Comment Re:Bulldozer outdated already ? (Score 1) 235
The 386DX chip needed the companion 387 co-processor for floating point.
Nope, the Itanium (Merced) is the better analogy. It could do the things it was designed to do, eventually, but for most purposes is not cost effective even thought it looks better on paper.
No, its really not like the Itanium, which required totally new applications to take advantage of it. Future multi-role craft will still be hauling cargo and humans. Cargo will still have mass and humans still breathe air, require food and water. The software that would be using the Merced was totally incompatible with CISC. That's like suggesting the people taking future craft will be 2 feet tall and breathing argon,and that the cargo will have negative mass. Future multi-role craft will have the same design considerations and will take advantages of the knowledge gained through the Shuttle program.
But the Shuttle didn't even look good on paper. You should go listen to the recent Science Friday archive with one of the original Shuttle designers. They *knew* that it was a BS design-by-committee craft and they spent lots of time before it got built trying to make up lies to justify it
"One of the original Shuttle designers" You say that as if there only 3 or 4. Do you even know how many people were responsible for designing the various parts of the shuttle? Propulsion engineers, Structural engineers, Avionics engineers, Thermal-Profile engineers, Electrical engineers. I'll require a citation of what parts didn't look good on paper. And furthermore, didn't look good as compared to what? Limitations are a part of any design.
How big is it? Will it fit on a Soyuz? If not, can you imagine human engineers could develop a larger version of the Soyuz?
A Soyuz is a late 1950's rocket design that was first flown in 1966 and was incrementally improved. The fact that you don't know how big an ammonia pump is, that you suggest it can be brought down in a crew capsule, and that you get modded +3 is quite funny.
So let's see, you want to bring down a module the size of a large commercial laundry drier, that is contaminated with poisonous substance now in a gaseous state, in the crew cabin of a cramped "3-man tent" style capsule? Can I recommend that you sit under the module during the decent? Oh, did I forget to mention, you wouldn't be able to get it through the door of the Soyuz?
As for a bigger version of the Soyuz? The capsule would need to be 4x bigger and the rocket would have to be exponentially bigger to lift it, costing exponentially more. Of course, this would go against your entire issue of cost, cost cost. And then the Soyuz cannot be guaranteed to return it without damage (see below about why runway landings are useful).
What good has that done?
A runway landing goes along with returning delicate cargo. A splashdown in the ocean or parachute to the ground has the potential to impart quite a bit of force on delicate equipment (aka satellites or something like hubble). A runway landing from a glider has barely any impact or potential for damage.
Furthermore, the shuttle can land at Kennedy and be replenished for its next mission with no transportation costs. Or were you planning on externalizing the cost of the transportation required to move an ocean-landed craft by using the US Navy? Aircraft carriers aren't free.
Right, so in a world where only the Shuttle got built, only the Shuttle is available for materials returns. That's simply begging the question [nizkor.org].
No. I'm not begging the question or in other words, assuming what I'm trying to prove. I'm showing that the shuttle is useful for the very nature of what it can do and for what no other vehicle can currently do. SHOULD THERE HAVE BEEN ANOTHER CRAFT DESIGNED AND BUILT that was able to do it better and for the same or equal cost then bravo to that other design/build. However, you are suggesting that because there "might have been" something better, that what we have in the Shuttle isn't useful. In a world where $5 flying carpets exist, I guess my $500 bicycle would be pretty damn limited and expensive. However, since flying carpets don't exist, I find my bicycle useful for getting around sometimes.
This doesn't even make sense. Sometimes car analogies just don't work.
Let me make the comparison more explicit:
Without a return vehicle:
Your engine stops working == The ammonia pump fails.
