While the ISS has only served to continue early work on extended duration spaceflight as far as it being a space station, two things stand out as new with the ISS:
1. Effective, large scale international cooperation. 2. Large scale, in-space construction.
In learning how to truly expand beyond Earth, these are important lessons. Add to this the lessons of everything that went wrong, particularly a dependence on a single launch vehicle for many components, and there is much to be gained from the experience. You might say that you have to do it wrong before you know how to do it right.
Whether it was worth the cost is another question -- but now that its done we should learn everything we can from it.
In some ways yes, in some ways you simply have to understand its limits. For something you want to lend out, for something you want to hold onto forever, or something with lots of pictures, get a real copy. If you just want a fun or quick read, an ebook works great.
An E-reader does make some things significantly better -- for instance, I've been wanting to read a particular book for a long time, but it was unavailable as an ebook. I checked it out from the library, and started to read it, but its massive (4-5 inches thick). My best times to read are on the bus/while travelling, and something that big is simply difficult to read, and I couldn't make enough progress. Add to this having a couple of other books to read if I'm not in the mood to read that, as well as a few magazines, and it makes reading much more pleasant for me. I can honestly say I've read more since getting a kindle.
Plus theres the simple fact that its easy to read in bed or read while eating when you dont have to hold the thing open.
Self control and a bit of knowledge allows you to get the good parts of a technology, and avoid some of the ugly side effects.
What now? The new Airs aren't much different than what was out yesterday -- the only differences are a new case, a higher-resolution screen, some updated specs, stereo speakers, on-board Flash, the same trackpad as the rest of the Macbook line, a smaller version, etc. Its still an OSX laptop, nothing 'hybridized' about it. There's no more DRM in the new Air than in any other MacBook. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Second, Steve said you could still get software from other sources. It would be platform suicide to do anything else. They're just trying to make it more convenient for developers and users. I'm personally curious to look at the terms and see if open source software can be distributed using it -- in those cases it could basically be a repository just like on any Linux distro.
Finally, I haven't consented to anything like that. If OS X Lion were to implement the changes you seem to think exist, I would stick with Snow Leopard. If the changes were made retroactive and made it difficult to use old versions somehow, I could install Ubuntu. The Mac platform suits my needs for now (a Unix platform with nice laptop hardware integration) -- its not actually a cult, so I can re-evaluate my options at any time.
Its probably a phased array antenna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array. The big thing here isn't the fact that its been done, but that the chip makes it easy, cheap, and fast to manufacture one. The actual size wouldn't be very different, since the size is based on the required gain, and the physics don't change for a parabolic antenna or a phased array.
The big advantage I see to this is two-fold:
1. Mounts flat so it is much less of an eyesore. Also you could conceivably hide it behind something that is radio transparent.
2. Can be pointed via software, so that the physical installation only needs to be pointed in the rough direction of the satellite.
These methods don't rely on our changes moving the asteroid enough on their own.
Its much more subtle -- orbits are highly sensitive to initial condition. For instance, a meter per second change in velocity while in deep space is the difference between impacting mars and being off by 1000s of kilometers. Iterate that over a few more orbits and small errors grow in very non-linear ways.
Throw in third-body perturbations and it becomes even more interesting. If the asteroid makes a close approach to a planet, a few tens of meters change in position at the close approach translates to 10000 km later. This approaches interesting topics like chaotic orbits and the so-called "interplanetary superhighway".
(I did asteroid mitigation work for my graduate school work, and now work doing interplanetary navigation, so this is an area of particular interest to me.)
For a regional-destruction class asteroid (e.g. Apophis ~300 m), a 560kg spacecraft is more than sufficient to move it by a 100s of Earth radii with 20 years of advance notice. Certainly doesn't require any heavy-lift capability.
There are many factors that affect the mass required -- asteroid mass, time till expected impact, Delta-V required to reach the asteroid, amount of time you're able to spend tractoring, and the standoff distance you're comfortable maintaining. Differences here can cause orders of magnitudes in requirements.
