Satellite Mishap

[najab]

There is little doubt that a spaceship designed <i>specifically</i> for low cost would work out significantly cheaper than the Shuttle. Hell, even the Shuttle - if it were designed using year 2000 technology rather than 1970's would be cheaper.

 

[halman]

shuttle_guy, et. al,<br /><br />My apologies! My recently retired Air Force buddy mis-led me. He was confused between the B-1 and the B-2. There are only 29 B-2's. However, they do cost 2.1 billion dollars plus a copy. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[najab]

><i>An easy mistake since the B-1 was first built after the B-2 !</i><p>You know me, always one to nitpick: the B-1<i>A</i> predates the B-2, but the current version the B-1<i>B</i> did, indeed come after. The original B-1 was cancelled (I believe by President Carter) but the program was revived - with different aircraft specifications - by President Regan a few years later. In the meantime the B-2 program had gone ahead. So which came first depends on which version you are talking about.</p>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"I bet you are a MASTER debater as well. "</font><br /><br />He could round out his skills by taking a two year degree in cooking school and becoming a certified Master Baker. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br />

 

[najab]

<img src="/images/icons/blush.gif" />!!! (speechless)

 

[najab]

><i>I would like to point out that the B-2 bomber costs around 2.5 billion each, and that there are currently 100 of them!</i><p>It was already pointed out that there are only 20-somebody B-2s, but did you know that at a unit cost of $2.2 billion and a dry mass of 158,000lbs the B-2 cost about $870/oz - that's more than twice as much as if it were made of solid gold!!!</p>

 

[mrmorris]

Sorry. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> The wife of a good friend of mine actually went to cooking school and got her degree/certification in this. She could have gone for "Master Chef" -- but she specialized in baked goods... and therefore has a different designation.

 

[najab]

><i>B-2 first flew 17 July, 1989 and the first one delivered to the 509th BW was December of '93.</i><p>That's the date I see on all the websites, but I don't believe it. That was almost a year <b>after</b> it was publicly revealed - the first time that a 'black' aircraft was made public before it was flying. The F-117A, the U-2 and the SR-71 were all flying for some time before they were announced. I suspect the actual first flight was quite some time earlier.</p>

 

[najab]

Yeah. That's the info - but I still don't buy it. The F-117A was flying for 7 years and had one operational squadron 3 years before it went public.

 

[najab]

But hey, I can't prove anything and if I could you probably would never hear anything from me ever again. So if the official story is that it didn't fly until 1989, I'll go with it. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />

 

[halman]

newsartist,<br /><br />The Flying Wing has finally become an operational aircraft. Northrup was promoting the concept back in the early 50's with the B-49. I still want to see one about 400 feet across, with a shuttle on its back.<br /><br />If we could just convince the weapons contractors that there is more money to be made in space than there is in defense. There will always be demand for new spacecraft, avionics, sensors, control systems, etcetera, if the ball gets rolling. But we have to spend a good chunk of the defense budget for a few years to get the ball rolling. The military isn't about to give up their income, and the contractors have to go where the money is. Weapons have been the bread and butter for so long that changing the status quo might ruin the steady flow of money going to the contractors, so they are not anxious to divert defense money into space.<br /><br />If we don't, what are we going to have left to defend? Hooverville? A bunch of shantytowns? We need real jobs, that are actually productive of material things, things which create value when they are used. Adding value to something just because it has passed through our hands is self-delusion. We must create, not just trade back and forth.<br /><br />We could spend every penny made in this country on defense, and still be horribly vulnerable. Instead of insuring that we can dstroy anyone who opposes us, why don't we examine why so many people oppose us? If we are exploiting the Earth to live in luxury, while displacing people and other life-forms in the process of exploiting the Earth, how can we pretend that there will not be consequences?<br /><br />Everything we need is out there, waiting for someone to come along and use it. Everything we need, that is, except a place to live where we can survive without advanced technology. There is no question that if our activities continue to increase, they will have an impact on this planet. But we have a choice of how severe that impact wil <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[kazvorpal]

> As someone who "worked on the Hubble program",<br /> /> you should be able to appreciate that Rutan's effort,<br /> /> while admirable, is a long way from putting people "in<br /> /> space". SpaceShip One visits space briefly - I suspect<br /> /> that the Tier 2 vehicle will be significantly different<br /> /> and, most assuredly, more expensive.<br /><br />That's really nit-picking though...unless you really want to be on record as thinking that they won't continue to make their accomplishments at a fraction of the pricetag NASA would have put on the same effort. <br /><br /> /> SpaceShip One had neglible down-range velocity at<br /> /> apogee, an orbital vehicle will have to accelerate to<br /> /> over 17,000mph.<br /><br />The trick, of course, is to get up into space first, THEN do most of the accelleration. I remember how, when debating the supposed impossibility of cheap, private aerospace with a NASA guy a few years ago, he kept insisting that you can't possibly boost any meaningful payload off the ground without hundreds of times its mass in fuel. Of course he was simply displaying the utter lack of imagination of a bureaucrat in an organization used to having billions thrown at it. <br /><br />Ultimately, whatever bureaucratic "experts" say is implossible ends up being done by private people.<br /><br />I alluded, at some point, to Vanderbilt's breaking of the government-mandated riverboat monopoly in New York.<br /><br />At the time he illegally entered the market, the riverboat company had just (in a way which reminds me much of the USPS and NASA) testified to the government, with engineers and accountants, that the massive price they charged for a trip was not enough...it just wasn't possible to run a riverboat profitably...and so they needed a large government subsidy. <br /><br />They got it. And then Vanderbilt began illegally running a riverboat up and down the river in competition. I believe, though I'd have to look it up, that the original prices were four

