of thing for a very, very long time. How it's any surprise to anyone is beyond me.
Go to Wikipedia and look at Mugabe's list of honorary degrees -- most of which have now been withdrawn -- and the comments people made when awarding them to him. He hasn't changed. The people who laughed at and support his earlier genocide are now just realizing that Mugabe has never been a nice guy, at all.
I do not support apartheid or white minority rule, but there are better ways to move the country forward than murder of all political opposition and everyone of a certain skin color. Yes, the white minority governments in Africa did this as well, but it was wrong when they did it, and it is wrong now. I don't see how the tragedy that was colonialism in any way justifies his actions.
There's nothing "hideous" about it. It's how the human (and probably mammalian) visual system works. In bright lighting conditions, we perceive colder temperatures as "white"; in lower lighting, it is warmer temperature light. This makes evolutionary sense, as sunliight's peak "cold" temperature is about mid-day, whereas in the morning and evening it is warmer due to the angle.
The sunlight-type bulbs are great when it's bright out. At night, your house just looks like an odd fishtank, though.
There's no such thing; all CFLs, even modern ones, have a significant start-up time. Yes, the cheap Chinese ones are especially terrible, but they all exhibit it. For a head-to-head comparison, put your "instant-on" CFL next to whatever incandescent it's rated to replace. You'll be surprised.
Even the Philips LED bulbs I've seen have used terrible LEDs with overly blue or green tints, and aren't really driven properly and look like a bad example of PWM.
If there are LED bulbs that use premium LEDs with a decent color temperature, I'd like to see them. I know it's possible, as I have a number of flashlights with them, but nothing in LED bulb land has come close to comparing with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Virgin's the furthest ahead here, and has a small fleet of Scaled Composite's SpaceShipTwo currently in testing. It's an aircraft-launched rocket plane, derivative of the Boeing X-20. The earlier SpaceShipOne was derivative of the Bell X-15.
Max altitudes:
- SS2: 110km (est.)
- SS1: 112km
- X-15: 108km
- X-20: 160km (est.)
- Silbervogel: 145km (est.) (WWII German design the X-20 is derived from)
- Me-263 Komet: 14km (WWII German fighter the X-15 is derived from)
(Yes, the "Sputnik moment" of using German technology strikes again)
The ISS is parked at about 186km.
The rocket plane design is cheap, but I'm not sure it's possible to actually get the necessary altitude with it. I don't know if the X-20 would've gotten that altitude or not, but Scaled Composite's estimate of 110km seems more sane given their design carries 7 more people than the X-20.
The ISS's problem isn't the cost involved in getting to it as the Soyuz is pretty cheap -- which is $45k per seat to NASA, or $20k/seat to space tourists -- it's that the number of personnel is limited by the escape spacecraft, which has been a single Soyuz capsule, so there can only be three astronauts there at any one time. NASA was supposed to have made an escape shuttle that would hold more for the ISS, but Congress canceled the funding before it could be completed.
I don't know that these designs are actually that practical for much as they don't achieve low-earth orbit. But if nothing else, it goes to show that Germany had some damn fine rocket engineers in the 1940s.
Do you have a cite for this? Reason I ask is, from what I read Sony tried this with PS2 Linux and their attempt at tax exemption was rejected by the EU. I could not find anything definitive on Google either way.
Some incorrectly speculate it was used as an attempt to help classify the PS2 as a computer to achieve tax exempt status from certain EU taxes that apply to game consoles and not computers (It was the Yabasic included with EU units that was intended to do that).[citation needed] Despite this, Sony lost the case in June 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2
Of course, that also says "citation needed"...
Yeah, as I said in my post, it takes more fuel than getting to the moon. My point was "more" does not equal "physically impossible" as the GP's post claimed. Both Russia and us have solved the fundamental engineering challenges involved (lander -> orbiter return) and while Mars is harder to get to, it's not impossible. In fact, we're already planning such a mission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_sample_return_mission
And that's a joint mission between NASA and the ESA... so I'm not sure why people think this is impossible.
Yes, that's why I said "more fuel than a moon trip for deceleration / liftoff... will require more still". I'm not disputing that getting to Mars is harder than getting to the moon, or that it requires more fuel. My point was the fundamental engineering of lander, orbiter, flight vectors etc has been done, and it is not impossible.
Yep-- I've owned a lot of cheap laptops, and laptops that weren't so cheap. My Fujitsus were made in Japan, and cost more than my 13" MBP... but surprisingly, the MBP is significantly better made out of superior materials.
