we do have the right to say, "you've made enough". Particularly because we are giving them something. Something we are under no obligation to give them.
And you do that by not buying whatever it is they are selling. Think about what you just said for a minute: "we are under no obligation". So when someone does give them money, they are doing it voluntarily. If you think they've made enough money, don't buy it any more. And as others have said, the producers of $thing are under no obligation to produce them.
Your conclusion might hold water if the product is something critical or necessary to life, like maybe AIDS vaccine or something. But luxury items like children's novels, professional sports, video games, music, etc. are certainly not vital for life, and nobody is being forced to consume those products against their will.
The things is, the barrier to entry for other people to send you an e-mail is lower than to phone you and much, much lower than to walk to you cube.
So you're a lot less likely to get e-mails for unimportant things.
I'd argue that it's the other way around; you're much more likely to get emails about unimportant things (like Coke vs. pop vs. soda maps, engineering drawings for cocktails, etc). Any fool can bang out a quick email and send it; email requires no direct interaction and can be done from the comfortable confines of their own chair.
Phone calls take a bit more effort, you actually need to speak to someone.
Walking to the cube requires physically evicting one's ass from the chair and walking over there, then dealing face-to-face with another person.
You were going well for a minute... but then lost it.
The answer isn't "price it out of reach of common people" when the problem is that airlines are trying to make too many airplanes occupy the same runway in a given amount of time.
Basically, a given runway can safely handle a certain number of "operations" (takeoffs and landings) every hour. That number depends primarily on weather, but also aircraft size (due to wake turbulence). In good weather, aircraft can follow each other more closely (because they can see each other) and pilots can see the runway (meaning they don't have to rely on instruments, and chances of "runway incursions" are lessened because everyone can see).
However, add some low clouds, and it starts to bog down. Now, since the pilots can't see each other or the runway, you have to rely on other procedures to ensure the runway is clear and that you aren't too close to the guy in front of you. Further, since you're relying on instruments, certain procedures have to be followed to prevent interference with the guidance signals--ergo, more spacing. End result is that fewer operations can be conducted per hour. In heavy rain or very low visibility, this effect is magnified. Even fewer airplanes get through.
So how does this relate to the airlines? Well, the airlines started flying smaller jets more often on busy routes, instead of making fewer flights on larger aircraft. This is less efficient just in fuel use, but in this discussion it means that the airports had to handle more load. Also, the airlines (if they bothered to check at all) scheduled their flights with the assumption of good weather. The big airports wound up scheduled right to the limit of operations they could handle in good weather, so as soon as anything came along (like rain or fog) to slow the pace down, the whole system starts backing up. That's why, for example, fog in New York can back up air traffic all over the northeast for the rest of the day.
In short, the airlines' schedules had no margin in them for weather. I could see slot restrictions (with more realistic assumptions) at large airports, provided they're administered fairly, but simply jacking prices up to reduce demand isn't the way to go. Besides, current rail infrastructure couldn't handle a fraction of the displaced passengers, and building a nationwide high-speed rail network would be very expensive. Imagine Boston's "Big Dig" over the entire country. My guess is it would take decades to fully implement.
Air travel's two greatest advantages are speed and flexibility. Capacity can be reallocated literally overnight if necessary, without having to change or build expensive infrastructure. The facilities already exist, and are relatively compact compared with rail lines (which must physically run continuously between terminals). You don't have to purchase land for the right-of-way, and air travel allows much more decentralization than is possible with rail.
But how long do the batteries last? How much does it cost to replace them, and what's the disposal fee for the old ones?
Toyota isn't telling anyone that part. I don't know the numbers either, but I'd suspect that said battery costs will wipe out any gas savings you might have made, unless gas goes to $7 or $8.
Every time I think about getting a motorcycle, somebody I know gets in an accident on one. All but one of those accidents has been someone else's fault. Most recently, my boss hit a deer and was out for five weeks with a broken leg.
Much as the efficiency appeals to me, I'll stick with cars. Too many idiots out there on the road.