The method you choose depends on all these things. A smaller asteroid is better handled by a gravity tractor, while something large and with a higher DV required to get there may require a landed ion engine with ISRU capabilities. Something discovered late may required a risky 'nuke the bastard' approach. A small risky asteroid that doesn't have impact risks for hundreds of years may be best handled by albedo modification that will eventually push it too far in or out to be an impact risk. Its not a single problem, with a single best approach -- we need a menu of options.
What now? You think that its easier to *MOVE THE MOON* or *LAUNCH A NEW MOON* rather than use a kinetic impacter or slow-push gravity tractor on an asteroid.
Anyway when you don't have a solid fixed reference (like the ground), the difference between trying to hit something or putting something in the way is really nonexistent. Just consider a kinetic impactor putting something in the way of the asteroid and you'll be happy.
The JPL HORIZONS data tend to have covariance data for their ephemerides. Might look it up there if you're interested. Unfortunately, six-state covariance matrices don't fit well in public articles, a range of values which probably correspond to an RMS 3-sigma value are the best you're going to get.
Alarmed is certainly an overreaction. However, that doesn't mean it should be ignored -- kind of like terrorism. Plus, unlike terrorism, taking precautions on the NEO threat doesn't interfere with civil rights, and hasn't seen significant overreaction on the part of the general public.
Detection programs cost tens of millions of dollars, and even a mitigation testbed for a modest sized asteroid is only around $500 million. These kinds of programs have scientific benefit as well (and costs are on par with other space science efforts,) so it has value beyond the NEO threat.
Additionally, the threat is not just from extinction-class asteroids, but smaller asteroids that can cause regional destruction. These are expected to occur on a much more regular basis (hundred-ish years). If something like Tunguska were to occur over a populated area, the material damage would be far greater than the cost of NEO programs, and that doesn't even include loss of life.
The FAA office of commercial space (AST, dont ask me how the acronym is related to the office name) is doing exactly that. Some dedicated, motivated people there are trying to give these kinds of companies a sound legal framework to work within.
They are helpful though. Maven pays my bills right now, and i would feel incredibly goofy calling it MAVEM or MAO (mars atmosphere orbiter) during our discussions. This one doesn't feel especially contrived, more like they came up with a name and found an easily said acronym that fit with it. Also a good name makes sure it doesn't face trouble in congress or the media.
That and to be honest I didn't really notice that it didn't match up until now, even though I've been working on it for three months...
You can't do this science from the ground. You can get an idea of composition and density from spectrographic data, but the noise is too high to capture any of the dynamic properties. The main purpose of MAVEN is to study atmosphere evolution, which involves the rate at which volatiles are leaving the atmosphere, and how those rates relate to geography and the solar cycle. And its not just these things that we don't know -- its as basic as what the density is at a given region. Previous Mars missions have been surprised to find the atmospheric densities off by a factor of 4 from what was expected in the past, and this mission will also hopefully refine those models.
And in case you think understanding Mars' atmosphere isn't worth the cost for its own sake, it helps us understand our own atmosphere and climate better, which has very real and relavent impacts on daily life, from better weather predictions to lending more data to the climate debate.
NASA typically suffers from not having enough money, and unmanned missions don't typically have congress meddling in how they're run -- if this wasn't valuable other missions would have won the funding instead.
Considering that its taken NASA 30 years to get over the first one, and we're still recovering, the last thing we need is another one.
Space races lead to expensive one-off architectures that achieve their goal but are too expensive to be used for much else. NASA needs to learn how to develop flexible systems that can be revised and re-purposed with minimal modifications, short time-frames, and within the historical post-Apollo budget.
I fear if we got in another space race with China, we'd achieve more flags and footprints, and be saying 'If only it were like the 2010s again' until 2070.
When you're launching complex machines with low production numbers that are primarily designed to direct and control large chemical explosions, theres a decent risk of something going wrong no matter who is doing it.
