Good job, NASA. No wonder this country is going down a freakin' hole....
POSTED BY: Wishimay
UPDATED: Friday, September 6, 2024 00:05
VIEWED: 5174
PAGE 2 of 2
Quote:But the plane is a success! You misunderstand what it was trying to succeed at.
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Yeah, we're getting pretty good at the failure part...
350 Billion plane, coming to a used parts lot near you...
Major F-35 industry partners are Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney and BAE Systems. There are subcontractors for the F-35 in nearly every state, overseas territory and Puerto Rico. The business plan was to make it impossible for Congress to change its mind and cancel the contracts. It would have been nice if the plane had lived up to the promised cost and speed and maneuverability, but that technical stuff was always beside the real point of the F-35. Money, it's really always about the money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II
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Another reason the private sector should take over space travel.
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Quote:
Originally posted by whozit:
Another reason the private sector should take over space travel.
The private sector? They can't even make cars or testosterone gel that won't kill you. Always been NASA ... should always be NASA.
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http://news.yahoo.com/chicago-schools-pension-payment-classroom-cuts-l
ikely-235954340.html
350 billion had to come from somewhere, ya?
Can't nobody DO anything about it, either.
Those who blindly follow will always outnumber those that don't.
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Horrifying Facts You Didn't Know About the Space Shuttle
www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/04/18/5-horrifying-facts-you
-didnt-know-about-the-space-shuttle/
1. The Shuttle killed more people than any other space vehicle in history.
The explosion of the Challenger killed seven people, six astronauts and one Teacher in Space participant, during the launch of its 10th mission in 1986. The explosion of the Columbia killed seven more during re-entry of its 28th mission in 2003.
Let me spell it out for you: out of five Shuttles–Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor—two met a disastrous and fiery fate. That’s a 40% vehicular failure rate and a flight failure rate of 1.5%. This would have grounded any other vehicle permanently.
To compare, the Apollo I mission resulted in the death three astronauts during a launch pad test. The Mercury and Gemini missions had no fatalities.
The Chinese space program has currently had no fatalities.
As for the Russian space program, one cosmonaut died during the re-entry of the Soyuz 1, and three died on the Soyuz 11 after being exposed to vacuum.
(There is no hard data available on the deaths of Soviet-era cosmonauts, but unsubstantiated rumors suggest that there may have been Soviet casualties in the early days of the space race.)
2. It was extremely expensive
Although NASA says that it cost a trifling $450 million to launch each Shuttle mission, other sources find that price tag vastly underestimated. All five Shuttles flew a total of 135 missions. According to Space.com, in an article written in 2005,
If the space shuttle program is terminated after 2010, then it will have a total lifetime cost of about $173 billion, Pielke reported.
…Given that flight rate, this will result in a total program cost per flight of $1.3 billion, Pielke explained. Of further interest is the average cost per flight from 2004-2010: It is $1.3 billion. The average cost per flight from the middle of 2005 through 2010, assuming 22 flights, is about $1.0 billion, he said.
Nature followed up in 2011:
The US Congress and NASA spent more than US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars) on the shuttle from 1971 to 2010 (see ‘A costly enterprise’)…. During the operational years from 1982 to 2010, the average cost per launch was about $1.2 billion. Over the life of the programme, this increases to about $1.5 billion per launch
On the other hand, the Soyuz, the vehicle of choice of the Russian Space Agency (RSA), is less expensive by an order of magnitude. So how much does it cost to launch?
Watson said, “That number has never been publicized by the RSA, but it’s rumored to be as low as $45 million. Of course, in accordance with supply & demand, they’re now selling seats for $63 million a piece: initially “tickets” were selling for around $20 million.
“But even if it cost the RSA $80 million to launch, it’s still significantly cheaper than Shuttle.
According to MSNBC, “Russia is now seen as having the world’s safest, most cost-effective human spaceflight system.”
It’s also—and the irony here is almost painful—the only one you can buy a seat on. This makes the Soyuz both the most capitalist and the least government-funded space transportation option.
