You're going to need to provide citation for that absurd quarter million claim.
Why? Are you incapable of doing the slightest amount of web searching, but somehow still manage to post here?
Working for a defense contractor, I can say that someone is going to have fun talking with the FBI and/or the CIA and/or the NSA soon.
Happy butt raping!
Soon?
You must have missed the part where it says "A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development ".
I seriously doubt the FBI or CIA are going to go after the NSA.
It just costs US companies sales, and further encourages them to move manufacturing overseas.
Government routinely pays a lot more than what they could purchase the same item for at Walmart. I've seen it with my own eyes. A government agency can only buy from a vendor approved for the project, after 400 pages of paperwork to get approved. The vendor charges $150 for a widget. Walmart charges $30 for the same widget. The vendor buys the item for $30 and sells it to the government for $150. To avoid HAVING a juicy contract at all, government agencies should be able to just use Walmart.com.
The paperwork just to get on the bidders list can be enormous. So much so, that our company just told any government bidders to go through on of our resellers, because we were not going to jump through all those hoops. Suddenly, a short track paper work trail was available. Still not interested. (We had been down that way before, and wasn't really any shorter.) We got the sales anyway, just had to give our resellers their cut, which was less costly than the paperwork.
If you knew the natives only spoke smoke signals you would have to be even less educated than the natives to respond with radio.
The more capable civilization adjusts communication means to fit the capabilities of less capable.
That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.
Certainly possible. But then, who of us could receive it?
Probably all of us would receive it.
After all, they would understand our limitations, by virtue of examining our transmissions, and adjust their
transmissions accordingly.
The EU is paying for the new shelter, not Russia or Ukraine. The construction of the old shelter/sarcophagus is a lie. They're still running about 10 of these RMBKs in Russia proper.
The new shelter is not even on the same scale of intent as the old sarcophagus. Never mind the shortcomings of the sarcophagus, its intent was to be a shield for radiation. It is falling in due to its own weight, and hasty construction. But as of now it is serving its purpose, although badly in need of repair.
The new shield is nothing more than dust cover. Made of thins sheet steel, it is designed to keep the dust of future work on the sarcophagus contained. It is not itself designed to block radiation. Its mostly dual concentric layers of 1 mm thick correlated sheet steel and aluminum held up by a system of trusses. It is not designed to be radiation proof.
Once in place, the new structure should contain radioactive dust, preventing any atmospheric contamination should the old sarcophagus collapse. The new building is expected to last anywhere from 100 to 300 years.
And why shouldn't the EPA be revising safe acceptable radiation levels? After all, the prior standards proved so overly protective as to be universally ignored. If WWII and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and all of the other minor leaks and accidental exposures have taught us anything is that life (including humans) is more resistant to radiation that we ever though. Basically if it doesn't kill you within a few weeks, you will have a statistically indistinguishable prognosis of living a normal life.
Utter nonsense.
Look, we all acknowledge the accomplishments Mother Russia, OK?
But stop trying to make out that this is either high tech or difficult to make. Its a very basic simple design (as is almost all Russian space hardware), simply scaled up.
Engines with the exact same principal of operation powered the Shuttle. It had the additional requirement of being reusable. SpaceX already has the Raptor engine in production and testing.
The metallurgy is not a particular impediment, because it was already developed for prior rocket motors (F1) as far back as the 50s.
I save my best editing for people who pay me.
Russia was not given a contract. Check your facts.
Boeing and Lockheed got the contract.
The US (NASA and Air Force) has been buying and using these motors since forever.
The US licensed the technology (Pratt and Whitney), and could build them stateside any time they want. Its just been cheaper to buy them in Russia from the original manufacturers.
Why? You were allies in WWII. History moves along. Why can't you?
History also moves backward. Where have you been for the last several months?
The contract will probably be re-opened, and this temporary injunction is mostly aimed at doing just that.
DOD will not let it stand in the way of their mission critical launches.
When security critical payloads need to be put in orbit this ruling goes away without a whimper.
To paraphrase Joseph Stalin: "How many divisions does the Court of Federal Claims have?"
DOD and Launch Alliance has nothing to worry about from the Court or from SpaceX. They SHOULD be worried about Putin.
This case turns the usual defense procurement bugaboo on its head.
Not really.
This decision won't stand. The DOD will not let some meddlesome judge stand in the way of a security need, and friendlier judges will quickly overturn it. (It was a temporary injunction anyway).
Look people, this is just to get their (Air Force's) attention. It isn't going to be a permanent thing, by simply making headlines it has served its purpose. (Note that the Russian's will probably block the sale anyway soon).
DOD will promise to revise the bidding, they may also tell Pratt and Whitney to start manufacturing these engines in western countries (P&W bought the license to do this a long time ago, but it was never economic to do so in the past). This isn't particularly difficult tech to build when all of the plans and specs are already in US hands due to long existing licensing deals.
But mostly, the purpose was an attention grab, to demonstrate how stupid it is to encourage US companies to develop lift capabilities and then turn around and buy Russian made engines on a sole source contract.
USPS is still about 15 years behind in adopting the Internet.
And Thank God they are.
If the USPS hadn't killed off this whackjob scheme, the Snowden revelations would have done it for them, because
the NSA would never be able to resist cataloging every bit of it.
I was BEGGING for this service a few years back when I was spending extended periods at sea. I'm sure anybody who goes on extended overseas trips would love it.
Including Mr Snowden.
Elliptic paraboloids for sale.
