By WILLIAM J. BROAD For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon the design principles that went into the aging space shuttle, agency officials and private experts say.
Instead, they say, the new vehicles will rearrange the shuttle's components into a safer, more powerful family of traditional rockets.
The plan would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads on top of the rockets - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.
By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its price.
"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper," the new administrator of NASA, Michael D. Griffin, told reporters on Friday.
The plan, whose origins go back two and a half years, is emerging at a time when it may help deflect attention from the current troubles of the shuttle fleet.
The Discovery's astronauts are to make a spacewalk tomorrow to fix a potentially hazardous problem with cloth filler on its belly.
Future missions have been indefinitely suspended while NASA tries to solve the persistent shedding of foam from the external fuel tank at liftoff.
The plan for new vehicles is to be formally unveiled this month. Its outlines were gleaned from interviews and reviews of trade reports, Congressional testimony and official statements. Some details were reported on Sunday in The Orlando Sentinel.
On Friday, Dr. Griffin emphasized the plan's safety, telling reporters that the new generation of rockets would have their payloads up high to avoid the kinds of dangers that doomed the Columbia two and a half years ago and threatened the Discovery last week when insulating foam broke off its fuel tank shortly after liftoff.
"As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff all day long."
Congress would have to approve the initiative, and many questions remain. John E. Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private Washington research group on military and space topics, said he wondered how NASA could remain within its budget while continuing to pay billions of dollars for the shuttle and building a new generation of rockets and capsules.
Alex Roland, a former historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who now teaches at Duke University and is a frequent critic of the space program, said the plan had "the aroma of a quick and dirty solution to a big problem."
But supporters say it will let astronauts move expeditiously back into the business of exploration rather than endlessly circling the home planet, and do so fairly quickly.
"The shuttle is not a lemon," Scott J. Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview. "It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."
Dr. Horowitz was one of a small group of astronauts, shaken by the Columbia disaster, who took it upon themselves in 2003 to come up with a safer approach to exploring space. Their effort, conceived while they were in Lufkin, Tex., helping search for shuttle wreckage, became part of the NASA program to design a successor to the shuttle fleet.
The three remaining shuttles are to be retired by 2010 under the Bush administration's plan for space exploration, which is intended to return humans to the Moon and eventually Mars.
The new vehicles would sidestep the foam threat altogether, and its supporters say they would have other advantages as well. The larger o
I fear most of those 'jobs' are going to be outsourced to India... and the precious few who remain stateside will probably be powered by A.I. content-generators like AutoBlogger.;)
With countless parodies and spoofs of The Matrix online, I was as surprised as anyone else to discover what the #1 result for the Google search term "Matrix Spoof" was.
Since 1998, the Office of the Chief Actuary (a division of the U.S. Social Security Administration) has published lists of names in popularity order by gender and birth year from samples of Social Security Number applications. Curious parents-to-be can find the top 1000 male and female names from the year 2000 online - culled from a sample of 2,089,457 boys and 1,996,763 girls.
...
Female name "Trinity" is #74 in popularity - 98% of which are probably children of obsessive "Matrix" fans hoping for boy next so they can name him "Morpheus" (a name which I predict will break the top 100 list in about two years). Be on the lookout as single white mothers with children named "Trinity" start dating bald black men to make little Morpheuses with.
Girlfriend Luck: [noun] (gerl frend LUK) - the uncanny and highly annoying phenomenon where girlfriends who are invited to join player-vs-player computer/console games that they are wholly unfamiliar with, nonetheless beat the stuffing out of more-experienced male opponents.
background: As most residents of college dormitories or mixed-gender households can tell you, the player-vs-player computer and console gaming world appeals disproportionately to the male demographic. The cause is likely something to do with testosterone and its affinity to simulated gunfights/swordplay/unarmed combat. Whatever the case, from time to time someone's girlfriend/roommate/sister is invited to join a game - typically to even out FPS (First Person Shooter) teams, or as an answer to the incessant question "what's so fun about these silly games anyway?"