 

[kazvorpal]

> I would like to point out that the B-2 bomber costs<br /> /> around 2.5 billion each, and that there are currently<br /> /> 100 of them! If the United States were serious about<br /> /> manned space exploration, and spent 1 percent of<br /> /> the Gross Domestic Product on spaceflight, 1 billion a<br /> /> flight would seem relatively cheap. <br /><br />So you're claiming it reasonable that just turning around a supposedly reusable spacecraft should reasonably cost almost half as much as the ENTIRE cost of BUILDING one of the most idiotically expensive, rube-goldbergishly complex and highest-tech of all long-range government aircraft?<br /><br />That's why NASA needs to be privatized, right there.

 

[kazvorpal]

> There are two viable space programs in the US now.<br /> /> One is a loose cannon bent on actually sending real<br /> /> folks into orbit and beyond. <br /><br />Actually, unless they're all foolish enough to quit now, there are over a dozen space programs in the US right now, and /some/ of those are viable beside the two who've passed the stratosphere already.<br /><br />And that's what we need...as many space programs as possible, so that the REAL best solutions to various problems get found, not the one that Committee X falls upon in their weekly day's worth of meetings.<br /><br /> /> Certainly going to orbit will be hard. You won't be<br /> /> able to "pilot," a craft traveling at mach 26. It will<br /> /> require computer guidance, more expense and more<br /> /> complexity....unless Rutan is MUCH better then<br /> /> people think...<br /><br />You won't be able to zigzag through Beggar's Canyon and shoot wump rats with one, but remember not to apply NASA's wasteful rube goldberg theories of how complex and expensive things need to be, when thinking of actual, productive organizations.<br /><br />The odds are that there's a way which does not require the kind of antiquated, complex, overpriced crap you get on, say, a Shuttle.<br /><br />

 

[kazvorpal]

> There is little doubt that a spaceship designed<br /> /> specifically for low cost would work out significantly<br /> /> cheaper than the Shuttle. Hell, even the Shuttle - if it<br /> /> were designed using year 2000 technology rather<br /> /> than 1970's would be cheaper.<br /><br />Yep, that's yet another reason NASA should be privatized. We spend a billion dollars per year to turn around a thirty year old space craft which is based on fifty year old technology, when the odds are that the private solution won't even cost a billion bucks to produce in total.<br /><br />Imagine if the "turnaround" on a 767 cost as much, proportionately, as a shuttle. And hell, the airline industry is so outragously regulated that it's barely private industry anyway...yet it's already infinitely less wasteful than NASA.<br /><br />

 

[kazvorpal]

I haven't kept in touch with the guy at STScI who was explaining it to me, but it boiled down to the two hundred million (or whatever the exact number was) being an accounting trick, where the overall costs were broken down into various segments and what was being reported was actually just the "development budget", or "implementation budget", something like that. For example, the contractors themselves assumed a lot of costs during design and development, for which they would be paid once they delivered, but that payment was treated as a separate bill to NASA, not part of the project.<br /><br />What it boiled down to, as people at STScI often complained, was that the "leaner, meaner" NASA was more a PR game than a real change in attitude.

 

[kazvorpal]

> You're missing the point. Rutan has no intention of<br /> /> competing with NASA, so why make the claim that he<br /> /> is? His focus for SpaceShipOne is purely on suborbital<br /> /> manned spaceflight, with a long-term goal of manned<br /> /> orbital spaceflight. He's not really providing anything<br /> /> at all toward science, and his contributions to<br /> /> engineering research are, of course, purely<br /> /> commercial. <br /><br />He is competing because he is moving into space, which NASA held in a government-mandated monopoly up to now. In fact, it's still technically illegal for private companies to make commercial passenger space flights, even now.<br /><br />And he's in competition with NASA because what matters isn't some specific, esoteric data, it's contribution to society of any kind. <br /><br />It's not the fifty million spent seeing if salamanders mutate if born in microgravity, NOR how many Pepsi logos get painted on the first private space station.<br /><br />No, it's contribution to society, and that's an area in which coercive government always loses to private enterprise, because there is no way to /measure/ the government projects in terms of their contribution. <br /><br />Private companies are measured by the amount which people choose to reward them, via investment, purchases, et cetera. This is the closest thing to an objective measure of value that can occur. The collective will of the people, conveyed by their free choices, always trumps the decisions of a a subset of that same society, sitting around spending resources by authoritarian mandate.