Certification standards require that all such aircraft be able to withstand 150% of the highest allowable g-limit without structural failure. This is true for both Boeing and Airbus aircraft--and neither manufacturer is going to significantly overbuild their aircraft, because that adds weight. In fact, if tests show the structure is stronger than that, they will remove some to save weight.
And a properly-designed fly-by-wire system doesn't "trump pilot judgment." It puts in g-limits (so you don't rip the wings off) and an alpha limiter (so you don't stall the airplane; incidentally, this makes windshear recovery easier since you can just haul back on the stick). Almost any situation where you would possibly need to overstress the aircraft, or would get into a stall, is likely the result of poor judgment on the pilot's part.
I can think of only two incidents off the top of my head where aircraft crashed due to FBW-related problems... the aforementioned Airbus, and the recent B-2 crash.
I'm and engineer working on a fly-by-wire program, and a private pilot, fwiw.
And what ideology do you suppose that I have? I'm not claiming private enterprise is totally superior in every way, and I didn't suggest that Delta/Atlas be chosen because they were "privately" developed or inherently superior. I only said that this particular program is being cocked-up because of political interference, and that Delta/Atlas would have been better for this application because they were already flying and they are better rockets than Ares I.
If anything, my "ideology" would be "let's give them the funding they need to do it right, instead of politically forcing poor design decisions in an attempt to run a jobs program or keep somebody's constituents happy." I'm tired of seeing politicians and bean-counters fuck up good space programs--it happened with Apollo (canceled early), it happened with the shuttle (too many problems to list), it happened with ISS (too many design compromises), and it's happening with this program. But sadly, I think it'll take an imminent "dinosaur-killer" asteroid or some form of alien contact before anyone treats space seriously.
For the record, I have libertarian leanings. But space is one of the few areas where I do support large-scale government involvement.
The reason the shuttle's payload seems so low is the orbiter itself... it's not "useful" payload per se, but in terms of absolute mass delivered into orbit, the shuttle system (as a whole) is right up there in the same general category as Saturn V, Ares V, and Energia.
We could have leveraged a lot of that capability had we so chose... look up Shuttle-C
Yeah, that's true; though the boosters have their own issues... I was thinking more of putting all the really heavy and expensive stuff (wings, TPS, computers, etc.) in the orbiter.
More like "because of budget shortfalls, we only have time to come up with this crappy solution instead of spending more time to come up with a good one."
The US government oversaw Apollo. US enterprise is currently overseeing a crappy suborbital space plane and an even crappier low payload rocket.
If the current incarnation of NASA has a problem, it is that like many modern government agencies it is trying to emulate private enterprise too much.
No, the decision to use Ares I was a political one, with the apparent objective of keeping as many of the old shuttle people employed as possible.
Had it been up to enterprise, I'm pretty sure Atlas V or Delta IV (both of which are flying today) would have been chosen instead. But, just like the shuttle, political mandates and short-sightedness ("I don't care if it costs more in the end, it costs less today!) will give us an overweight, underwhelming, extremely-expensive, and inefficent design.
It's how much that weight has to be accelerated that matters. If you have to have dead weight, it's better to put it on the first stage than on a later one--you only have to accelerate that dead weight to first-stage burnout, rather than all the way to orbit.
The end effect is that a pound of dead weight in the last stage costs you a pound of payload... but a pound of dead weight on the first stage might only cost you a quarter of a pound in payload.
That's why many people propose making the first stage of a launcher reusable, and throwing away the upper stage (rather than the other way around, like the shuttle). All the reusability adds weight (thermal protection, landing gear, recovery systems)... make it the first stage, and you can make it beefier and more robust. And there's less of a thermal problem to deal with.
That said, 1600 pounds of deadweight mass dampers is a piss-poor engineering solution. But that's what you get when you have a politically-dictated design that's being rushed out the door; shit gets kludged together to make it work now instead of doing it right to begin with. This could be seen as the equivalent of using a GOTO in complicated code (instead of fixing it correctly), or fixing misaligned teeth by pulling them all out (to be replaced by dentures) instead of getting braces. It works, yeah, but it's not a good solution.