3. It never went very high.
Watson said, “The public has this mental image of [the Shuttle] going somewhere between the Earth and the Moon, and the fact is, it’s not true.”
The Shuttle had an operational altitude of only 120 to 600 miles. However, the Shuttle’s trip to the International Space Station (ISS) was only a 200-250 mile journey… approximately the distance between NYC and Boston. The Shuttle also flew to the Hubble Telescope, which is maintained at an altitude of 350 miles, a little less than the distance from NYC to Norfolk, VA.
In case you don’t remember it from science class, the distance between the Earth to the Moon is 238,000 miles.
4. It never worked according to parameters.
Plans for the Space Shuttle were created in 1972 as
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:Quote:
Originally posted by whozit:
Another reason the private sector should take over space travel.
The private sector? They can't even make cars or testosterone gel that won't kill you. Always been NASA ... should always be NASA.[/quote
Two shuttles exploded and Apollo 1 killed 3 and never got off the ground. Was Serenity built by NASA, no it was not. I think the FORD Motor Company did.]NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The stupidly simple reason why the military lost control of a giant surveillance blimp
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/02/16/the-stupidly-simp
le-reason-why-the-military-lost-control-of-a-giant-surveillance-blimp/
Last fall the military lost control of an unmanned surveillance blimp: The craft unmoored itself from a base in Maryland and drifted 100 miles over Pennsylvania, leaving destruction in its wake. A trailing tether downed powerlines and cut off electricity for tens of thousands of people; 911 lines were overwhelmed; college classes were canceled; and fighter jets were even deployed to track the blimp.
But all of that chaos could have been avoided if someone had done the sort of basic maintenance that keeps smoke detectors working: No one loaded the batteries needed to power an automatic-deflation device on the blimp, according to the Los Angeles Times.
www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-runaway-missile-defense-blimp-20160214-st
ory.html
The sequence of events that caused the blimp to break away began when a pitot tube, a narrow 18-inch-long device intended to measure air pressure within the blimp, malfunctioned. Ground personnel failed to detect or address the problem, investigators found.
Ordinarily, fans within the blimp would activate in response to a change in atmospheric conditions, such as increased winds. But because the pitot tube failed, the fans did not operate — and air pressure within the blimp started to drop.
The blimp turned so that it was perpendicular to the prevailing wind, instead of the desired parallel position. Gusts that reached 69 mph bent its vertical tail fins out of their normal shape.
This made the blimp unstable in the air, putting greater pressure on the mooring tether than it was designed to withstand, according to the investigative documents.
Still, the blimp was equipped with an automated device that should have caused it to deflate promptly and return to ground within two miles. The device failed to activate, because batteries had not been installed as a backup power source, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command, confirmed the lapse: "The lack of batteries prevented the automatic rapid deflation device from deploying."
Military officials declined to say who was responsible for failing to load the batteries. The blimps were managed by Army and contractor personnel.
“There is a one-in-a-million chance of that tether breaking.” – Captain Matt Villa. The Space Shuttle also had a one-in-a-million chance of crashing, at least until the first time it crashed, then the official chance was lowered to one-in-a-hundred, until the second time it crashed. A million or a hundred, it's all just official hot air to convince you they are competent, until somebody dies.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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That picture- it looks like something out of the X-Files.
Awesome!!!
That's like the Mars probe that crash-landed because the engineering department was working in "miles" and the science department was working in "kilometers".
Stupidity happens everywhere. I just look at Space X trying to land a rocket on fins (FINS!!!) and I think Buck Rogers.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Opinion: PM Modi's Vision Catapults Nation to Global Space Leadership
https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/opinion-pm-modis-vision-catapults-nation-
to-global-space-leadership-6413961
China to launch Mars sample return mission in 2028, will follow planetary protection guidelines
https://spacenews.com/china-to-launch-mars-sample-return-mission-in-20
28-will-follow-planetary-protection-guidelines/
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