Because she is unfamiliar with a game's commands or dynamics, the newbie usually proceeds to mash all the buttons/commands at random... and much to the bewilderment and chagrin of her opponents, wallop them repeatedly because she is such a wildly unpredictable adversary.
As one who has suffered through our grueling-yet-vocationally-worthless Physics program I've concluded that Physics is God's way of telling us that there are things mortals just shouldn't know. When getting over 30% on midterms and finals earns an "A" in an upper-division class in E&M, you know something is wrong with the discipline - even the best students are doing worse than what would flunk you in any other class. The only good thing I learned from studying physics: now I know why the Space Shuttle blew up.
Think about it: NASA hired a bunch of scientists with seemingly impeccable academic qualifications - "straight-A" Physics students to work on specific portions of mechanics/safety evaluation. NASA authorities blindly trusted their options with the stupid confidence of those who do not realize physicists can earn their straight-As being WRONG 70 percent of the time. Only in baseball can a successful career be built on a comprable failure rate.
The biggest weakness of any security system is always the human part. Overreliance of 'security software' only amplifies the vulnerabilitiy of firms to a resourceful attacker.
How Ironic... a technology Marla, slamming another technology Marla.
Marla: [noun, adj.] (mâr la)- (pejorative) a "tourist," someone who joins a group or organization to be associated and/or socialize with its members, but lacks the fundamental qualities that define the group's identity. Synonyms: groupie, hanger-on, faker, poseur.
[... ]
Technology Marlas:
Individuals who read/post on Slashdot but have never seen a command line in their entire life.
Jon Katz
Anyone who buys books like "XML For Dummies"
95% of the Marketing department in the average software company.
98% of the Associates/VPs in the "Technology" Group of major investment-banking firms
100% of the employees in Public Relations firms that represent "high-tech" companies.
Is there anyway that amatures could set up some device so that we can listen to what it has to say?
Three weeks ago, the answer would have been of "of course!"... but thanks to the L337 h4x0rz from DirecTV my H-card is torched and you will have to pay $39.95/month for your dish to tune in. Rats.
--
If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.
Excellent points! Most people go straight into the censor/not-censor mode when dealing with this type of issue, and ignore the entire idea of tort law. However, I have a few thoughts of my own on the comments in your three questions:
[1]Issue of harm: - As repulsed as I am by child pr0n, I disagree with your conclusions here. I do not think that depicting a "resemblence" of somebody put compromising situations is a crime. I sympathize with your friend, but ask yourself: how much "resemblence" must there be before it becomes a tort? Does this mean that an adult who happens to look a lot like me should be denied the freedom, to, say, become a leather-wearing, bondage-S&M gay-porn star?
I would certainly be distressed if something like that happened ("dude, I didn't know you were into this sort of stuff, heh heh...") but it's nothing I can take anyone to court over.
Unless the identity of the individual is part of the pr0n's titilation ("Britney Spears Nude!!!"), you don't have a case.
[2]From the forensic psychology material available, the general consensus is that pedophilia is hardwired - pictures don't push pedophiles into committing acts of abuse to children. If they are going to do it, they are going to do it. Period. The best thing WE can do in a civilized society is quickly identify who they are, and restrict their access to children. Time spent legislating the legality or illegality of doing certain things with PhotoShop is TIME WASTED. [3]I'm right up there with you until you said virtual child that could be confused with my child. Guy posts on geocities his fantasy about how he wants to violate "my next-door-neighbor Sandra Miller's hot little seven-year-old daughter, Tara." that's an tortable offense, as it was directed to a specific individual. But if same guy around about how he wants to violate "hot little blond seven-year-olds" - who has a case against him? Parents of every blond seven-year-old in nation?
No, I would NOT like it if people cut-and-pasted my face on pr0n (or saw somebody who looks like me engage in extreme sexual acts), but unless they attach my name to it (and thus, can be seen as an attempt to smear my reputation), I don't have a LEGAL case. The best I can hope for is that those images drift to the bottom of the ever-growing piles of pr0n on the internet.
That's my HK$ 0.15
--
If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.
