This happens frequently. I have two kids one in high school the other will enter 5th grade new term. There are a few every year in elementary school. But at some point they get pulled from normal class and sent to special ed class. In high school many kids fail, an alarming number of them.
It's easy to write about how schools aren't good. But I have two kids age 17 and 10. When I go to there schools and talk to the people that work there I am quite impressed. They know a lot more abut education then I do. The have meeting hwere the teachers get together and see what works and what doesn't.
I Challenge everyone who says the "schools are bad" to point to a specific school by name and say one specific thing you would change.
But you look at the numbers and it's easy to see who does well and who does not. The number one predictor of which students will do well is how well their parents did in school. Kids grow up to be like their parents. (Yes there are many exceptions.)
It does work that way. Sometimes we hire "fresh outs" (recent graduates) You have to give them well defined tasks and they need close supervision and support but they tend to be very productive in those tasks.
A accountant or lawyer is different. They work for the public and a licensed.
"...The energy savings from using a balloon are only a small percentage of the overall energy required to achieve orbit..."
You are looking at this from a university "Physics 101" perspective. If you were an engineer you would not be allowed to "neglect the effects of the atmosphere" These effects are...
1) There is a huge amount a friction drag. You have to fly through many tens of miles at high mach numbers, this require a lot of power.
2) Because of #1 above the vehicle must be quite strong with a structure that can withstand large aerodynamic forces. This structure is heavy.
3) Remember the "rocket equation"? That aerodynamic shell counts as "payload" in the equation.
4) Sea level pressure is not the same as what we'd see at 50,000. The optimum design of a rocket exhaust bell depends on the ambient pressure. If you can start at a 50K feet you can optimize the rocket to work in low ambient pressure.
So if you can start at 50,000 feet you avoid quite a bit of aerodynamic force, so youe structure can be lighter.
Almost all space launches have there launch trajectories compromised. They waste a bit of fuel by going straight up (which adds zero "deta V".) before they pitch over. Also you will se them throttle the engines and run at less to 100% efficiency so as to reduce aerodynamic loads to keep them in limit.
No, I am not a rocket scientist but these are hundreds of them walking the wallways here at work. (I only do software.)
No it's not. Steve himself described it at it's introduction as a general purpose computer then can run many applications, one of those applications happens to be a cell phone. Infact you can buy an Apple "iPod Touch" which is just like an iPhone except it lacks the phone part.
He was right. the iPhone is popular because it can do "anything". Well anything within the limits of it's small screen size.
The limitation on distributing information only applies to developers not end users and it is silly because anyone can get this information for free from Apple's web site
Right now Apple is the only company that makes the "whole stack" the computer, the OS, the applications and now even the retail store.
This means Apple gets ALL the money. But also means that Apple can test everything and see that it works together and does not need to waste time and money supporting every possible combination of components.
It's more than just marking Apple has a unique product. No one else sell you a system that thy built top to bottom. Well OK Sun can but they don't go after home users.
OK markeing is a big factor with Apple but it would fail if they didn't have a product people want. It's the combination of products AND marketing.
"..The US government doesn't sell people in "people stores"
GW Bush has not yet finished unilaterally repealing the constitution. He still has a few months left to finish so maybe he'll start working on the 13th amendment next. Who knows
For those not from the US the 13th starts off with the words "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude..." Repeals the 13th and then we could see "peole stores" again. We had then here before 1865.
At first I would have areed that Macs hitts 10% has nothing to do with Linux. But now I think "maybe".
I think many people go with Windows because either they did not now there was a choice. (many people do not know the OS is just a program you run.) or they were afraid to be "different".
Once this people see that there are options and "different" is OK. then they might look around and if they look they might notice Linux.
"normal people (not just us geeks) are choosing to go with a different OS, rather than staying with the headache-inducing Windows."
What's really interesting is the demographics of the people who buy Apple computers. You think it would be young people. Not now Apple costomers tend to be much older and much better educated then the average PC buyer. Turns out if you are a 40+ year old professional with a graduate level education you are a prime demographic for Apple's Mac. These people tend to NOT be geeks of "on the fringe" Certainly these people are as full on mainstream as it gets. (and there have the money to buy what they like.)