I'd say that the two sets are fairly distinct. While there are iPhone using Ubuntu users (myself included), I'm guessing the majority on each platform wouldn't use the other. Ubuntu users are going to in general be more libertarian leaning and privacy minded than iPhone users.
That said, I personally feel the opposite. Ubuntu collecting that data doesn't bother me at all, and I definitely see the value. App developers doing so makes me a little bit uncomfortable, but I see the value in it to them too.
Well, how can we learn if we don't start sometime? Now seems as good a time as any.
I'm not saying we'll have independent moon colonies in 20 years. I'll be happy if we do in 200. Science can be done with probes, but the only way to learn how to sustain life in space is to try it.
I believe the idea is that with an authorization bill passed, the CR can actually include language to redirect funding. Or so the people who actually understand this stuff tell me.
Still, it would have been nice for the politicians to have gotten this sorted out sooner, so unnecessary layoffs wouldn't be an issue.
Now you're making the right argument. Its not a debate about whether robots and such are better at exploration than humans, which is what your first statement sounded like.
Since other reasons for manned exploration are not really sustainable, the debate over HSF should be whether or not its a worthwhile and feasible goal to learn to live off world.
You're missing the point. The most important thing we can do in space is to live there. Slowly but surely we need to learn how to live away from and independent of the Earth.
At least thats what those of us who fight to do these things think. Its not about nationalism or even science -- you may disagree, but then you're making the wrong argument.
Not quite right. The continuation of the space race did have major defense related goals, but it was nothing so concrete as direct tech development.
Missiles and space-bound launch vehicles are similar only in their basic physics. Once you get down to the particulars, the use cases mean you engineer them radically different ways. Saturn V tech would make no contribution to missiles. No missile would need to be that large of heft that much mass, or go that far. Solid rocket technology was more than capable.
However, the superficial similarities were very important. The idea was that, while in the battle for the allegiance of the third world, being able to point to a grand accomplishment like Apollo was a not-so-subtle hint that "Yeah, we can build better missiles too. You want to be on the winning side of this right?"
Add to that a marginal public enthusiasm (and it was only marginal, despite modern delusions to the contrary) and you have a winning combination.
I'm amused that Kay has been calling some of her own constituents incompetent during this fight.
Its like she didn't realize that SpaceX employs 100-200 people near Waco. Granted its not as many people as in Clear Lake, but her tactlessness here was surprising.
Huh? How is it dead? NASA has money, they have goals, and a start on an idea of how to make manned exploration affordable and sustainable.
Constellation was never going to fly. It had to get through a few more administration changes before getting to the moon, and if past performance is any indication, the budget was going to grow more, and the target dates were going to be pushed back. 2030 is a long way off.
In its place we get a competitive market for Gemini class vehicles to reduce the risk of ever facing a spaceflight gap again, a push for a more affordable heavy lift vehicle that while I think is misguided will keep the politicians happy, technology development to make BEO missions 5-year projects instead of 20-year projects, and most importantly, a restatement of the goal that NASA should always have had: To facilitate the settlement of space, through trying to reduce dependence on the Earth, building LEO infrastructure, and focusing on in-space resource utilizatoin.
As a spacecraft engineer who has been viscerally opposed to working on anything in the past NASA HSF environment, I'm looking forward to what comes up in the next few years.
It does help prevent layoffs. There is continued funding in the continuing resolution. The problem was that no one knew what that money was going to be used for until the authorization bill passed.
The layoff risk came not to NASA civil servants, but to contractors. While NASA could allocate CR funds to keep their employees even without knowing exactly what they should be doing, no contracting manager would have been able to keep people around without some indication of the direction of NASA, since NASA couldn't pay them and the company would have trouble justifying the risk to stockholders.
