I'm wondering if it would've helped had they been in contact with someone on the ground at the time. Someone who wasn't themselves in the danger situation, and thus not blinded by fear, could've helped them out?
Air industry fanboying is retared. Both the main manufacturers in the western world have excellent safety records, with the difference in the (tiny) number of hull losses to small to draw conclusions from.
REL are planning to sell these (and the know how to operate them) freely, so NASA will presumably be welcome to become a Skylon operator. Alternatively, they could just run two completely separate Apollo-style capsule programs, but that would be daft...
What you are failing to take into account is the difference in cultures. Massive overstatement of ones capabilities does not go over well in the UK like it does in America. Notice, that if you actually dig through the REL site, their absolute minimum for future costs (which is equivalent to the number Musk is shouting from the rooftops) is less than $300/kg. They just are too careful to promise that publicly. So you are comparing a hollow boast to a cautious prediction.
Did you even read what I said? Skylon is a completely different vehicle, with different engines. You are showing an incredible ignorance of engineering here.
Unlike SpaceX, REL are including amortised R&D costs. SpaceX expects to have paid for developing their rocket when they hit $1k/kg, so its not a valid comparison. Especially when REL has to do a lot more R&D, and doesn't have the help SpaceX had.
Right, because the ESA engineers who have poured over the REL numbers and seen their technology demonstrated in the lab are just fucking guessing, right?
The altitude gained by the vehicle during the airbreathing phase is almost irrelevant. The speed is the issue; it gets to Mach 5 (i.e. 1650m/s) Thats about 20% of what you need to get to orbit. It isn't that much, but its enough to take SSTO from a marginal possibility (See Venture Star) to seriously doable.
What you seem also to have missed is how much heavier oxygen is than hydrogen. It forms over 80% of the weight of the mix. Combine this with the fact that most fuel burned by a rocket is there to lift more fuel the savings add up.
One more thing; H2/O2 rockets traditionally suffer from poor thrust/weight ratio due to the low density of H2 requiring large, heavy tanks. This is why most systems that employ it from lift-off have boosters (Shuttle, Ariane 5, Energiya) to minimise gravity losses. Dumping lots of O2 means Skylon can avoid this problem without any weird tank materials.
You aren't being skeptical, because a skeptic would easily be able to find numbers on the REL website, or would recognise that the ESA review is probably as good as any you could do (most likely far better). You are just taking a shot at this idea for whatever reason, and disguising this as thoughtful skepticism.
They are not aiming for ESA specifically. They are aiming to sell Skylons to anyone who will buy them. Their promotional animations sometimes show rows of Skylons with different tail art, showing their intention that multiple operators will be running their space plane.
Ariane 5 does not have to worry about competition from SpaceX. Its primarily a French launch system, and the French government isn't afraid to dump money into their high-tech industries. They will simply subsidise it to compete with SpaceX, force ESA payloads to use it etc. until they can make a more competitive replacement (Ariane 6 is mooted to be a smaller, cheaper vehicle) One private rocket does not a market make.
This is Skylon, not HOTOL, so no it hasn't been in development since 1982. Different vehicle, different engine (the original one was classified by the UK government).
The statement 'they are not planning to build it until the 2020's' is flat out false. They are planning to have it operational in 2020. This may be optimistic, but what you said does not accurately reflect their statements.
Environmentally friendly is not a touchy-feely issue either; if spaceflight is going to go from long-term experiment to routine flight, its emissions need to be taken into account. Concern has already been raised about the effects of releasing particles from hybrid motors at high altitude. Right now it doesn't matter, but IF we are entering an era of mass spaceflight, it will.
A review isn't the same as the test, no, but I can tell you from first hand experience that ESA engineers are not easily impressed. They will have given REL a proper grilling before coming out and saying that they think this concept is viable.
Whilst I have no doubt the mostly US-based/. audience will probably not have much respect for ESA, please bear in mind that despite a budget half the size, and a lack of manned capability for political reasons, its cooperates with NASA on engineering matters as an equal these days.
Because its hard to measure social capital, but its comparatively easy to keep a body count. Society doesn't necessarily value death, but it does value only things than can be reduced to a single number.
This is a myth, and for a very good reason that most people aren't aware of.
