In these situations, I'm not entirely sure collateral damage is of a primary concern. The image of either building being damaged or destroyed or the threat to elected representatives likely presents a worse impact than collateral damage might. Its like all the special protections they already have. For instance, punch your neighbor and face a misdemeanor, punch a senator or the president and it is not only a felony but a serious one at that. Kill someone in an auto accident and it can be a charge with less than 10 years but run over a police dog and you face life for killing an officer of the law.
Our system has said they are special and more protected than most people for quite a while now.
You're not getting what he was saying.
I do get what he's saying. What neither of you seem to grasp is that the size of the target isn't as relevant as you think, because you have to null your horizontal velocity regardless of the size of the target. It doesn't matter whether you're stopping on a postage stamp or anywhere in a given block - either way you still have to stop. It's the stopping that's problem, not the deciding where to stop. Stopping is very difficult for the Falcon 9 because it's T/W ratio is so far out of the optimal range and a larger target area won't make it all that much easier.
Though if they're that good at targeting, maybe programming up an adaptive 'catcher' robot would work? I'm thinking of something along the lines of 3 arms that have a range of motion, and when the rocket's within a few feet, they gently 'grab' the rocket using shaped and padded interfaces(I'm picturing a semi-circle matching that of the rocket) and provide stability.
That's "good at targeting" a couple of orders of magnitude better than what they've demonstrated to date (which is, pardon my french, already pretty fucking amazing). You're talking about some kind of articulated arm (which can survive being essentially inside rocket exhaust)... Which is, quite frankly, makes things much harder and more complicated and introduces a metric buttload of additional possible points of failure. Much easier to simply re-engineer the throttle valve.
IMHO, if more of the horizontal velocity was shed earlier, It'd be easier to stay balanced at the end.
At the cost of increasing the difficulty of targeting the landing, and still having to null any horizontal velocity due to the wind. TAANSTAFL.
The rest of what you say is generally true, although a larger target *would* help. The advantage of a larger target is that, while you still have to zero your horizontal velocity, you don't have to zero it anywhere terribly precise.
Yeah, you do. Given the narrow footprint and the low CG of the vehicle, if the horizontal velocity wasn't as close to zero as you can get at touchdown - it's very likely to tip over. (Even if you don't damage the landing legs in the process.) The upper part of the vehicle isn't heavy, but it has a very long lever arm.
You can pick an optimal set of thrusts that results in the correct orientation and velocities (horizontal and vertical) without worrying overmuch *where* that series of thrusts has you touching down.
In the end, that makes far less difference than you think because while you can reduce the amount of horizontal velocity that needs to be nulled you cannot eliminate it. (Not without launch criteria that include "near zero wind at the recovery site", which is beyond impractical.) The result is, with the current vehicle, you still have to null horizontal velocity at the last second before touch down. The basic problem is that the vehicle is badly designed for what it's being asked to do.
. Both attempts so far clearly demonstrate the ability to do an excellent good job of targeting a (relatively) tiny barge, but currently, if the rocket would come down even 100' (30m) to one side of its target spot, it needs to induce a horizontal momentum (which requires leaving a vertical attitude as well, it can't just translate sideways) and then null that momentum at the right moment (and fix its attitude). That's hard.
Both times they've hit the barge almost dead center - I fail to see how that's an arguement for a larger landing area since neither failure was caused by the landing area being too small. Both vehicles would have crashed regardless of the size of the landing area due to control system failures. (Attitude control on the first, throttle control on the second.) That's what neither you nor the OP seem to grasp.
Anything is possible but they have helicopter rides at the county fair around my neck of the woods. They take off and land right next to the fair way with an area about 30 yards roped off. Of course they approach and leave from the far side and away from the rides but its usually still over a parking lot.
I'm not sure I would be overly excited about his landing. Still some concerns but likely not dangerous.
Does it harm you for them to spend their money this way?
Not directly. Not as an individual. But diverting resources to quackery is bad for society; not so bad in this case that it's high on my list as "health supplements", but not totally benign either.
So... They didn't test the iPad / content combo to establish usability / feasibility / usefulness prior to dropping all this cash?
That's speculation. Feasibility is no guarantee of performance.