You wake up at Seatac. You wake up at La Guardia. Gain an hour, lose an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time.
Did the researcher discover any subjects who sleepwalked, created/organized/led underground anarchist organizations, returned back to the study center and promptly forgot about it?
So ka, NOW we know how Tyler got so much work done. --
If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.
Like many of you, I seethe each time I open my mailbox and see FREE XXX/Make $10,000 per week from home/lost 3 inches guaranteed crap.
Hunting/identifying/shutting down spammers' freemail address and geocities/angelfire sites is not that satisfying - you know the jerks are just going to start another one.
Fight fire with fire!
I've been having fun saving the 800 numbers in my Palm V and calling them from public phones - and leaving the 800 number of other spammers in their voicemail. Call 800-555-1219: "Hi, this is Mark Miller, and I'd love to make $10,000 from home each week. My number is 800-555-4492. Look forward to hearing from you!"
Call 800-555-4492: "Hi, this is David Logan, I'd be very interested to talk! 800-555-1219"
Alternatively, I've left messages pointing to my home fax line. And I KNOW those thieving motherfuckers call back - there's always a few call-and-hangups after each phony voicemail I leave.
The idea of jamming up hopeful get-rich-quick idiots gives me warm fuzzies at night. Sure, it's a cheap thrill, but they are gratifying nonetheless. That 800-number "duck quack" meme cost the company over $10,000 in long distance chargesper day. Don't just ignore spam - run up their telephone charges and drive them out of business. Your country is counting on you.
- The Mischief Commitee
(a wholly owned subsidiary of Project Mayhem. Member FDIC)
-------------------------------------------------
--
If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.
Slashdot Mirror
Redesign Is Seen for Next Craft, NASA Aides Say
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon the design principles that went into the aging space shuttle, agency officials and private experts say.
Instead, they say, the new vehicles will rearrange the shuttle's components into a safer, more powerful family of traditional rockets.
The plan would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads on top of the rockets - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.
By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its price.
"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper," the new administrator of NASA, Michael D. Griffin, told reporters on Friday.
The plan, whose origins go back two and a half years, is emerging at a time when it may help deflect attention from the current troubles of the shuttle fleet.
The Discovery's astronauts are to make a spacewalk tomorrow to fix a potentially hazardous problem with cloth filler on its belly.
Future missions have been indefinitely suspended while NASA tries to solve the persistent shedding of foam from the external fuel tank at liftoff.
The plan for new vehicles is to be formally unveiled this month. Its outlines were gleaned from interviews and reviews of trade reports, Congressional testimony and official statements. Some details were reported on Sunday in The Orlando Sentinel.
On Friday, Dr. Griffin emphasized the plan's safety, telling reporters that the new generation of rockets would have their payloads up high to avoid the kinds of dangers that doomed the Columbia two and a half years ago and threatened the Discovery last week when insulating foam broke off its fuel tank shortly after liftoff.
"As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff all day long."
Congress would have to approve the initiative, and many questions remain. John E. Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private Washington research group on military and space topics, said he wondered how NASA could remain within its budget while continuing to pay billions of dollars for the shuttle and building a new generation of rockets and capsules.
Alex Roland, a former historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who now teaches at Duke University and is a frequent critic of the space program, said the plan had "the aroma of a quick and dirty solution to a big problem."
But supporters say it will let astronauts move expeditiously back into the business of exploration rather than endlessly circling the home planet, and do so fairly quickly.
"The shuttle is not a lemon," Scott J. Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview. "It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."
Dr. Horowitz was one of a small group of astronauts, shaken by the Columbia disaster, who took it upon themselves in 2003 to come up with a safer approach to exploring space. Their effort, conceived while they were in Lufkin, Tex., helping search for shuttle wreckage, became part of the NASA program to design a successor to the shuttle fleet.
The three remaining shuttles are to be retired by 2010 under the Bush administration's plan for space exploration, which is intended to return humans to the Moon and eventually Mars.