"No one (with power in NASA or gov't) is interested in getting back to the moon without a billion rules, regulations, and safety measures."
Even if that were true the cost of five really nice seats is not much. What costs is the thousands of people that stay on the ground. The flight hardware is "nothing"
Where do yo think those billions go? Almost all of it is paid in saleray to middle class enginers and technicains. Noe of those guys are ritch. Upper middle class mostly.
People always think of the big rocket as being the expensive part. It isn't. It's that army of people who support it. Just one simple little thing like inspecting a weld joint with X-ray. You need to maintain a whole lab and trained people. and then you have the mission asserace people who check that the work was done and that the correct weld was inspeced and so on and so on. And then you have to pay me (I'm typing this while waiting for a test to complete.) Me and 12 others work on getting telemerty from some data link to about 50 or 100 computer screens. Next you have the engineers that look at that data and not just durring flight. We support tests on the pad or hangers, several a week.
And yes we have to follow dumb OSHA rules like not placing large object on file cabinets that might fall on our heads and we have to hold fire drills twice a year and I've got to take a CPR class even if I'm a software engineer because we need 1 in 20 or so people to know CPR.
Oh, and recently the window washer outside is required to use a safety harness and helmet. Darn rules running up the costs. But would you change them?
"Just use the equipment from the Apollo program...problem solved."
Even if this could be done there are problems...
1) Why bother. The Apollo can only support a VERY high risk "plant the flag" type mission. We do not want to do that mission.
2) Many people just don't realize how risky and shoe string the Appollo design was. I think if we started it up we could expect to loose one in ten missions. NASA did 6 missions and almost lost one. It was also a very expensive design. The expense was the reason NASA went for the shuttle, they thought it would be cheaper. It would have been cheaper had they been able to run as many missions per year as were planned. But the first accident caused the major user the Air Force abandon the program. With most flights now canceled the cost per flight went through the roof.
Bottom line is that Apollo was risky and expensive and could only do one very limited mission. That is NOT what we want now. Now the idea is to build a robust transportation system that can support a range of missions
"What object is in the hands of the 3rd woman from the left"
Yes, that would be a hard question for a computer. But I bet I could write a program to solve it.
I'd build a porn site and I'd have that site link directly to your site. The would-be porn viewers would be directed to a copy of your page and required to solve it before being given access to some video downloads.
There are likely a millions ways to set this up but all of then simply use a "human in the loop"
There was a survey done a few years back where they went to some public places like the shopping mall and asked the "man on the street" science related quetions. One was "If NASA wanted to go to the moon do you think it would be cost effective to simply fly the shuttle to the moon.?" Lots of people thought that was a great idea and would save money. Half the people they talked with saw no problem with simply driving to shuttel to the moon.
I think we have the same rather un-informed idea here. Yes we might be able to push ISS there but (1) Maybe radiation would kill the people inside. the Earth's magnetic field does not extend all the way to the moon and (2) How would you get food and water to a lunar orbiting ISS?
That said. I don't see how people can get to the moon or Mars without something like ISS in lunar or Mars orbit if NASA keeps their current policy of not sending people to places were there is no "lifeboat". That policy will have to change or going to those places will be even more expensive
I have to agree that the Adobe products don't have open source equivalents. Gimp is not Photoshop. But really how many Windows users use Photoshop? I'd bet not even 1%. Most just surf the web and read email. Some use MS Office. Very few are using their PC to create digital content at the profesional level where Adobe CS3 is the "standard". All of those web surfers and email readers could switch over to Ubuntu Linux and not miss a beat. Of those who do use Adobe for professional work a slight majority are on Apple's Mac OS X. In the end the need to run Adobe's suit does not hold many back.