Another thing people overlook in laptops is the display. The brightness, contrast ratio, black levels, and color gamut on the Apple LCDs is vastly superior to almost everything else out there. I've seen a Dell with a better screen, but Dell discontinued that screen option shortly after it was introduced. And it's like that for all the high-end PC notebook screen options I've seen on Anandtech -- you can't actually buy them. While the TN LCD isn't amazing compared to the better S-PVA and IPS panels on desktop monitors, it's almost unequaled among notebooks.
There's the little touches too, like the external LED battery check, the MagSafe power connector, backlit keyboard, glass touchpad, compact power supply, etc.
You get what you pay for. A $1200 MBP is a lot better than two $600 budget laptops.
I'll admit it-- you nailed us, right on dude.
And then we shall bomb your country and export democracy with our backyard-manufactured junk Apple computers. And take your oil. We're gonna bomb you until you bring us flowers. Haliburton all over your bitch. You might as well surrender right now, it's what the Republican Guard did.
Think of how a nice fresh coat of white phosphorous will make you look bright and shiny. And there's gonna be waterboarding. That's pretty much a given. Depleted uranium fertilizing your lawn.
You might as well just give up and start mailing us bulk fuel today. I prefer 87 octane, thx.
It's your own fault for being such a terrorist, really. You know Jack Bauer is right.
A small start-up company hardly changes the fact that rocketry is very expensive, and going to other planets and returning is crazy complex. There's no cheap way to do it. The "big contractors" actually have skilled scientists, engineers, and experience... and bid against each other to win the contract. No one is stopping little venture capital dot-com start-ups from trying to compete in this process. It's just that rocket science is... well, rocket science. It's a lot different from programming a hit website and making an IPO.
Heavy lift is a crazy boondoggle
Yeah, that Wernher von Braun... always concerned with profits and personally designing boondoggle after boondoggle.
The way to reduce costs is to increase flight rates so that reusability becomes worthwhile and viable, not to stick everything on top of a huge rocket that flies twice a year, costs billions of dollars every time, and destroys your entire multi-billion dollar spacecraft if it fails.
We had something like that, and it's going to cease to exist in June. It could carry quite a bit of cargo, but not enough for a lunar or martian mission. You're also going to leave stuff behind that's not reusable on any type of super-long distance space trip; "reusable" only really applies to stuff within Earth's atmosphere. You need big freaking rockets to get to Mars and back, and that's all there really is to it... throwing away your escape velocity is very inefficient, and you have to keep momentum going to slingshot.
Yeah, but is that technology going to get cheaper? The fundamentals of rocket science haven't changed since the days of Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun. There's no Moore's law in effect here.
Sure, they can buy seats on the Soyuz, which has been around forever and always been very economically efficient... or SpaceShipOne/Two which are X-15 / X-20 ripoffs (which are Me-263 and some German rocket bomber ripoffs...) anyway, the X-15 / X-20 were always relatively cheap, it's just that the rocket plane B52-launched design isn't capable of enough altitude to do anything practical except serve as a vomit comet. None of the cost structures of these things has significantly changed over time.
There's some economy of scale, but it's mostly in R&D expense, not anything that any volume of space tourists is going to effect.
Barring some major technological advancement, I don't see how space exploration can do anything but remain the purview of nation-states and alliances.
Yeah, you teabaggers really need to take a fucking macroeconomics course. Bunch of ignorant, cheap, un-American, social-security sucking parasites. Keynesian economics... look into it.
Keynesian economics dictate that direct government spending is the most efficient economic stimulus, followed closely by tax cuts. Even if you think such a project is a waste of money, it isn't -- the hiring of American engineers, American workers, American astronauts etc ultimately returns *more* tax dollars to the government than the program costs. Period. That's basic macroeconomics 101, if you don't understand that, there's the door, GTFO.
The Space Shuttle program alone employs 25,000 people *directly*. That's government workers, in addition to the thousands of other contractors and businesses it benefits. And these are skilled labor positions -- engineering and science, that improve America's technological leadership and education.
If you think the government spending $0 on everything is great idea, go build your undersea city with Andrew Ryan already. Because the only thing that's actually going to do is create further deficit by decreasing tax revenues more than the expense of the programs.
Valentina Tereshkova (first woman in space) said recently she'd be happy to volunteer for a one-way trip to Mars. I'm sure you could find other veteran astronauts and cosmonauts who feel the same. I think it's a bit ghoulish, personally... the Russian scientists who sent Laika up on a one-way trip (first animal / dog in space) regretted it. I think we'd owe it to the astronauts and/or cosmonauts to at least *attempt* to bring them home safely.
It's not terribly different than going to the moon, which we've already done, and which the Russians have already done with a robotic probe returning lunar samples. Once you get going in space, it's not like there's a lot of friction, now is it?