Thatcher was elected in 1979. The UK government started collecting (a lot of) revenue from North Sea oil in 1979. So you need to distinguish between the economy recovering *because* of Thatcher and it recovering *in spite of* Thatcher. Its well documented her early monetarist experiments did not have the outcomes intended. Lowering the money supply did not stop inflation.
No, because it being coffee is not the cause. The statement 'coffee prevents prostate cancer' contains the implicit assumption that coffee does so more than control. This may seem nitpicky, but summarising scientific research requires fairly precise use of language.
Even without caffeine, extra fluids will make you piss more. Constantly cleaning out your urinary tract sounds like a more feasible mechanism of action than some unidentified chemical in coffee that isn't common in other parts of the human diet. Decaf coffee isn't a valid control, water is.
One route by which a false causation could occur here is through one of the most obvious effects of caffeine - its a diuretic. The summary could have just as easily said "Pissing often helps prevent prostate cancer"
This is clearly a derivative of an old Soviet vehicle. They never got much use of of them because they require a perfectly flat surface in order to work properly, hence the Japanese building a specially made track for it.
1) Our economies aren't recovering fast enough
2) The Chinese economy is growing really fast
3) Lets do what the Chinese are doing...
4)...censor the Interwebs!
The next logical step is for David Cameron to run over protestors at the royal wedding with tanks.
I googled it. Nice to learn something new each day. However, from what I read the bubble isn't the kind of threat it is in western countries.
In a western democracy, the response to a bubble is usually to keep feeding it, claim you are an economic genius for providing so much growth, and pray to god it bursts on the next guys watch, where you can tut about reckless mismanagement from the opposition side.
China, on the other hand, doesn't have have anybody they can hand a ticking timebomb of an economy over to. They are in it for the long haul, they know it, and they are willing to interrupt a bubble before it blows up in their faces. This at least gives them a *possibility* of a soft landing.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm wondering if it would've helped had they been in contact with someone on the ground at the time. Someone who wasn't themselves in the danger situation, and thus not blinded by fear, could've helped them out?
Where are your errors?
Air industry fanboying is retared. Both the main manufacturers in the western world have excellent safety records, with the difference in the (tiny) number of hull losses to small to draw conclusions from.
REL are planning to sell these (and the know how to operate them) freely, so NASA will presumably be welcome to become a Skylon operator. Alternatively, they could just run two completely separate Apollo-style capsule programs, but that would be daft...
The dot.com bubble would disagree with that assessment. So would the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
What you are failing to take into account is the difference in cultures. Massive overstatement of ones capabilities does not go over well in the UK like it does in America. Notice, that if you actually dig through the REL site, their absolute minimum for future costs (which is equivalent to the number Musk is shouting from the rooftops) is less than $300/kg. They just are too careful to promise that publicly. So you are comparing a hollow boast to a cautious prediction.
Did you even read what I said? Skylon is a completely different vehicle, with different engines. You are showing an incredible ignorance of engineering here.
No, you can't. They project $1k only for Falcon Heavy, which has never flown. Their price projection is no more concrete than the one for Skylon.
Unlike SpaceX, REL are including amortised R&D costs. SpaceX expects to have paid for developing their rocket when they hit $1k/kg, so its not a valid comparison. Especially when REL has to do a lot more R&D, and doesn't have the help SpaceX had.
Right, because the ESA engineers who have poured over the REL numbers and seen their technology demonstrated in the lab are just fucking guessing, right?
The altitude gained by the vehicle during the airbreathing phase is almost irrelevant. The speed is the issue; it gets to Mach 5 (i.e. 1650m/s) Thats about 20% of what you need to get to orbit. It isn't that much, but its enough to take SSTO from a marginal possibility (See Venture Star) to seriously doable.
What you seem also to have missed is how much heavier oxygen is than hydrogen. It forms over 80% of the weight of the mix. Combine this with the fact that most fuel burned by a rocket is there to lift more fuel the savings add up.
One more thing; H2/O2 rockets traditionally suffer from poor thrust/weight ratio due to the low density of H2 requiring large, heavy tanks. This is why most systems that employ it from lift-off have boosters (Shuttle, Ariane 5, Energiya) to minimise gravity losses. Dumping lots of O2 means Skylon can avoid this problem without any weird tank materials.
You aren't being skeptical, because a skeptic would easily be able to find numbers on the REL website, or would recognise that the ESA review is probably as good as any you could do (most likely far better). You are just taking a shot at this idea for whatever reason, and disguising this as thoughtful skepticism.