Slashdot Mirror
While the ISS has only served to continue early work on extended duration spaceflight as far as it being a space station, two things stand out as new with the ISS:
1. Effective, large scale international cooperation.
2. Large scale, in-space construction.
In learning how to truly expand beyond Earth, these are important lessons. Add to this the lessons of everything that went wrong, particularly a dependence on a single launch vehicle for many components, and there is much to be gained from the experience. You might say that you have to do it wrong before you know how to do it right.
Whether it was worth the cost is another question -- but now that its done we should learn everything we can from it.
In some ways yes, in some ways you simply have to understand its limits. For something you want to lend out, for something you want to hold onto forever, or something with lots of pictures, get a real copy. If you just want a fun or quick read, an ebook works great.
An E-reader does make some things significantly better -- for instance, I've been wanting to read a particular book for a long time, but it was unavailable as an ebook. I checked it out from the library, and started to read it, but its massive (4-5 inches thick). My best times to read are on the bus/while travelling, and something that big is simply difficult to read, and I couldn't make enough progress. Add to this having a couple of other books to read if I'm not in the mood to read that, as well as a few magazines, and it makes reading much more pleasant for me. I can honestly say I've read more since getting a kindle.
Plus theres the simple fact that its easy to read in bed or read while eating when you dont have to hold the thing open.
Self control and a bit of knowledge allows you to get the good parts of a technology, and avoid some of the ugly side effects.
What now? The new Airs aren't much different than what was out yesterday -- the only differences are a new case, a higher-resolution screen, some updated specs, stereo speakers, on-board Flash, the same trackpad as the rest of the Macbook line, a smaller version, etc. Its still an OSX laptop, nothing 'hybridized' about it. There's no more DRM in the new Air than in any other MacBook. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Second, Steve said you could still get software from other sources. It would be platform suicide to do anything else. They're just trying to make it more convenient for developers and users. I'm personally curious to look at the terms and see if open source software can be distributed using it -- in those cases it could basically be a repository just like on any Linux distro.
Finally, I haven't consented to anything like that. If OS X Lion were to implement the changes you seem to think exist, I would stick with Snow Leopard. If the changes were made retroactive and made it difficult to use old versions somehow, I could install Ubuntu. The Mac platform suits my needs for now (a Unix platform with nice laptop hardware integration) -- its not actually a cult, so I can re-evaluate my options at any time.
Quit the FUD.
Its probably a phased array antenna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array. The big thing here isn't the fact that its been done, but that the chip makes it easy, cheap, and fast to manufacture one. The actual size wouldn't be very different, since the size is based on the required gain, and the physics don't change for a parabolic antenna or a phased array.
The big advantage I see to this is two-fold: 1. Mounts flat so it is much less of an eyesore. Also you could conceivably hide it behind something that is radio transparent. 2. Can be pointed via software, so that the physical installation only needs to be pointed in the rough direction of the satellite.
These methods don't rely on our changes moving the asteroid enough on their own.
Its much more subtle -- orbits are highly sensitive to initial condition. For instance, a meter per second change in velocity while in deep space is the difference between impacting mars and being off by 1000s of kilometers. Iterate that over a few more orbits and small errors grow in very non-linear ways.
Throw in third-body perturbations and it becomes even more interesting. If the asteroid makes a close approach to a planet, a few tens of meters change in position at the close approach translates to 10000 km later. This approaches interesting topics like chaotic orbits and the so-called "interplanetary superhighway".
(I did asteroid mitigation work for my graduate school work, and now work doing interplanetary navigation, so this is an area of particular interest to me.)
For a regional-destruction class asteroid (e.g. Apophis ~300 m), a 560kg spacecraft is more than sufficient to move it by a 100s of Earth radii with 20 years of advance notice. Certainly doesn't require any heavy-lift capability.
There are many factors that affect the mass required -- asteroid mass, time till expected impact, Delta-V required to reach the asteroid, amount of time you're able to spend tractoring, and the standoff distance you're comfortable maintaining. Differences here can cause orders of magnitudes in requirements.
