We took the family to DC for a vacation, and of course one of the things I had to see was Smithsonian Air and Space. I didn't know that the original Enterprise model was there, and was surprised to see it on the lower floor.

The next surprise was that the model was never finished. One side had all of the lights, striping, and everything. The other side had a little striping, and was otherwise pretty much blank. I remembered reading that in one of those books, and how all shots were of the finished side, or mirrored in post-processing.

I thought I also read something about kerosene leaving some sort of residue in the plumbing, turbopumps, etc. For a disposable it just doesn't matter, but for a reusable it means extra maintenance. The other thing was Zubrin suggesting that methane/oxygen was relatively easy to generate on Mars, for a return flight. Since Musk probably isn't planning on returning, that would be for a Mars space program.

Since you sound familiar with this stuff, I'm wondering about Falcon Heavy. I've seen that it's moving to methane/oxygen propellents. My understanding has been that kerosene/oxygen were generally best for a first stage, and hydrogen/oxygen is best for an upper stage where specific impulse is more important than tank size.

With methan/oxygen it seems obvious that they'd like to run the engine on mars-native fuel. But I also get the impression that kerosene/oxygen might not be the best thing for reusability because it gums up the works, and methane/oxygen would be better.

So I see three factor here - Earth launch, reuse, and Mars launch. Do you have any feel for this tradeoff set?

I must have skimmed TFA too fast. So this appears to be for the capsule, not the launcher? I thought there was a launcher competition going too, and that was going to be bigger than Atlas 5 or Delta IV.

"Safe" and "Exciting" have a different meaning in this context. Realize that Falcon 9 has already flown several times, and though plagued with the delays that plague pretty much all launches, has a good track record which will presumably continue through its use in a manned launch. The "Exciting" choice sounds about as "Safe" as it gets in rocketry, to me.

The Boeing design is new, though presumably using tried and true components from a tried and true design. There will no doubt be unmanned test launches, but the first men on top will still be sitting on a rocket with far less launch history than the Falcon 9. The "Safe" choice sounds just a bit more "Exciting" this way.

Disclaimer - TFA doesn't say if this is for Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy is all-new, with only the company track record behind it. That puts SpaceX and Boeing on a more even footing, with Boeing having a longer track record and SpaceX having done more launches recently.

OTOH, I seriously doubt that the head of Boeing plans on going through a Boeing launch personally. The head of SpaceX does.

Seriously... If we really want to foster a private space industry, both companies need to be kept moving forward. At this stage of the game, the contract needs to be split in order to improve the viability of both efforts. Cutthroat cost competition can happen later.

Of course, but that's "sunk cost" in a manner of speaking, available under no better terms to SpaceX than to any other US-based company.

However given that basis, typical contract projects are then paid for by the government, on top of "historical knowledge." SpaceX used the historical knowledge, as others do, but then paid for their additional development themselves.

SpaceX did the development themselves, from what I understand. They're now doing fixed-cost government contracts, unlike the rest of the space industry in the U.S.

My beef is with the way it seems that most US companies are there to make money, and see their products as a way to do so. I'd rather see them be there to build their products, and see money as a way to keep making those products.

For the car analogy, assuming support for both ways would properly continue, would you rather by a car built by a car geek, or buy a car built by a money geek?

Wow, this is really fascinating!

One set of systemd advocates suggests that the Unix Way is obsolete, holding Linux back, and is overdue to be discarded.

Now another systemd advocate suggests that systemd is fulfilling the Unix Way better than SysV Init.

I will say now, as I said months ago, that systemd would be much less controversial if it had been packaged differently. I'm not the only one making that statement, and yet for all of its claimed modularity at compile time, systemd is still one package.

> the reality is systemd is a bunch of individual modules

I disagree. Technically you are correct, but the same modularity argument can be made for practically any piece of code bigger than "Hello World". However in practice systemd is shipped as a monolith. I just checked, and even on Genoo with its uber-flexible USE flags and compilation from source, you can't shut off individual features like logging, dhcp, ntp, etc. Most people just install the binaries.

No, systemd is not the end of the world. But it would be the end of running my machines the way I wish to - at least without spending more time and effort keeping it fenced in as you suggest.

This always struck me as a funny part of the "Harry Potter" series. They were all in a school for magic, verifying and repeating using experimentation. Though it sounds silly to say, it impressed me as "the science of magic."

Science is the way of thinking and the framework, not the topic.

I didn't name it by name in my original post, but I believe Slackware will be one of those safe distributions. Nor do I ever see a need to go off of Linux.

I simply predict that in the future there will be two platforms - GNU/Linux and SystemD/Linux. The latter will have the lion's share of the users, and will indeed achieve World Domination. The former will continue to have something under 1% of market share, just where we've always been.

In this respect, BSD will not be any safer port in the storm than the old-school-Linux distributions. We all use pretty much the same userspace - we have to just hope that SystemD/Linux doesn't fiddle with that userspace so badly that we can't use it. As long as things are reasonable orthogonal - part of the Unix WAy - we're OK. But we know the new crowd has no respect for that, and indeed feels that it's part of what is holding Linux back.

But you see, Windows has the lion's share of the market, and many of them are happy there. We tend to look with our Linux/Unix blinders on can't imaging that anyone could be happy there, but there are.

Once upon a time Miguel De Icaza spoke of trying to make Gnome "Windows Done Right". That's what I think people are trying to do with systemd - Windows Done Right - on the Linux kernel. Except that because they came from Windows and were happy with Windows, they may also think that systemd is Linux Done Right.

Any mass migration to BSD is not "mass" when compared to the WIndows userbase. Depending on how many Windows users and developers have already moved to Linux, it may not even be that big a number compared to the current Linux userbase, any more.

I see systemd as the product of a culture clash between old and old-school Linux users/developers and new Linux users/developers.

Linux was really derived from Unix, and in a very important way RMS has always been correct in insisting it be called GNU/Linux. Because "GNU's Not Unix" only in the licensing aspect. Philosophically, GNU really IS Unix.

A few years back, Linus and Linux started getting a lot of attention in the computing and even general press. Linux started becoming cool and interesting. It started attracting new users, a new wave of early adopters, and since early adopters also tend to be developers, Linux attracted a new wave of developers.

But these developers has a key difference - they had no Unix background. They largely came from Windows, simply because that's the largest source of developers, by simple demographics. But they weren't "fleeing Windows", they were attracted to Linux. They also brought their background, attitudes and preferences with them, and that includes a heave dose of "The Windows Way" and little to nothing of "The Unix Way."

The result is systemd - the Windows Way ported on top of the Linux kernel.

Then there is the demographics issue. The classical Linux market share has been so small and Windows so big that it doesn't take many Windows users/developers to swamp out the old school Linux/Unix camp. We're bing "conquered by demographics." They don't see anything wrong with systemd because it fits their background and world view perfectly - in fact it's a better fit for them than SysV Init is. There's also a bit of the Windows "One Way" attitude at work, attempting to push systemd across the board.

Fortunately there are a few never-newbie distributions still around, and it seems that the old-school Unix users are congregating there and will keep them alive. Or there are always the BSDs..