Evidence for that?
They are not aiming for ESA specifically. They are aiming to sell Skylons to anyone who will buy them. Their promotional animations sometimes show rows of Skylons with different tail art, showing their intention that multiple operators will be running their space plane.
Ariane 5 does not have to worry about competition from SpaceX. Its primarily a French launch system, and the French government isn't afraid to dump money into their high-tech industries. They will simply subsidise it to compete with SpaceX, force ESA payloads to use it etc. until they can make a more competitive replacement (Ariane 6 is mooted to be a smaller, cheaper vehicle) One private rocket does not a market make.
This is Skylon, not HOTOL, so no it hasn't been in development since 1982. Different vehicle, different engine (the original one was classified by the UK government).
The statement 'they are not planning to build it until the 2020's' is flat out false. They are planning to have it operational in 2020. This may be optimistic, but what you said does not accurately reflect their statements.
Environmentally friendly is not a touchy-feely issue either; if spaceflight is going to go from long-term experiment to routine flight, its emissions need to be taken into account. Concern has already been raised about the effects of releasing particles from hybrid motors at high altitude. Right now it doesn't matter, but IF we are entering an era of mass spaceflight, it will.
A review isn't the same as the test, no, but I can tell you from first hand experience that ESA engineers are not easily impressed. They will have given REL a proper grilling before coming out and saying that they think this concept is viable.
Whilst I have no doubt the mostly US-based /. audience will probably not have much respect for ESA, please bear in mind that despite a budget half the size, and a lack of manned capability for political reasons, its cooperates with NASA on engineering matters as an equal these days.
The name you are looking for is 'Ryan Giggs'
A lot of people dismiss Stallman as quirky or pedantic. However, he does seem to have a good nose for how the information cartels are going to act
Because its hard to measure social capital, but its comparatively easy to keep a body count. Society doesn't necessarily value death, but it does value only things than can be reduced to a single number.
This is a myth, and for a very good reason that most people aren't aware of.
Thatcher was elected in 1979. The UK government started collecting (a lot of) revenue from North Sea oil in 1979. So you need to distinguish between the economy recovering *because* of Thatcher and it recovering *in spite of* Thatcher. Its well documented her early monetarist experiments did not have the outcomes intended. Lowering the money supply did not stop inflation.
No, because it being coffee is not the cause. The statement 'coffee prevents prostate cancer' contains the implicit assumption that coffee does so more than control. This may seem nitpicky, but summarising scientific research requires fairly precise use of language.
Even without caffeine, extra fluids will make you piss more. Constantly cleaning out your urinary tract sounds like a more feasible mechanism of action than some unidentified chemical in coffee that isn't common in other parts of the human diet. Decaf coffee isn't a valid control, water is.
One route by which a false causation could occur here is through one of the most obvious effects of caffeine - its a diuretic. The summary could have just as easily said "Pissing often helps prevent prostate cancer"
This is clearly a derivative of an old Soviet vehicle. They never got much use of of them because they require a perfectly flat surface in order to work properly, hence the Japanese building a specially made track for it.
My mind has a firewall because I reject the arguments of climate change deniers? Grow the fuck up, and learn some real science.
Idiot AC
From people like David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy. You know, the people running the most powerful countries in the EU. Moron.
That comes from retards like James Delingpole
You really don't sound like you actually understand European politics at all.
1) Our economies aren't recovering fast enough ...censor the Interwebs!
2) The Chinese economy is growing really fast
3) Lets do what the Chinese are doing...
4)
The next logical step is for David Cameron to run over protestors at the royal wedding with tanks.
I googled it. Nice to learn something new each day. However, from what I read the bubble isn't the kind of threat it is in western countries.
In a western democracy, the response to a bubble is usually to keep feeding it, claim you are an economic genius for providing so much growth, and pray to god it bursts on the next guys watch, where you can tut about reckless mismanagement from the opposition side.
China, on the other hand, doesn't have have anybody they can hand a ticking timebomb of an economy over to. They are in it for the long haul, they know it, and they are willing to interrupt a bubble before it blows up in their faces. This at least gives them a *possibility* of a soft landing.
The difference is, China actually has the capability to do it. Musk only has one bit of technology, and the hope that the US gov. will buy it.