The big hang up is games. If you bought the PC and run Windows toplay games you are kind of stuck there. I suspect the huge majority of Windows users use the machine for games mostly
Here in Los Angeles the police department (LAPD) has the goal to hire more woman officers. I think they want either 45% or 50%. The problem is the totally lopsided number of make vs. female applicants. It's like 10 to 1 more men apply for the job. So, what they do is test everyone. They hire EVERY female that makes a passing score and then they hire the top scoring males turning most of them away. So technically every person is "qualified" because they passed the test but on average the men all got near 100% score and the females on average did much worse some barely passed. In fact few females can pass the test at all. It includes such tasks as climbing over a 6 foot wall.
Now later what we hear is that the men get promotions faster. Why is that? Well ALL the men had very high scores, they turn away all but the best men and take any woman can pass. What this tells us is that the test really DOES measure how well you will perform on the job. So those scoring higher get the promotions
The fair way to handle this is to get more female applicants but that is really hard. Not many little girls want to be cops.
You have the same problem with engineers. You have to really want to be one or you just will not do well neither in school or on the job later.. If you don't like designing machines you won't be good at it.
It can work without quotas. For example I work for our campany's CEO is an African American Woman. We don't use quotas. The thing that will work best is to broaden to pool. We have to make millions of 12 year old minority girls WANT to grow up to be chemists, engineers, physicists and so on. And it has to start at that age, middle school of before. High school is to late.
Back to the LAPD quota problem. If the numbers of male and female applicants were equal then I'm sure the test scores would be equal because then they could turn down low scoring (but still passing) women that they are currently forced to hire.
Even if you were right and a Saturn V could be found or re-built you would not want ot use it. The saturn V was designed to place a small minimal size lander on the moon for a short stay. Now we want to send something MUCH larger to the moon.
"Larry King stealing this guy's identity to buy ziploc bags and passing them on to the CIA to "microwave test" his DNA? "
Maybe he's not so wacky.
I read this as a kind of political performance art. He is making a statement that sails "Here is just one more law suit not un-like the millions you've seen before." And you know what? He's right. No so different really.
Kind of like the guy barfs on a canvas and says it's "art". He is making a statement about how stupid and gullible some art critics and buyers are. Like "If you buy that I've got one just like it here."
OK so he gets control of the Java compiler. What then? He is running as a normal user in a normal user account and he still has a long ways to go to take over a Linux or BSD machine.
If you want to run code as the user then it's simpler to just trick him. Write a trojan. "click here for free porn" should work well enough.
"The trouble is, the contemporary battlefield doesn't need the "tremendous force" of 38 tons of bombs, from 35K feet,"
You are wrong about that. The war in Bosnia was ended by a single large bomber mission. Prior to that mission close air support aircraft were attacking single vehicles one at a time. Then the Serb army massed for an offensive but before they could launch it a b2 was re-directed in flight. They lost about 250 men in that one B2 attack. This caused the Serb army to rebel against their government, saying in effect we are not going to fight any more.
"Hubble cost about $2.5 billion to build and launch [wikipedia.org]. The Shuttle costs $1.3 billion per launch [wikipedia.org] at the rate of ~7 launches a year."
You are correct about this. It would have been cheaper to launch multiple copies of Hubble than to service it. Note that all major telescopes after Hubble are designed NOT to be serviced. Seems the folks at NASA learned something. Launching a replacement is cheaper then service but more than that. Hubble had to be placed in a very non-optimal orbit so that it could be reached by the Shuttle.
There is another problem with manned missions. The lead time is very, very long. It takes roughtly 20 years from concept to flight for a new manned vehicle. Not just space craft. Look at the B2 bomer and so on. They are very complex systems and you have to design and build not just the vehicle. The vehicle is the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of the work is the support infra structure that stays on the ground. Training up 1,000 technicians, the mission control and ground stations. Assembly building and repair depots and then the long supply chain of smaller contractors. For a small platform like Phoenix (that is on Mars now) all of this is small but for hugly complex system all of this is a 20 year project.
Notice that the Space Shuttle is basically 1970's technology. A mission to Mars on 2030 would use 2010 technology. I think a manned Mars mission will have to wait until about 2050 or so.