I read the attached article, and there were two specific complaints cited. The first was security, which is a non-functional requirement; that could well be a failure of the customer to do his homework on requirements but presumably a competent and honest vendor could have done a better job on security. It's often the vendor's job to anticipate customer needs, particularly in projects of the type customers don't necessarily have experience with.
The other complaint is that the curriculum wasn't completely implemented. If the vendor failed to deliver something it agreed to, that's purely the vendor's fault.
Sometimes bad vendors happen to good customers. Bad vendors happen more often to bad customers, but every project involves taking a calculated risk.
There is a surface to air missile battery on the capital building and white house. Likely in other areas around there to.
Because of his slow speed and open cockpit they had the opportunity to watch him instead of just reacting. If he got closer or appearedt to be threatening to the white house he likely would have been shot down.
Well, until the details of how the contract was awarded and how the vendor failed have been thoroughly investigated, it's premature to fire anyone.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for accountability and decisiveness, but picking someone plausible and throwing them under the bus isn't accountability. In fact that may actually shield whoever was responsible.
This isn't from the Onion?
Kind of makes me wonder if using the barge as such a small target is contributing to the hard landings, simply because it's such a tiny target relative to the area that the rocket has to come down on
Since the first attempt hard landed because it ran out of attitude control gas, and the second hard landed because of a control valve problem... how would a larger target have helped? In case of the first attempt, you've still got to control your attitude regardless of the size of the field. In the second, the size of the field is irrelevant if you can't properly control the vehicle in the first place.
Seriously, don't be misled by the frantic activity in the final seconds of the most recent attempt. That burst of activity was the vehicle attempting to null it's horizontal velocity and then trim it's attitude before landing - something it has to do regardless of the size of the field.
The basic flaw in the landing sequence isn't the size of the target, it's the design of the vehicle. Its minimum T/W ratio is well over unity at landing, meaning it can't hover, can't ease itself down, and you have to take great care to not end up with positive vertical velocity. The only way it can land (with any reasonable sized target) is to approach at high speed, then at the last second try to null horizontal velocity without excessively reducing vertical velocity (I.E. bouncing), followed by a return to vertical and touchdown.
You could avoid this by having a circle of paved ground a quarter to half a mile in diameter - but that's not cheap to build or maintain given the need to resist a rocket's exhaust. Long term, given that the tests are essentially free*, it's cheaper and easier to figure out how to land precisely on a smaller target.
* The first stage is bought and paid for by the launch customer - and so long as the added equipment for landing poses no undue risk during ascent, they don't care what happens to it after separation.
McCain-Feingold was not an attempt to "prevent people from gathering together in a group, pooling their resources, and using those resources to express an opinion about politics"
That's exactly what it was. How else would you characterize you being subject to felony federal charges if you (personally, or as part of a group) run an issue or party advocacy ad in the week before an election? It wasn't about the size or loudness of the "megaphone," it was about political speech, period. Unless you are part of one of the groups that the law allowed to continue. Which is the second reason why the law was struck down - unequal protection. The law abridged free speech, and applied the law unevenly to different parties. Unconstitutional right out of the gate on both counts.
Perhaps, just get rid of districts. If someone from across my state represents me better than someone local, then perhaps my appointment should not be limited by borders drawn for an election system that would no longer be in place.
Why even restrict the choice of representative to someone in your state? I'd just let anyone interest in the job apply to serve as a representative, provided they could meet some minimum number of votes nation-wide—perhaps 0.1% of the eligible voting population, so there could be at most 1,000 representatives. In practice it would probably be much less than 1,000, with a few individuals representing the major factions but plenty of room for minority positions. Each eligible voter gets three votes, and thus up to three representatives, which they are given the opportunity to change at regular intervals (e.g. quarterly, or when one of their representatives steps down). The votes are persistent until changed, and can be concentrated or spread out according to the voter's preference. A representative's influence in the House is determined by how many votes he or she currently holds.
This would, of course, be separate from the states' representatives in the Senate, to be appointed by the state legislatures. Popular representation is all well and good, but someone has to look out for the long term. Under my system the House would be able to approve any short-term (discretionary) expenditures unilaterally out of existing savings, but a 2/3 super-majority in the Senate would be required for anything requiring new debt (to include any increase in the money supply), speculation on future revenues, or a commitment of more than a few years. Finally, all laws would be required to maintain the approval of a simple majority in both the House and the Senate or face immediate repeal following a call for a vote.
The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