You cannot tear apart or inspect your engine or send it back to the manufacturer for analysis == You cannot open up the pump yourself and you cannot return the ammonia pump to earth
You can install a brand new engine == You can install a brand new ammonia pump (launched from a rocket)
It might fail again in the same manner == It might fail again the same manner
With a return vehicle
Your engine stops working == The ammonia pump fails
You take your car to a shop where they have specialized tools to examine it == You return the ammonia pump to earth where they have specialized tools to examine it
A failure is noted in a piston ring == Pump failure mode is found
Analysis shows heat induced cracking == Manufacturing defect found
Technical Service Bulletin is issued by the Manufacturer for other cars using the same engine == Manufacturer retrofits part to accommodate mode of failure.
All car owners can have this problem fixed and the engine becomes more reliable == Future human spaceflight opportunities are enhanced by knowledge of and the correction of the flaw.
The analogy works just fine.
I'm genuinely curious how you think the Shuttle program is responsible for artificial hearts and highway safety during rainstorms,
New ways of runway surfacing came from shuttle landings at KSC in florida after heavy rains. This was later applied to highways as a means of improving traction during rainy seasons.
but you ignore two obvious points: 1) without the Shuttle program, the US would have had more money for all of these kinds of space research and 2) we would have had a space station up at least a decade, probably two earlier, and much more science could have been done than on the short Shuttle missions.
True, and an alternate spaceflight program would also have yielded these kinds of results.
Care to explain #2 and also how you've seen an alternate future from the past? Is that you, Doc Brown?
That's like saying if you didn't go to to the University where you met your wife, you would have never met her. Care to explain how you can prove that? I can think of dozens of different ways that it still might have happened.
Good. They didn't work.
Again, the argument isn't that it's done no good, but that other systems would have done far better.
So from your first posting to your second you have changed your story? First you say they 'didn't work' with the assumption that 'working' == hitting the cost point. Now you say that they've 'not done no good' == done some good.
Thanks for agreeing with me, Doc. Remember to say 'Hi' to Marty the next time you go back to your alternate future where space exploration is cheap and politics never get in the way.
I haven't read the engineering summary on the AMS-02, but off the top of my head, there are many benefits of having it on the ISS:
1) Crew access to it in case anything goes wrong (i.e. for repairs or modifications)
Crew continually rotate through the ISS and could potentially go on a spacewalk to investigate / repair anything mechanically wrong with the module. If it were on a different orbital plane, we won't have a crew vehicle (read: space shuttle) capable of getting to it now that the space shuttle is being retired. It makes sense to attach it to the ISS for this purpose, since the ISS is resupplied and re-crewed at regular intervals.
2) No need for independent transmission / control / power systems.
The AMS-02 module can link up to the proven communications systems on the ISS and this can reduce cost / weight and improve redundancy.
3) Falls into existing thermal / environmental protection procedures.
Beta angles and other interactions with the Sun (heating) and the environment (micrometeroid / debris) are already monitored and calculated for the ISS. This also reduces cost and improves lifetime of the expensive equipment.
The Space Shuttle didn't work? You have to be kidding!
Someone who claims the space shuttle "didn't work" probably was saying in 2003, "I'm glad those 486's were retired. They weren't even multi-pipelined. Good thing we have these Pentium III / Athlon processors now to take us to new levels of productivity."
Do you think any system is going to hit all of its goals the first time around?
No, it comes from PRACTICAL experience from operating in an environment, and in this case operating in an intensely difficult environment... space.
Furthermore, their design goal was not to be $50M per launch. Their design goal was to send people and cargo to low-earth-orbit to increase our engineering and science knowledge in space and to return people and cargo safely to a runway touchdown. With two exceptions, both being OPERATIONAL / MANAGEMENT rolls-of-the-dice (when safety should have been paramount), it has accomplished these goals. A hope that they would achieve spaceflight at $50M per launch was merely a political fantasy, which is irrelevant.
From a long-term perspective, it doesn't matter if the shuttle cost 10x its initial estimate to operate. It gave us experience and knowledge from refining processes / technology / materials of the initial system. It has taught us what works, what is difficult to make work and what the practical tradeoffs are for a given spacecraft design. These are the benefits from simply being in the environment.
To quote Han Solo, "flyin' through [hyper]space ain't like dustin' crops, boy!"