"Unfortunately, it's not going to happen if the "No manned space program!" supporters get their way. Those supporters keep telling us that all science can be achieved without a manned space program. Yet we have yet to see a probe provide as much useful material, data, and support infrastructure for return missions as the manned space program"
There WILL be a sample return mision long before a manned mission to mars. We we need to perfect the technology needed to lift off mars and return to Earth before we send people.
Actually getting people to mars is not so hard what's hard is (1) Launching the Mars to Earth mission. and (2) Figuring out how to keep people alive and healthy for 2.5 years in deep space.
It is a kind of race as I see it. It will take 25 or more years to solve the two big above problems but in 25 years machine will become much smarter and more capable. Even when people do go back to the moon and to Mars most work on the surface will be done by remote control. There is the problem of "total lifetime radiation dosage" so time outside must be rationed.
Lot's of automated equipment will have to be built, sent and tested ahead of people. Right now half of what is sent to mars fails. We will want better odds before we send people.
Even at $5/galon gas is not really expensive. The cost of driving your car is the sum of the (1) price of the car, (2) insurance, (3) taxes, (4) maintance and (4) fuel. For most peole I know #1 is by far the largest factor. People use something lke 600 galons of gas a year. That's only $3,000. compared to the price of a car $3K is not much.
I's not imposable to make one. I worked on a digital camera project twice. Today to skill set you'd want to develop is learning how to program an FPGA.
Kodak sells the "engineering grade" chips cheap because they may have minor defects. I'd say a "few" thousand bucks and about a year of your spare time and you'd have it. I've been through this process twice now. Both were amateur projects to build astronomical cameras. For use in a studio it would be easier because you would not need the vacuum or thermoelectric cooling systems.
Look around in the Internet and you see that quite a few people have done this, designs and ideas are floating around and there are text books that cover the subject.
The early Heinlein books were written for younger readers later he targeted adults.
But don't forget Jules Verne. From the Earth to the Moon, 10,000 leagues under the sea, and the Center of the Earth and so on. I likely have the titles wrong
Slashdot Mirror
This happens frequently. I have two kids one in high school the other will enter 5th grade new term. There are a few every year in elementary school. But at some point they get pulled from normal class and sent to special ed class. In high school many kids fail, an alarming number of them.
It's easy to write about how schools aren't good. But I have two kids age 17 and 10. When I go to there schools and talk to the people that work there I am quite impressed. They know a lot more abut education then I do. The have meeting hwere the teachers get together and see what works and what doesn't.
I Challenge everyone who says the "schools are bad" to point to a specific school by name and say one specific thing you would change.
But you look at the numbers and it's easy to see who does well and who does not. The number one predictor of which students will do well is how well their parents did in school. Kids grow up to be like their parents. (Yes there are many exceptions.)
"Why not software designers?"
It does work that way. Sometimes we hire "fresh outs" (recent graduates) You have to give them well defined tasks and they need close supervision and support but they tend to be very productive in those tasks.
A accountant or lawyer is different. They work for the public and a licensed.
"...The energy savings from using a balloon are only a small percentage of the overall energy required to achieve orbit..."
You are looking at this from a university "Physics 101" perspective. If you were an engineer you would not be allowed to "neglect the effects of the atmosphere" These effects are...
1) There is a huge amount a friction drag. You have to fly through many tens of miles at high mach numbers, this require a lot of power.
2) Because of #1 above the vehicle must be quite strong with a structure that can withstand large aerodynamic forces. This structure is heavy.
3) Remember the "rocket equation"? That aerodynamic shell counts as "payload" in the equation.
4) Sea level pressure is not the same as what we'd see at 50,000. The optimum design of a rocket exhaust bell depends on the ambient pressure. If you can start at a 50K feet you can optimize the rocket to work in low ambient pressure.
So if you can start at 50,000 feet you avoid quite a bit of aerodynamic force, so youe structure can be lighter.
Almost all space launches have there launch trajectories compromised. They waste a bit of fuel by going straight up (which adds zero "deta V".) before they pitch over. Also you will se them throttle the engines and run at less to 100% efficiency so as to reduce aerodynamic loads to keep them in limit.
No, I am not a rocket scientist but these are hundreds of them walking the wallways here at work. (I only do software.)