The method you choose depends on all these things. A smaller asteroid is better handled by a gravity tractor, while something large and with a higher DV required to get there may require a landed ion engine with ISRU capabilities. Something discovered late may required a risky 'nuke the bastard' approach. A small risky asteroid that doesn't have impact risks for hundreds of years may be best handled by albedo modification that will eventually push it too far in or out to be an impact risk. Its not a single problem, with a single best approach -- we need a menu of options.
What now? You think that its easier to *MOVE THE MOON* or *LAUNCH A NEW MOON* rather than use a kinetic impacter or slow-push gravity tractor on an asteroid.
Anyway when you don't have a solid fixed reference (like the ground), the difference between trying to hit something or putting something in the way is really nonexistent. Just consider a kinetic impactor putting something in the way of the asteroid and you'll be happy.
The JPL HORIZONS data tend to have covariance data for their ephemerides. Might look it up there if you're interested. Unfortunately, six-state covariance matrices don't fit well in public articles, a range of values which probably correspond to an RMS 3-sigma value are the best you're going to get.
Alarmed is certainly an overreaction. However, that doesn't mean it should be ignored -- kind of like terrorism. Plus, unlike terrorism, taking precautions on the NEO threat doesn't interfere with civil rights, and hasn't seen significant overreaction on the part of the general public.
Detection programs cost tens of millions of dollars, and even a mitigation testbed for a modest sized asteroid is only around $500 million. These kinds of programs have scientific benefit as well (and costs are on par with other space science efforts,) so it has value beyond the NEO threat.
Additionally, the threat is not just from extinction-class asteroids, but smaller asteroids that can cause regional destruction. These are expected to occur on a much more regular basis (hundred-ish years). If something like Tunguska were to occur over a populated area, the material damage would be far greater than the cost of NEO programs, and that doesn't even include loss of life.
The FAA office of commercial space (AST, dont ask me how the acronym is related to the office name) is doing exactly that. Some dedicated, motivated people there are trying to give these kinds of companies a sound legal framework to work within.
They are helpful though. Maven pays my bills right now, and i would feel incredibly goofy calling it MAVEM or MAO (mars atmosphere orbiter) during our discussions. This one doesn't feel especially contrived, more like they came up with a name and found an easily said acronym that fit with it. Also a good name makes sure it doesn't face trouble in congress or the media.
That and to be honest I didn't really notice that it didn't match up until now, even though I've been working on it for three months...
You can't do this science from the ground. You can get an idea of composition and density from spectrographic data, but the noise is too high to capture any of the dynamic properties. The main purpose of MAVEN is to study atmosphere evolution, which involves the rate at which volatiles are leaving the atmosphere, and how those rates relate to geography and the solar cycle. And its not just these things that we don't know -- its as basic as what the density is at a given region. Previous Mars missions have been surprised to find the atmospheric densities off by a factor of 4 from what was expected in the past, and this mission will also hopefully refine those models.
And in case you think understanding Mars' atmosphere isn't worth the cost for its own sake, it helps us understand our own atmosphere and climate better, which has very real and relavent impacts on daily life, from better weather predictions to lending more data to the climate debate.
NASA typically suffers from not having enough money, and unmanned missions don't typically have congress meddling in how they're run -- if this wasn't valuable other missions would have won the funding instead.
(Full disclosure: I work on this mission.)
Considering that its taken NASA 30 years to get over the first one, and we're still recovering, the last thing we need is another one.
Space races lead to expensive one-off architectures that achieve their goal but are too expensive to be used for much else. NASA needs to learn how to develop flexible systems that can be revised and re-purposed with minimal modifications, short time-frames, and within the historical post-Apollo budget.
I fear if we got in another space race with China, we'd achieve more flags and footprints, and be saying 'If only it were like the 2010s again' until 2070.
So... don't install the proprietary DEBs... I fail to see how making such software easily available puts you at risk.
Plenty of things. Whats your point?