Tell me: How you are going to do an analysis of a failed ammonia pump on the space station without the shuttle? You cannot open up a pump containing (or, even if vented, that previously contained) poisonous fluid on the space station. Thus, you need to bring it back to Earth. What is the only vehicle can do this? hmm?
For those that want a car analogy, the ISS operating without the space shuttle would be like throwing out the entire contents of your car's engine bay in your car when something goes wrong, and ordering a new one for replacement (that may or may not develop the same exact problems since you have no means to investigate what went wrong with a given design.)
The technology improvements and quality of life improvements the Shuttle program has brought all of humanity: wild-fire detection, artificial hearts, artificial limbs and joints, food-safety, the hubble space telescope, highway safety during rainstorms, just to name a few, is ground-shaking.
It's been a Good Thing we have such a vehicle that can perform science / engineering / building / repair in any number of configurations. At least until the close of STS-135.
But it wasn't canceled because it would look bad politically, and cost jobs. Now 14 astronauts are dead and there are still people in congress pushing for a shuttle derived launch system.
Seven astronauts died on Challenger because MANAGEMENT refused to listen to the ENGINEERS who designed it. It was not designed to be launched in such low temperatures. Operations decided to roll the dice with the Challenger and we see what happened.
Who with a rational mind complains that a high-performance sports car is junk because its Z-rated tires fail when you drive it through a lava field?
Seven astronauts died on Columbia because MANAGEMENT refused to listen to multiple ENGINEERS who requested orbital photography analysis of the foam-impact site. A rescue mission using Atlantis was possible.
Let's not forget the three Astronauts who died on Apollo 1. NASA management and bean-counters went against ENGINEERING best practices. North American (the contractor who designed the command and service modules for Apollo) engineers wanted the door to open outwards and a non-pure-O2 environment (requiring higher internal pressurization) even though that setup is harder to seal against vacuum. Government bean-counters mandated a command module door that swung inward for cost reasons. After the accident and loss of life, NASA conceded that North American's original best practice design for an outward-opening door and non-pure-O2 environment was worth the cost and the design was reverted.
Do we see a trend here? Flying a space vehicle outside of its design envelope or refusing to follow up on a request for analysis by engineers concerned for its safety are decisions that reflect poorly of the operations management or economic short-sightedness, NOT of the design of the vehicle.
The space shuttle is a flying swiss-army knife. What other vehicle has done construction in space? It is also the only vehicle capable of returning payloads FROM Space. I would like to see how STS nay-sayers would propose doing R&D on the failure-mode of the ammonia pump that recently failed on the space station, without the STS to bring it back to Earth for analysis.
I suppose the people pushing for single-purpose launch vehicles were the same people complaining that an original IBM PC was in the $2500 range, when a type-writer and calculator could be had for under $150.
Wang: VMWare has plans for us, if he didn't we'd be dead door-nails.
Jack: Which VMWare, little ol' free VMWare viewer on-wheels or the 10,000 dollar ESX road-block?
Wang: One and the same software, Jack!
Jack: You know something you're not telling me, Wang!
Wang: Myths and legends... I don't want to insult you.
Jack: No go ahead, insult me!
Wang: It's about all sorts of scary things, about an ancient army of almost-dead servers who lived in Spirit City... and monkey sacrifices.
And the first sovereign emperor of OSS, that mad monarch, confederated our 7 warring distributions and defeated VMWare, then imposed upon him that horrible curse of no hardware, in 272 BC.
A lot of systems engineers hear these things as kids, then we grow up... and pretend not to believe them.
Jack: No horse-shit, Wang?
Wang: No horse-shit, Jack. Hell, I don't blame you. I'm a systems engineer myself and I don't even want to believe it. But it's for real... virtualization, and systems black magic!
Oh great, I also left out a 'must' in front of 'be a real pain' or maybe I just left out an 'Arrrrrr' at the end of that sentence. I don't even have a Firefox grammar module (pirate edition of course) to blame...
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.