"A phone is a phone is a phone."
No it's not. Steve himself described it at it's introduction as a general purpose computer then can run many applications, one of those applications happens to be a cell phone. Infact you can buy an Apple "iPod Touch" which is just like an iPhone except it lacks the phone part.
He was right. the iPhone is popular because it can do "anything". Well anything within the limits of it's small screen size.
The limitation on distributing information only applies to developers not end users and it is silly because anyone can get this information for free from Apple's web site
Right now Apple is the only company that makes the "whole stack" the computer, the OS, the applications and now even the retail store.
This means Apple gets ALL the money. But also means that Apple can test everything and see that it works together and does not need to waste time and money supporting every possible combination of components.
It's more than just marking Apple has a unique product. No one else sell you a system that thy built top to bottom. Well OK Sun can but they don't go after home users.
OK markeing is a big factor with Apple but it would fail if they didn't have a product people want. It's the combination of products AND marketing.
"..The US government doesn't sell people in "people stores"
GW Bush has not yet finished unilaterally repealing the constitution. He still has a few months left to finish so maybe he'll start working on the 13th amendment next. Who knows
For those not from the US the 13th starts off with the words "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude..." Repeals the 13th and then we could see "peole stores" again. We had then here before 1865.
At first I would have areed that Macs hitts 10% has nothing to do with Linux. But now I think "maybe".
I think many people go with Windows because either they did not now there was a choice. (many people do not know the OS is just a program you run.) or they were afraid to be "different".
Once this people see that there are options and "different" is OK. then they might look around and if they look they might notice Linux.
The current Apple mouse is touch sensitive on the top and knows where your finger is. In effect it is a three button mouse.
But you can use any USB mouse you like with your Mac. I happen to like Microsoft's low-end optical mouse. I use them with both Mac OS X, and Linux.
"normal people (not just us geeks) are choosing to go with a different OS, rather than staying with the headache-inducing Windows."
What's really interesting is the demographics of the people who buy Apple computers. You think it would be young people. Not now Apple costomers tend to be much older and much better educated then the average PC buyer. Turns out if you are a 40+ year old professional with a graduate level education you are a prime demographic for Apple's Mac. These people tend to NOT be geeks of "on the fringe" Certainly these people are as full on mainstream as it gets. (and there have the money to buy what they like.)
"No one (with power in NASA or gov't) is interested in getting back to the moon without a billion rules, regulations, and safety measures."
Even if that were true the cost of five really nice seats is not much. What costs is the thousands of people that stay on the ground. The flight hardware is "nothing"
Where do yo think those billions go? Almost all of it is paid in saleray to middle class enginers and technicains. Noe of those guys are ritch. Upper middle class mostly.
People always think of the big rocket as being the expensive part. It isn't. It's that army of people who support it. Just one simple little thing like inspecting a weld joint with X-ray. You need to maintain a whole lab and trained people. and then you have the mission asserace people who check that the work was done and that the correct weld was inspeced and so on and so on. And then you have to pay me (I'm typing this while waiting for a test to complete.) Me and 12 others work on getting telemerty from some data link to about 50 or 100 computer screens. Next you have the engineers that look at that data and not just durring flight. We support tests on the pad or hangers, several a week.
And yes we have to follow dumb OSHA rules like not placing large object on file cabinets that might fall on our heads and we have to hold fire drills twice a year and I've got to take a CPR class even if I'm a software engineer because we need 1 in 20 or so people to know CPR.
Oh, and recently the window washer outside is required to use a safety harness and helmet. Darn rules running up the costs. But would you change them?
OK back to work,....
"Just use the equipment from the Apollo program...problem solved."
Even if this could be done there are problems...
1) Why bother. The Apollo can only support a VERY high risk "plant the flag" type mission. We do not want to do that mission.
2) Many people just don't realize how risky and shoe string the Appollo design was. I think if we started it up we could expect to loose one in ten missions. NASA did 6 missions and almost lost one. It was also a very expensive design. The expense was the reason NASA went for the shuttle, they thought it would be cheaper. It would have been cheaper had they been able to run as many missions per year as were planned. But the first accident caused the major user the Air Force abandon the program. With most flights now canceled the cost per flight went through the roof.
