iphitus - Slashdot User

NASA Outsources ISS Resupply To SpaceX, Orbital 151

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @10:10PM from the minding-the-gap dept.

DynaSoar writes "NASA has signed two contracts with US commercial space ventures totaling $3.5 billion for resupply of the International Space Station. SpaceX will receive $1.6 billion for 12 flights of SpaceX's planned Dragon spacecraft and their Falcon 9 boosters. $1.9 billion goes to Orbital for eight flights of its Cygnus spacecraft riding its Taurus 2 boosters. Neither of the specified craft has ever flown. However, the proposed vehicles are under construction and based on proven technology, whereas NASA has often contracted with big aerospace companies for services using vehicles not yet even designed."

Linux 2.6.27 Out 452

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 09, 2008 @11:58PM from the not-all-fancy-like-gnu dept.

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux 2.6.27 has been released. It adds a new filesystem (UBIFS) for 'pure' flash-based storage, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O scalability and performance, delayed allocation support for ext4, multiqueue networking, data integrity support in the block layer, a function tracer, a mmio tracer, sysprof support, improved webcam support, support for the Intel wifi 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 chipsets, more new drivers, and many other improvements and fixes. Full list of changes can be found here."

Comment Re:That's ok. (Score 0) 400

by iphitus on Wednesday July 09, 2008 @09:56AM (#24116539) Attached to: Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement

NASA's already outsourced.

NASA doesn't do anything. They're just a bureau of administration. They hand out money so that others can do things.

NASA don't do research, they fund others to do research. Training astronauts? Spacehab. Maintain and launch the Shuttles? United Space Alliance (Boeing+Lockheed). Build SRB's? ATK. etc.

New Radar Maps of Moon 70

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday February 29, 2008 @06:19PM from the stay-on-target dept.

SpaceAdmiral writes to mention that NASA has some new high-resolution radar maps of the Moon obtained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The new images have also been used to create a simulation of the Moon's day and a movie of a Moon landing from the point of view of the astronaut. "NASA is eying the Moon's south polar region as a possible site for future outposts. The location has many advantages; for one thing, there is evidence of water frozen in deep dark south polar craters. Water can be split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn as rocket fuel--or astronauts could simply drink it. Planners are also looking for 'peaks of eternal light.' Tall polar mountains where the sun never sets might be a good place for a solar power station."

Slashdot Top Deals