On the contrary. A completely silent CVR tells you a lot; it tells you that the airplane kept on flying with every one on board either unconscious or dead for at least 2 hours before the crash. That's a critical information for the investigation.

Furthermore, through data/media forensic, you might be able to recover the previous data that was overrecorded, although I wouldn't count on it after 3 to 4 record cycles.

I thought he was quite font of his spelling.

I find your view somewhat naive. I've been involved in multiple space projects (some very big ones), although never with NASA. But through my interactions with NASA and JPL scientists and engineer, I doubt that the situation there is any different than the one with the agencies I work with.

We are speaking of purchasing organizations run by politicians. Not scientists. How often have I seen scientists and engineer sake their heads on the attribution of a contract or selection of a mission? I stopped counting when I ran out of fingers to count on.

The attribution of the contracts is highly dependent on geographical distribution rather than on expertise. The selection of wrong contractors, based on geopolitical motive, costs years in delays and millions in over costs. It magnitude over the interaction you describe. If only that was the only source of higher costs...
The selection of the projects or mission that get financing is even worse. It became a real political farce, and is undermined by political marketing (eg. what sells well to the people financing the agencies) and by the true role of these agencies: financing the aerospace industry.

I would answer in short that people who assert things like you do haven't been in the business long enough or have been doing so with their eyes and ears closed. What you describe is entirely correct, but accounts only for a minute fraction of the cause of the high costs found in the space industry.

wooooosh, makes the shooting star.

Of course they know how. But they are not allowed to... or more accurately they do not allow themselves to do cheap.

But that is the first part of the price equation... equally strong is the polical part. A lot of decision are based on politcal decision rather than engineering choices or, even, common sense. Those decision often drive the prices to new hights.

I had at first trouble as well understanding the concern, which I have initially related back to me not being a physician. But if I put my engineer hat back on, I start to understand what the issue is (I deal all the time with people having issues, they can't correctly describe or explain). My believe, and I hope someone here can confirm or infirm this, is that the potency is not that much the issue, but rather the variance of the potency. In order word how different is the potency of the drug for different patients, which make dosage very difficult. Albeit this view might be biased, then it is the only logical explanation I personally can find for having an issue with the approval of this drug.

When I read the article, I have the impression that the a lot of different half-arguments are put fore in attempt to convince the reader, through which the real arguments gets diluted and lost.

I'm sure you'd get bonus points at the game for posting fake material about posting fake material to manipulate public opinion in order to manipulate public opinion on the material published.

How is that irony? And, much more important question, how would you come to think that it is any different in the USA, UK or any other western countries? Whats the point of trying to change the focuse of the discussion towards Russia? They all have been doing that since even before the Internet existed. I can't see how things could have been any different in the Internet Era.

I believe you missunderstood me or read only half of what I wrote - or I expressed myself poorly (or both). Your are basically saying the same thing as I do! A map can't tell you where a flooding will occure for sure, but you can say where the probability a flood will occur are higher, especially in the context of sea level rise. Combining elevation information with current flooding probability maps is a brilland idea to extrapolate the potential effects of sea level rise.

My comment was in response to the not-so-insightful comment "oh no, according to the map Niederland is completely flooded. The map must be wrong. The science must be wrong."

It is not wrong. It shows probabilites, just like I said in my first post and just as you mentionned in as well.

*you* (i give up - if at least beta had comment editing possibility... not even that.)

No map or prediction can tell your... (sorry for the poor proofreading. It's early -_-)

No map or prediction can't tell you where there is going to be flooding or not. Even without sea level rise. This is espcially true with heavy human intervention, like in the Netherlands. You can simply identify regions at risk and attemp to evaluate the flooding probabilties.

But is that really so surprising and unrealistic? It's not like floods are something unheard of in the Netherlands.

I consider someone turning to ridicule an action or person based on a obviously and willingly flawed logic a troll, that especially when it is wirtten in a tone like the one you use.

I tried to illustrate how flawed your logic is. I do not care about your opinion and I will never comment or judge an opinion here. But a flawed logic of false statement, I will. If I believe the facts your state are false, I will comment on it. And that is what I did.

Not being able to post on what I believe is a flawed statement and moderate at the same time, I allowed myself to express my opinion on my perception of your comment (seen as a troll comment), while still make a remark on the content of your post. From the moderation my comment got, I believe this approach did not come across well and I will refrain of doing it in the future.

know -_- *sigh*

No. That answer we already now... we're obviously modelling the question.