Bottom line is that Apollo was risky and expensive and could only do one very limited mission. That is NOT what we want now. Now the idea is to build a robust transportation system that can support a range of missions
"What object is in the hands of the 3rd woman from the left"
Yes, that would be a hard question for a computer. But I bet I could write a program to solve it.
I'd build a porn site and I'd have that site link directly to your site. The would-be porn viewers would be directed to a copy of your page and required to solve it before being given access to some video downloads.
There are likely a millions ways to set this up but all of then simply use a "human in the loop"
There was a survey done a few years back where they went to some public places like the shopping mall and asked the "man on the street" science related quetions. One was "If NASA wanted to go to the moon do you think it would be cost effective to simply fly the shuttle to the moon.?" Lots of people thought that was a great idea and would save money. Half the people they talked with saw no problem with simply driving to shuttel to the moon.
I think we have the same rather un-informed idea here. Yes we might be able to push ISS there but (1) Maybe radiation would kill the people inside. the Earth's magnetic field does not extend all the way to the moon and (2) How would you get food and water to a lunar orbiting ISS?
That said. I don't see how people can get to the moon or Mars without something like ISS in lunar or Mars orbit if NASA keeps their current policy of not sending people to places were there is no "lifeboat". That policy will have to change or going to those places will be even more expensive
I have to agree that the Adobe products don't have open source equivalents. Gimp is not Photoshop. But really how many Windows users use Photoshop? I'd bet not even 1%. Most just surf the web and read email. Some use MS Office. Very few are using their PC to create digital content at the profesional level where Adobe CS3 is the "standard". All of those web surfers and email readers could switch over to Ubuntu Linux and not miss a beat. Of those who do use Adobe for professional work a slight majority are on Apple's Mac OS X. In the end the need to run Adobe's suit does not hold many back.
The big hang up is games. If you bought the PC and run Windows toplay games you are kind of stuck there. I suspect the huge majority of Windows users use the machine for games mostly
Here is the problem with qoatas....
Here in Los Angeles the police department (LAPD) has the goal to hire more woman officers. I think they want either 45% or 50%. The problem is the totally lopsided number of make vs. female applicants. It's like 10 to 1 more men apply for the job. So, what they do is test everyone. They hire EVERY female that makes a passing score and then they hire the top scoring males turning most of them away. So technically every person is "qualified" because they passed the test but on average the men all got near 100% score and the females on average did much worse some barely passed. In fact few females can pass the test at all. It includes such tasks as climbing over a 6 foot wall.
Now later what we hear is that the men get promotions faster. Why is that? Well ALL the men had very high scores, they turn away all but the best men and take any woman can pass. What this tells us is that the test really DOES measure how well you will perform on the job. So those scoring higher get the promotions
The fair way to handle this is to get more female applicants but that is really hard. Not many little girls want to be cops.
You have the same problem with engineers. You have to really want to be one or you just will not do well neither in school or on the job later.. If you don't like designing machines you won't be good at it.
It can work without quotas. For example I work for our campany's CEO is an African American Woman. We don't use quotas. The thing that will work best is to broaden to pool. We have to make millions of 12 year old minority girls WANT to grow up to be chemists, engineers, physicists and so on. And it has to start at that age, middle school of before. High school is to late.
Back to the LAPD quota problem. If the numbers of male and female applicants were equal then I'm sure the test scores would be equal because then they could turn down low scoring (but still passing) women that they are currently forced to hire.
Even if you were right and a Saturn V could be found or re-built you would not want ot use it. The saturn V was designed to place a small minimal size lander on the moon for a short stay. Now we want to send something MUCH larger to the moon.
"Larry King stealing this guy's identity to buy ziploc bags and passing them on to the CIA to "microwave test" his DNA? "
Maybe he's not so wacky.
I read this as a kind of political performance art. He is making a statement that sails "Here is just one more law suit not un-like the millions you've seen before." And you know what? He's right. No so different really.