The new vehicles would sidestep the foam threat altogether, and its supporters say they would have other advantages as well. The larger o
I fear most of those 'jobs' are going to be outsourced to India ... and the precious few who remain stateside will probably be powered by A.I. content-generators like AutoBlogger. ;)
OMFG! 5-0 PNWS L33T T0RRNTZ! LOL!!!
Perhaps they should have been using an artifical intelligence content-authoring program?
They ought to be using an Artificial Intelligence program to generate entries?
With countless parodies and spoofs of The Matrix online, I was as surprised as anyone else to discover what the #1 result for the Google search term "Matrix Spoof" was.
;)
Heh.
... is what I have in my hot little hands.
... how's THAT for geek bragging rights? ;)
Evidence: photo of all fifty pre-opening night tickets.
Me and my friends will be the absolute first people in the SF Bay Area to see The Matrix: Reloaded
"A spammer once sent me an email offer for penis enlargement. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti FFFT FFFT FFFT FFFT FFFT!"
Posted this question on my journal about a year ago and got some very thoughtful answers from my readers.
Also - if I go and grab a bunch of domains, make sure that after I register sex.com, I make sure to keep it from getting ganked from underneath me.
wrote a bit on that in Destiny's Child, Indeed
...
Excerpt:
Since 1998, the Office of the Chief Actuary (a division of the U.S. Social Security Administration) has published lists of names in popularity order by gender and birth year from samples of Social Security Number applications. Curious parents-to-be can find the top 1000 male and female names from the year 2000 online - culled from a sample of 2,089,457 boys and 1,996,763 girls.
Female name "Trinity" is #74 in popularity - 98% of which are probably children of obsessive "Matrix" fans hoping for boy next so they can name him "Morpheus" (a name which I predict will break the top 100 list in about two years). Be on the lookout as single white mothers with children named "Trinity" start dating bald black men to make little Morpheuses with.
Girlfriend Luck: [noun] (gerl frend LUK) - the uncanny and highly annoying phenomenon where girlfriends who are invited to join player-vs-player computer/console games that they are wholly unfamiliar with, nonetheless beat the stuffing out of more-experienced male opponents.
(continued here)
Physics:
As one who has suffered through our grueling-yet-vocationally-worthless Physics program I've concluded that Physics is God's way of telling us that there are things mortals just shouldn't know. When getting over 30% on midterms and finals earns an "A" in an upper-division class in E&M, you know something is wrong with the discipline - even the best students are doing worse than what would flunk you in any other class. The only good thing I learned from studying physics: now I know why the Space Shuttle blew up.
Think about it: NASA hired a bunch of scientists with seemingly impeccable academic qualifications - "straight-A" Physics students to work on specific portions of mechanics/safety evaluation. NASA authorities blindly trusted their options with the stupid confidence of those who do not realize physicists can earn their straight-As being WRONG 70 percent of the time. Only in baseball can a successful career be built on a comprable failure rate.
Major Trauma
WC3.exe? 3PvP?
Am I the only one who read the headline and thought: "Well, I've never had a privacy problem playing Warcraft III 3Player skirmish!"
Oh, bloody hell. I'm just a game dweeb. Never mind.
Totally agree.
:P
I have reasonably popular LJ - but thought I spend the most time writing longer essays on serious topics, my traffic always spikes around silly stuff like the Photoshop matrix spoof, my whimsical story on credit-card fraud or random picture of a cute asian girl.
Content is dead. Long live design!
*Shrugs*
According to this news story about AOL CD collectors(???), unusual AOL CDs are now selling for more $$$ than AOL stock.
Be afraid.
Patient: Uhm - WHAT are you doing?
...
Doctor: Well, Miss Everhart I need to verify that you're a 'real redhead' before we proceed with the operation to ensure proper dosage
Wha ... wha ... what do you mean ... IT'S NOT!!?!?!?!
:P
I mean, that's why the Internet is called America Online, right? It's supposed to be about America!
The biggest weakness of any security system is always the human part. Overreliance of 'security software' only amplifies the vulnerabilitiy of firms to a resourceful attacker.