Point 1: Compound that with a bureaucracy that discourages said motivated, educated, and trained people from teaching, and it's no wonder there's a shortage.
For the most part, in my state you have to have a degree in teaching in order to teach. There are programs by which someone in another field can get into teaching, but they involve jumping through lots of hoops and (eventually) getting a teaching degree anyways. It took years to even get engineers approved for this program to teach physics and math; one would think that a person who uses the material in the real world and spent several years studying to do so would be better suited than someone fresh out of school with a bachelor's in education.
(Oddly enough, there's no requirement at all to have teacher training to be a college professor...)
Point 2: The predicted price drop from offshore drilling is due to the placebo effect. Make a statement that doing so will drop prices, and the market (in true self-fulfilling prophecy style) will respond.
Exactly. Obviously, the best situation is for your opponent to not know your capabilities at all, since it's harder for him to defend against a complete unknown. But even if he does know your capabilities, hiding the technical details does two things: it still makes it harder for him to defend against (think missile guidance and electronic warfare), and it keeps that technology out of his hands so he can't use it against you.
Intelligence (and warfare) isn't a business competition, a school project, or a rec-league sport. Stuff like this can be literally life-or-death. Spending the extra money and effort to keep critical technology hidden can make a difference down the road and mean that more of your guys might make it home.
In war (and other serious, life/death situations), finding yourself in a fair fight means you screwed up somewhere.
Or, it's probably a combination of factors, and not just a dick-measuring competition.
Consider the following:
1. A very expensive intelligence satellite is stranded in low orbit, useless. Said satellite contains expensive, highly-classefied equipment; there's a finite chance that some of this equipment might reach the surface relatively intact (see Skylab, Columbia). Obviously, certain groups (China and Russia, especially) would love to get hold of anything that survived and analyze it. It would be nice to ensure that this equipment is rendered unusable and worthless.
2. The hydrazine tank mentioned. Yes, I know the odds of it hitting anything were very, very small... but not zero. And the public outcry had it hurt or killed anyone would have been loud and swift. The decision-makers probably figured it would be better to face the inevitable international grumbling by shooting down the satellite than to face the very small (but potentially devastating) risk of impact in a populated area.
3. The Navy ABM system is going operational, and someone realizes it has the capability to shoot down low satellites. Someone probably figured "hell, we have this satellite problem; it's going to reenter soon anyways so it's a nice convenient test target. We might as well try it while we have the chance". Besides, the additional cost is a drop in the proverbial bucket.
4. At the top levels, there probably was a bit of "let's show them" going on. But I suspect it was as much a coincidence as anything else, with #1 above leading the "rational" reasons list. The hydrazine tank story just made for the best PR.
The idea of being paid by the job, not by hours, is fine in theory. But you should be assigned tasks and allowed to go home when they're finished, and not held to a minimum number of hours.
The up-side of being salaried is that I am not tied to a time clock. Some weeks I work less than 40 hours, some weeks I work more. I keep track of what I work and take time off as needed to compensate for extra hours.
The problem is that many salaried positions still require a minimum of 40 hours, and don't get flex time or other compensation... in other words, if you're going to require a minimum time out of your employees, they should be getting compensated somehow for extra time that they work (time off, pay, etc).
Order, structure, and hierarchy work great for my files and things. But for my bedroom and workshop, "toss it on the floor" seems to be the entrenched system.
If my memory serves me, they've flown this thing in atmosphere, but not orbital yet. Kinda like how Enterprise flew from the back of a 747 (to test approach and landing) before the other orbiters flew in space.
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we do have the right to say, "you've made enough". Particularly because we are giving them something. Something we are under no obligation to give them.
And you do that by not buying whatever it is they are selling. Think about what you just said for a minute: "we are under no obligation". So when someone does give them money, they are doing it voluntarily. If you think they've made enough money, don't buy it any more. And as others have said, the producers of $thing are under no obligation to produce them.