 

[kazvorpal]

> It's difficult to make sense of it all if NASA is truely<br /> /> lying. Is that actually the case? I thought they were<br /> /> extensively audited. The piles of paperwork are<br /> /> often cited as part of the reason for NASA's high<br /> /> mission costs. <br /><br />It's not paperwork alone. There is also intentional expansion of budget, which I can tell you from firsthand experience is one fo the primary functions of many, if not all, government "science" projects and the like.<br /><br />When I lived in DC, I consulted for NASA (the Space Telescope Science Institute, specifically), the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...ummm...I'm forgetting someone. But anyway, I invariably found that key people were concerned primarily that all possible money be spent, with concern number two being that the expenditures APPEAR justifiable. <br /><br />On the Hubble project, my own task was a relatively simple, clear one, that was supposed to take "six months to one year". I was getting pretty close to finishing it after about four months...but I needed certain key data and decisions from the STScI people. I went to them and explained how close I was and what I needed, and suddenly they didn't even have the data that had been available to me up to that point. <br /><br />After a couple of months of them continuing to not have anything for me to use, I started recycling old data from their publically available data, as a sort of proof of theory, so I could complete the project and they could just plug in the real stuff on their own.<br /><br />When I proudly showed them how much I was accomplishing this way, they suddenly had urgent new projects for me to work on. Ones not actually part of the contract that was funding me. I spent the next few months working on these completely unrelated projects, and in fact never got to complete the original one...which was never completed to this day.<br /><br />By the way

 

[kazvorpal]

> If he succeeds in making the world think that it's the<br /> /> same business, he'll put himself out of business very<br /> /> quickly, because the NASA-contracting world is<br /> /> already full of 500-lb gorrilas, and he's frankly just a<br /> /> capuchin monkey next to the likes of Boeing and<br /> /> Lockheed. <br /><br />Yeah, that's what people said of Microsoft, when comparing it to IBM and Sun, who were government contracting, nearly useless bureaucracies as well.<br /><br />Fortunately, the big boys are SO dumb, as organizations, that they tend to overlook the immense value of REALLY contributing to society, and let guys like Gates and Rutan take it all away from them when actual private enterprise somehow accidentally manages to sneak into the industry.

 

[bobvanx]

Rather than expound the "government is funding bureaucracy by taking money away under threat of punishment" attitude, try looking at it from abundance. It's a shift in mindset, to shift from scarcity thinking to abundance thinking, and it's the number one most powerful attitude shift you can make for yourself.<br /><br />Anyway, here's why I never, ever complain about government employees:<br /><br />If they weren't inefficiently running our bureaucracy, they'd be out struggling in private enterprise.<br /><br />I for one LOVE paying my taxes, to keep that entire segment of the workforce out of the way of those of us who are moving fast and free towards ever greater things. The relatively minor inconveniences I bump up against as they try to keep up and regulate me are well worth the freedom from having them as clients and vendors.

 

[najab]

><i>Simply enforcing a "No Lone Zone" around critical operations would put a second set of eyes on the problem.</i><p>The thing is, tilting the satellite isn't supposed to be a critical operation. It's supposed to be an every day, run-of-the-mill thing.</p>

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>> If he succeeds in making the world think that it's the<br /> /> same business, he'll put himself out of business very<br /> /> quickly, because the NASA-contracting world is<br /> /> already full of 500-lb gorrilas, and he's frankly just a<br /> /> capuchin monkey next to the likes of Boeing and<br /> /> Lockheed.<br /><br />Yeah, that's what people said of Microsoft, when comparing it to IBM and Sun, who were government contracting, nearly useless bureaucracies as well. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />You completely missed my point. (BTW, I don't think Microsoft is a very good comparison. I firmly expect Burt Rutan's enterprise to succeed on its merits. He's not the sort of person to adopt Microsoft's business model.)<br /><br />The point is, Burt Rutan is not in the same business as NASA. <i>Nor should he be.</i> Burt Rutan is stepping into a business that has not existed prior to today, apart from some minor and not very practical forays into commercial manned spaceflight by Rosaviacosmos. (While I respect the commercial Soyuz spacecraft efforts, there just aren't enough billionaires out there to support private manned spaceflight at $20 mil per ticket. So that's why I consider it impractical.) Rutan will do what NASA has never done, and probably shouldn't do anyway -- conduct a commercial manned space program.<br /><br />He isn't NASA. He shouldn't be NASA. We don't need another massive organization devoted to aerospace research, and such an organization couldn't survive in the private domain anyway. No, he needs to make commercial manned spaceflight practical and affordable, which is what he is doing admirably. That's much better done in the private sector, IMHO.<br /><br />Basically, I'm just saying that the comparison of him to NASA is an apples and oranges comparison. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[najab]

><i>Yeah, that's what people said of Microsoft, when comparing it to IBM and Sun, who were government contracting, nearly useless bureaucracies as well.</i><p>That's strange...I was under the distinct impression that Microsoft was about <i>seven years older</i> than Sun Microsystems. <img src="/images/icons/rolleyes.gif" /></p>