On a semi-related tangent: Some of you might be interested in the account of how a UC San Diego student with a crummy GPA managed to fast-talked his way into a Silicon Valley investment-banking firm internship.
And if you click on your player repeatedly, she will turn around and shout at you "Stop touching me!"
Describe what Marcellus Wallace looks like.
death to RIAA! Long live the cow-spotted hardware retailer & bootleg music distributor!!!!
- pjammer
Three weeks ago, the answer would have been of "of course!"
--
If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.
Hello, LauraLolly.
Excellent points! Most people go straight into the censor/not-censor mode when dealing with this type of issue, and ignore the entire idea of tort law. However, I have a few thoughts of my own on the comments in your three questions:
[1] Issue of harm: - As repulsed as I am by child pr0n, I disagree with your conclusions here. I do not think that depicting a "resemblence" of somebody put compromising situations is a crime. I sympathize with your friend, but ask yourself: how much "resemblence" must there be before it becomes a tort? Does this mean that an adult who happens to look a lot like me should be denied the freedom, to, say, become a leather-wearing, bondage-S&M gay-porn star?
I would certainly be distressed if something like that happened ("dude, I didn't know you were into this sort of stuff, heh heh...") but it's nothing I can take anyone to court over.
Unless the identity of the individual is part of the pr0n's titilation ("Britney Spears Nude!!!"), you don't have a case.
[2]From the forensic psychology material available, the general consensus is that pedophilia is hardwired - pictures don't push pedophiles into committing acts of abuse to children. If they are going to do it, they are going to do it. Period. The best thing WE can do in a civilized society is quickly identify who they are, and restrict their access to children. Time spent legislating the legality or illegality of doing certain things with PhotoShop is TIME WASTED.
[3]I'm right up there with you until you said virtual child that could be confused with my child. Guy posts on geocities his fantasy about how he wants to violate "my next-door-neighbor Sandra Miller's hot little seven-year-old daughter, Tara." that's an tortable offense, as it was directed to a specific individual. But if same guy around about how he wants to violate "hot little blond seven-year-olds" - who has a case against him? Parents of every blond seven-year-old in nation?
No, I would NOT like it if people cut-and-pasted my face on pr0n (or saw somebody who looks like me engage in extreme sexual acts), but unless they attach my name to it (and thus, can be seen as an attempt to smear my reputation), I don't have a LEGAL case. The best I can hope for is that those images drift to the bottom of the ever-growing piles of pr0n on the internet.
That's my HK$ 0.15
--
If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.
You wake up at Seatac. You wake up at La Guardia. Gain an hour, lose an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time.
Did the researcher discover any subjects who sleepwalked, created/organized/led underground anarchist organizations, returned back to the study center and promptly forgot about it?
So ka, NOW we know how Tyler got so much work done.
-- If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.
Like many of you, I seethe each time I open my mailbox and see FREE XXX/Make $10,000 per week from home/lost 3 inches guaranteed crap.
Hunting/identifying/shutting down spammers' freemail address and geocities/angelfire sites is not that satisfying - you know the jerks are just going to start another one.
Fight fire with fire!
I've been having fun saving the 800 numbers in my Palm V and calling them from public phones - and leaving the 800 number of other spammers in their voicemail. Call 800-555-1219: "Hi, this is Mark Miller, and I'd love to make $10,000 from home each week. My number is 800-555-4492. Look forward to hearing from you!"
Call 800-555-4492: "Hi, this is David Logan, I'd be very interested to talk! 800-555-1219"
Alternatively, I've left messages pointing to my home fax line. And I KNOW those thieving motherfuckers call back - there's always a few call-and-hangups after each phony voicemail I leave.
The idea of jamming up hopeful get-rich-quick idiots gives me warm fuzzies at night. Sure, it's a cheap thrill, but they are gratifying nonetheless. That 800-number "duck quack" meme cost the company over $10,000 in long distance charges per day. Don't just ignore spam - run up their telephone charges and drive them out of business. Your country is counting on you.
- The Mischief Commitee
(a wholly owned subsidiary of Project Mayhem. Member FDIC)
-------------------------------------------------
-- If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.