Your conclusion might hold water if the product is something critical or necessary to life, like maybe AIDS vaccine or something. But luxury items like children's novels, professional sports, video games, music, etc. are certainly not vital for life, and nobody is being forced to consume those products against their will.
Unfortunately, it's not.
Care to expound on that, please?
The things is, the barrier to entry for other people to send you an e-mail is lower than to phone you and much, much lower than to walk to you cube.
So you're a lot less likely to get e-mails for unimportant things.
I'd argue that it's the other way around; you're much more likely to get emails about unimportant things (like Coke vs. pop vs. soda maps, engineering drawings for cocktails, etc). Any fool can bang out a quick email and send it; email requires no direct interaction and can be done from the comfortable confines of their own chair.
Phone calls take a bit more effort, you actually need to speak to someone.
Walking to the cube requires physically evicting one's ass from the chair and walking over there, then dealing face-to-face with another person.
You were going well for a minute... but then lost it.
The answer isn't "price it out of reach of common people" when the problem is that airlines are trying to make too many airplanes occupy the same runway in a given amount of time.
Basically, a given runway can safely handle a certain number of "operations" (takeoffs and landings) every hour. That number depends primarily on weather, but also aircraft size (due to wake turbulence). In good weather, aircraft can follow each other more closely (because they can see each other) and pilots can see the runway (meaning they don't have to rely on instruments, and chances of "runway incursions" are lessened because everyone can see).
However, add some low clouds, and it starts to bog down. Now, since the pilots can't see each other or the runway, you have to rely on other procedures to ensure the runway is clear and that you aren't too close to the guy in front of you. Further, since you're relying on instruments, certain procedures have to be followed to prevent interference with the guidance signals--ergo, more spacing. End result is that fewer operations can be conducted per hour. In heavy rain or very low visibility, this effect is magnified. Even fewer airplanes get through.
So how does this relate to the airlines? Well, the airlines started flying smaller jets more often on busy routes, instead of making fewer flights on larger aircraft. This is less efficient just in fuel use, but in this discussion it means that the airports had to handle more load. Also, the airlines (if they bothered to check at all) scheduled their flights with the assumption of good weather. The big airports wound up scheduled right to the limit of operations they could handle in good weather, so as soon as anything came along (like rain or fog) to slow the pace down, the whole system starts backing up. That's why, for example, fog in New York can back up air traffic all over the northeast for the rest of the day.
In short, the airlines' schedules had no margin in them for weather. I could see slot restrictions (with more realistic assumptions) at large airports, provided they're administered fairly, but simply jacking prices up to reduce demand isn't the way to go. Besides, current rail infrastructure couldn't handle a fraction of the displaced passengers, and building a nationwide high-speed rail network would be very expensive. Imagine Boston's "Big Dig" over the entire country. My guess is it would take decades to fully implement.
Air travel's two greatest advantages are speed and flexibility. Capacity can be reallocated literally overnight if necessary, without having to change or build expensive infrastructure. The facilities already exist, and are relatively compact compared with rail lines (which must physically run continuously between terminals). You don't have to purchase land for the right-of-way, and air travel allows much more decentralization than is possible with rail.
Ours blocks spacequotes.com and some fastener supply companies as "pornography".
Oh yeah, I get turned on by bolts and threaded rod. NAS6708D32, you go baby!
Because your daughter come over to my house, and she kicked my dog. And now dog needs operation.
But how long do the batteries last? How much does it cost to replace them, and what's the disposal fee for the old ones?
Toyota isn't telling anyone that part. I don't know the numbers either, but I'd suspect that said battery costs will wipe out any gas savings you might have made, unless gas goes to $7 or $8.
Every time I think about getting a motorcycle, somebody I know gets in an accident on one. All but one of those accidents has been someone else's fault. Most recently, my boss hit a deer and was out for five weeks with a broken leg.
Much as the efficiency appeals to me, I'll stick with cars. Too many idiots out there on the road.