Mars' gravity will require more fuel than a moon trip for deceleration / liftoff, and the vectors involved will require more still, but it's hardly impossible.
Your post makes Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun cry.
That's "Bible tracts". Love, Grammar Nazi
It doesn't matter if they do or not. Consider Fallujah, Iraq. The chief instigators were Al Queda in Iraq, headed by Zarqawi, and miscellaneous foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia, Iran (yes, even though they're Shiite), Chechnya, etc. How did these bad dudes gain power and force the local inhabitants to work for them? They were willing to do what we weren't. They would torture and kill anyone who worked with coalition forces, such as the Iraqi National Guard headed by LtCol Suleiman (RIP), and they just straight-up mass murdered the Iraqi National Police detachment. In order to maintain power, radical clerics became more radical, and moderate ones were murdered or lost their power base. Former Baathists who were still loyal to Iraq's Saddam also got in on the action.
As one Iraqi citizen in Fallujah said, "If we help the Americans, we get killed. If we help the mujahideen, we get arrested and released."
There are tremendous politics and other forces in effect; thinking everyone will be grateful is wishful thinking.
There is absolutely NO guarantee that direct military intervention is going to result in something better, either short or long term. There are examples from history when it has worked, but there are many more examples where it has failed. Do the people of Zimbabwe, as a whole, even want our help?
And frankly, we just can't afford to keep invading and rebuilding every country in the world with a shitty government.
It would be nice if the European colonial powers took responsibility for their former colonies and the instability, violence, and poverty that colonialism and their exploitation caused -- but they haven't, and they won't.
Option D -- proxy war!
Not that there's enough organized opposition to arm, and not that it's guaranteed to be any better.
Given that it's Africa, the rest of the world will be choosing "not do a damn thing".
How have sanctions ever done anything useful? All they do is hurt the residents of his country -- which are literally starving and require food aid programs to survive. Sanctions or not, Mugabe will be living large and laughing loud.
I'm not advocating military intervention, btw. I don't really see that helping much either.
Similarly, I don't see how putting trade sanctions on Libya is going to do anything but hurt your average Libyans.
lol wut? We're torturing Assange? Yeah, I'm sure Obama is waterboarding the hell out of him... as he sits in a *Swedish prison* for "surprise sex".
Haloperidol. Look into it before you shoot a congresswoman in front of Safeway.
Show me on the doll where George W. Bush touched you.
Yep. Countdown to someone calling you a racist in 5... 4.... anyway, Rhodesia wasn't perfect, but under Mugabe's "enlightened" slaughter of the white man, things went from being Africa's breadbasket as Rhodesia to widespread starvation that aid programs struggle to meet. The murdered whites' land was given to his cronies that didn't know the first thing about farming -- they were soldiers, thugs, and death squads, not agriculturalists.
Mugabe has been doing this sort of thing for a very, very long time. How it's any surprise to anyone is beyond me.
Go to Wikipedia and look at Mugabe's list of honorary degrees -- most of which have now been withdrawn -- and the comments people made when awarding them to him. He hasn't changed. The people who laughed at and support his earlier genocide are now just realizing that Mugabe has never been a nice guy, at all.
I do not support apartheid or white minority rule, but there are better ways to move the country forward than murder of all political opposition and everyone of a certain skin color. Yes, the white minority governments in Africa did this as well, but it was wrong when they did it, and it is wrong now. I don't see how the tragedy that was colonialism in any way justifies his actions.
There's nothing "hideous" about it. It's how the human (and probably mammalian) visual system works. In bright lighting conditions, we perceive colder temperatures as "white"; in lower lighting, it is warmer temperature light. This makes evolutionary sense, as sunliight's peak "cold" temperature is about mid-day, whereas in the morning and evening it is warmer due to the angle.
The sunlight-type bulbs are great when it's bright out. At night, your house just looks like an odd fishtank, though.
There's no such thing; all CFLs, even modern ones, have a significant start-up time. Yes, the cheap Chinese ones are especially terrible, but they all exhibit it. For a head-to-head comparison, put your "instant-on" CFL next to whatever incandescent it's rated to replace. You'll be surprised.
Even the Philips LED bulbs I've seen have used terrible LEDs with overly blue or green tints, and aren't really driven properly and look like a bad example of PWM.
If there are LED bulbs that use premium LEDs with a decent color temperature, I'd like to see them. I know it's possible, as I have a number of flashlights with them, but nothing in LED bulb land has come close to comparing with them.
Yes, these comments from people who have never even seen snow amuse me greatly.
And if that coal plant isn't so distant? Coal power is pretty nasty. Someone pays the price, even if you do not.