When you're launching complex machines with low production numbers that are primarily designed to direct and control large chemical explosions, theres a decent risk of something going wrong no matter who is doing it.
I'd say that the two sets are fairly distinct. While there are iPhone using Ubuntu users (myself included), I'm guessing the majority on each platform wouldn't use the other. Ubuntu users are going to in general be more libertarian leaning and privacy minded than iPhone users.
That said, I personally feel the opposite. Ubuntu collecting that data doesn't bother me at all, and I definitely see the value. App developers doing so makes me a little bit uncomfortable, but I see the value in it to them too.
I'm glad to see the use of slime molds to study transport networks on there.
I honestly thought it was one of the most interesting bits of research I'd seen all year.
Well, how can we learn if we don't start sometime? Now seems as good a time as any.
I'm not saying we'll have independent moon colonies in 20 years. I'll be happy if we do in 200. Science can be done with probes, but the only way to learn how to sustain life in space is to try it.
I believe the idea is that with an authorization bill passed, the CR can actually include language to redirect funding. Or so the people who actually understand this stuff tell me.
Still, it would have been nice for the politicians to have gotten this sorted out sooner, so unnecessary layoffs wouldn't be an issue.
Now you're making the right argument. Its not a debate about whether robots and such are better at exploration than humans, which is what your first statement sounded like.
Since other reasons for manned exploration are not really sustainable, the debate over HSF should be whether or not its a worthwhile and feasible goal to learn to live off world.
You're missing the point. The most important thing we can do in space is to live there. Slowly but surely we need to learn how to live away from and independent of the Earth.
At least thats what those of us who fight to do these things think. Its not about nationalism or even science -- you may disagree, but then you're making the wrong argument.
Not quite right. The continuation of the space race did have major defense related goals, but it was nothing so concrete as direct tech development.
Missiles and space-bound launch vehicles are similar only in their basic physics. Once you get down to the particulars, the use cases mean you engineer them radically different ways. Saturn V tech would make no contribution to missiles. No missile would need to be that large of heft that much mass, or go that far. Solid rocket technology was more than capable.
However, the superficial similarities were very important. The idea was that, while in the battle for the allegiance of the third world, being able to point to a grand accomplishment like Apollo was a not-so-subtle hint that "Yeah, we can build better missiles too. You want to be on the winning side of this right?"
Add to that a marginal public enthusiasm (and it was only marginal, despite modern delusions to the contrary) and you have a winning combination.
I'm amused that Kay has been calling some of her own constituents incompetent during this fight.
Its like she didn't realize that SpaceX employs 100-200 people near Waco. Granted its not as many people as in Clear Lake, but her tactlessness here was surprising.
Huh? How is it dead? NASA has money, they have goals, and a start on an idea of how to make manned exploration affordable and sustainable.
Constellation was never going to fly. It had to get through a few more administration changes before getting to the moon, and if past performance is any indication, the budget was going to grow more, and the target dates were going to be pushed back. 2030 is a long way off.
In its place we get a competitive market for Gemini class vehicles to reduce the risk of ever facing a spaceflight gap again, a push for a more affordable heavy lift vehicle that while I think is misguided will keep the politicians happy, technology development to make BEO missions 5-year projects instead of 20-year projects, and most importantly, a restatement of the goal that NASA should always have had: To facilitate the settlement of space, through trying to reduce dependence on the Earth, building LEO infrastructure, and focusing on in-space resource utilizatoin.
As a spacecraft engineer who has been viscerally opposed to working on anything in the past NASA HSF environment, I'm looking forward to what comes up in the next few years.
It does help prevent layoffs. There is continued funding in the continuing resolution. The problem was that no one knew what that money was going to be used for until the authorization bill passed.
The layoff risk came not to NASA civil servants, but to contractors. While NASA could allocate CR funds to keep their employees even without knowing exactly what they should be doing, no contracting manager would have been able to keep people around without some indication of the direction of NASA, since NASA couldn't pay them and the company would have trouble justifying the risk to stockholders.