Certification standards require that all such aircraft be able to withstand 150% of the highest allowable g-limit without structural failure. This is true for both Boeing and Airbus aircraft--and neither manufacturer is going to significantly overbuild their aircraft, because that adds weight. In fact, if tests show the structure is stronger than that, they will remove some to save weight.
And a properly-designed fly-by-wire system doesn't "trump pilot judgment." It puts in g-limits (so you don't rip the wings off) and an alpha limiter (so you don't stall the airplane; incidentally, this makes windshear recovery easier since you can just haul back on the stick). Almost any situation where you would possibly need to overstress the aircraft, or would get into a stall, is likely the result of poor judgment on the pilot's part.
I can think of only two incidents off the top of my head where aircraft crashed due to FBW-related problems... the aforementioned Airbus, and the recent B-2 crash.
I'm and engineer working on a fly-by-wire program, and a private pilot, fwiw.
Or to put it another way:
-You must play the game.
-You can't win.
-You can't break even, except on a very cold day.
-It doesn't get that cold.
Thermodynamics FTW
Exactly my point.
And what ideology do you suppose that I have? I'm not claiming private enterprise is totally superior in every way, and I didn't suggest that Delta/Atlas be chosen because they were "privately" developed or inherently superior. I only said that this particular program is being cocked-up because of political interference, and that Delta/Atlas would have been better for this application because they were already flying and they are better rockets than Ares I.
If anything, my "ideology" would be "let's give them the funding they need to do it right, instead of politically forcing poor design decisions in an attempt to run a jobs program or keep somebody's constituents happy." I'm tired of seeing politicians and bean-counters fuck up good space programs--it happened with Apollo (canceled early), it happened with the shuttle (too many problems to list), it happened with ISS (too many design compromises), and it's happening with this program. But sadly, I think it'll take an imminent "dinosaur-killer" asteroid or some form of alien contact before anyone treats space seriously.
For the record, I have libertarian leanings. But space is one of the few areas where I do support large-scale government involvement.
The reason the shuttle's payload seems so low is the orbiter itself... it's not "useful" payload per se, but in terms of absolute mass delivered into orbit, the shuttle system (as a whole) is right up there in the same general category as Saturn V, Ares V, and Energia.
We could have leveraged a lot of that capability had we so chose... look up Shuttle-C
Yeah, that's true; though the boosters have their own issues... I was thinking more of putting all the really heavy and expensive stuff (wings, TPS, computers, etc.) in the orbiter.
At first... but then when you're in orbit, going up means pointy end horizontal (forward).
More like "because of budget shortfalls, we only have time to come up with this crappy solution instead of spending more time to come up with a good one."
The US government oversaw Apollo. US enterprise is currently overseeing a crappy suborbital space plane and an even crappier low payload rocket.
If the current incarnation of NASA has a problem, it is that like many modern government agencies it is trying to emulate private enterprise too much.
No, the decision to use Ares I was a political one, with the apparent objective of keeping as many of the old shuttle people employed as possible.
Had it been up to enterprise, I'm pretty sure Atlas V or Delta IV (both of which are flying today) would have been chosen instead. But, just like the shuttle, political mandates and short-sightedness ("I don't care if it costs more in the end, it costs less today!) will give us an overweight, underwhelming, extremely-expensive, and inefficent design.
It's how much that weight has to be accelerated that matters. If you have to have dead weight, it's better to put it on the first stage than on a later one--you only have to accelerate that dead weight to first-stage burnout, rather than all the way to orbit.
The end effect is that a pound of dead weight in the last stage costs you a pound of payload... but a pound of dead weight on the first stage might only cost you a quarter of a pound in payload.
That's why many people propose making the first stage of a launcher reusable, and throwing away the upper stage (rather than the other way around, like the shuttle). All the reusability adds weight (thermal protection, landing gear, recovery systems)... make it the first stage, and you can make it beefier and more robust. And there's less of a thermal problem to deal with.