Kind of like the guy barfs on a canvas and says it's "art". He is making a statement about how stupid and gullible some art critics and buyers are. Like "If you buy that I've got one just like it here."
OK so he gets control of the Java compiler. What then? He is running as a normal user in a normal user account and he still has a long ways to go to take over a Linux or BSD machine.
If you want to run code as the user then it's simpler to just trick him. Write a trojan. "click here for free porn" should work well enough.
"The trouble is, the contemporary battlefield doesn't need the "tremendous force" of 38 tons of bombs, from 35K feet,"
You are wrong about that. The war in Bosnia was ended by a single large bomber mission. Prior to that mission close air support aircraft were attacking single vehicles one at a time. Then the Serb army massed for an offensive but before they could launch it a b2 was re-directed in flight. They lost about 250 men in that one B2 attack. This caused the Serb army to rebel against their government, saying in effect we are not going to fight any more.
"Hubble cost about $2.5 billion to build and launch [wikipedia.org].
The Shuttle costs $1.3 billion per launch [wikipedia.org] at the rate of ~7 launches a year."
You are correct about this. It would have been cheaper to launch multiple copies of Hubble than to service it. Note that all major telescopes after Hubble are designed NOT to be serviced. Seems the folks at NASA learned something. Launching a replacement is cheaper then service but more than that. Hubble had to be placed in a very non-optimal orbit so that it could be reached by the Shuttle.
There is another problem with manned missions. The lead time is very, very long. It takes roughtly 20 years from concept to flight for a new manned vehicle. Not just space craft. Look at the B2 bomer and so on. They are very complex systems and you have to design and build not just the vehicle. The vehicle is the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of the work is the support infra structure that stays on the ground. Training up 1,000 technicians, the mission control and ground stations. Assembly building and repair depots and then the long supply chain of smaller contractors. For a small platform like Phoenix (that is on Mars now) all of this is small but for hugly complex system all of this is a 20 year project.
Notice that the Space Shuttle is basically 1970's technology. A mission to Mars on 2030 would use 2010 technology. I think a manned Mars mission will have to wait until about 2050 or so.
"Unfortunately, it's not going to happen if the "No manned space program!" supporters get their way. Those supporters keep telling us that all science can be achieved without a manned space program. Yet we have yet to see a probe provide as much useful material, data, and support infrastructure for return missions as the manned space program"
There WILL be a sample return mision long before a manned mission to mars. We we need to perfect the technology needed to lift off mars and return to Earth before we send people.
Actually getting people to mars is not so hard what's hard is (1) Launching the Mars to Earth mission. and (2) Figuring out how to keep people alive and healthy for 2.5 years in deep space.
It is a kind of race as I see it. It will take 25 or more years to solve the two big above problems but in 25 years machine will become much smarter and more capable. Even when people do go back to the moon and to Mars most work on the surface will be done by remote control. There is the problem of "total lifetime radiation dosage" so time outside must be rationed.
Lot's of automated equipment will have to be built, sent and tested ahead of people. Right now half of what is sent to mars fails. We will want better odds before we send people.
Even at $5/galon gas is not really expensive. The cost of driving your car is the sum of the (1) price of the car, (2) insurance, (3) taxes, (4) maintance and (4) fuel. For most peole I know #1 is by far the largest factor. People use something lke 600 galons of gas a year. That's only $3,000. compared to the price of a car $3K is not much.
I's not imposable to make one. I worked on a digital camera project twice. Today to skill set you'd want to develop is learning how to program an FPGA.
Kodak sells the "engineering grade" chips cheap because they may have minor defects. I'd say a "few" thousand bucks and about a year of your spare time and you'd have it. I've been through this process twice now. Both were amateur projects to build astronomical cameras. For use in a studio it would be easier because you would not need the vacuum or thermoelectric cooling systems.
Look around in the Internet and you see that quite a few people have done this, designs and ideas are floating around and there are text books that cover the subject.
The early Heinlein books were written for younger readers later he targeted adults.
But don't forget Jules Verne. From the Earth to the Moon, 10,000 leagues under the sea, and the Center of the Earth and so on. I likely have the titles wrong