That said, 1600 pounds of deadweight mass dampers is a piss-poor engineering solution. But that's what you get when you have a politically-dictated design that's being rushed out the door; shit gets kludged together to make it work now instead of doing it right to begin with. This could be seen as the equivalent of using a GOTO in complicated code (instead of fixing it correctly), or fixing misaligned teeth by pulling them all out (to be replaced by dentures) instead of getting braces. It works, yeah, but it's not a good solution.
Point 1: Compound that with a bureaucracy that discourages said motivated, educated, and trained people from teaching, and it's no wonder there's a shortage.
For the most part, in my state you have to have a degree in teaching in order to teach. There are programs by which someone in another field can get into teaching, but they involve jumping through lots of hoops and (eventually) getting a teaching degree anyways. It took years to even get engineers approved for this program to teach physics and math; one would think that a person who uses the material in the real world and spent several years studying to do so would be better suited than someone fresh out of school with a bachelor's in education.
(Oddly enough, there's no requirement at all to have teacher training to be a college professor...)
Point 2: The predicted price drop from offshore drilling is due to the placebo effect. Make a statement that doing so will drop prices, and the market (in true self-fulfilling prophecy style) will respond.
Exactly. Obviously, the best situation is for your opponent to not know your capabilities at all, since it's harder for him to defend against a complete unknown. But even if he does know your capabilities, hiding the technical details does two things: it still makes it harder for him to defend against (think missile guidance and electronic warfare), and it keeps that technology out of his hands so he can't use it against you.
Intelligence (and warfare) isn't a business competition, a school project, or a rec-league sport. Stuff like this can be literally life-or-death. Spending the extra money and effort to keep critical technology hidden can make a difference down the road and mean that more of your guys might make it home.
In war (and other serious, life/death situations), finding yourself in a fair fight means you screwed up somewhere.
Or, it's probably a combination of factors, and not just a dick-measuring competition.
Consider the following:
1. A very expensive intelligence satellite is stranded in low orbit, useless. Said satellite contains expensive, highly-classefied equipment; there's a finite chance that some of this equipment might reach the surface relatively intact (see Skylab, Columbia). Obviously, certain groups (China and Russia, especially) would love to get hold of anything that survived and analyze it. It would be nice to ensure that this equipment is rendered unusable and worthless.
2. The hydrazine tank mentioned. Yes, I know the odds of it hitting anything were very, very small... but not zero. And the public outcry had it hurt or killed anyone would have been loud and swift. The decision-makers probably figured it would be better to face the inevitable international grumbling by shooting down the satellite than to face the very small (but potentially devastating) risk of impact in a populated area.
3. The Navy ABM system is going operational, and someone realizes it has the capability to shoot down low satellites. Someone probably figured "hell, we have this satellite problem; it's going to reenter soon anyways so it's a nice convenient test target. We might as well try it while we have the chance". Besides, the additional cost is a drop in the proverbial bucket.
4. At the top levels, there probably was a bit of "let's show them" going on. But I suspect it was as much a coincidence as anything else, with #1 above leading the "rational" reasons list. The hydrazine tank story just made for the best PR.
The idea of being paid by the job, not by hours, is fine in theory. But you should be assigned tasks and allowed to go home when they're finished, and not held to a minimum number of hours.
The up-side of being salaried is that I am not tied to a time clock. Some weeks I work less than 40 hours, some weeks I work more. I keep track of what I work and take time off as needed to compensate for extra hours.
The problem is that many salaried positions still require a minimum of 40 hours, and don't get flex time or other compensation... in other words, if you're going to require a minimum time out of your employees, they should be getting compensated somehow for extra time that they work (time off, pay, etc).
Order, structure, and hierarchy work great for my files and things. But for my bedroom and workshop, "toss it on the floor" seems to be the entrenched system.
If my memory serves me, they've flown this thing in atmosphere, but not orbital yet. Kinda like how Enterprise flew from the back of a 747 (to test approach and landing) before the other orbiters flew in space.