Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"NZ is about 41deg S.
Unless they have changed the Earth's rotation recently the only thing favourable about it's location is that you could explode something rather large there without disturbing the neighbours."
True. Florida is not good at 28deg compared to French Guiana at about 5 but NZ is rubbish.
Mind you plenty of ocean to drop a dud launch into.
"I haven't a clue what it would cost to develop a new, commercial launcher from scratch - but lets make a WAG¹ at about $1Bn (which sounds incredibly low - you'd think NASA would have new launchers coming out of it's ..."
Wrong.
SpaceX's figures (checked over by NASA) were about $200m including the F1 and 1st launch of the F9.
However LOX and Carbon Fibre make quite an interesting propellant mix on their own.
"And the companies can have MP's on the board, if not owning them!"
Let's not forget the reason this item is included in legislation is someone bunged a Lord to include it in the relevant legislation.
There is no EU mandate for it if it's too difficult (or expansive) for the country to do it.
<lunar orbit plan needing multiple launches>
There's really a few reasons why NASA won't do it that way. some sensible, some dumb as a stump.
1) The Congress told them not to.
2)They are actually s**t scared of orbital rendezvous having spent nearly 5 decades failing to invest in better EVA suits (although they got a radically better glove design for a couple of $m when they did it as a competition) and on orbit propellant management.
3) The biggest US rocket (the Delta IV Heavy) can do 28 1/2 tonnes to LEO for about $500m and is not human rated, although it's sibling the Atlas V is. So between them you could launch 100 tonnes for about $2Bn. But NASA is also terrified of launch failures and long delays with the LH2 (which will be what NASA will use for the upper stage) boiling off since the longest an on orbit LH2 stage has lasted has been 12 hours (Centaur upper stage). See what happens when you don't invest in basic research over 1/2 a century?
4)The Congress told them to.
QED Must build big rocket because must build big rocket.
"This is Congress' budget. NASA just gets whatever Congress scraps off the plate and has just about zero say in it. I don't see why they're pounding NASA about it."
True.
But it was Congress who asked the GAO to find out what the state of play was.
I think their concern is the apparent level of denial within SLS management
Keep in mind that NASA's standard level of confidence that a programme will get done on time and budget is 70%. IE there's roughly a 1/3 chance it won't happen at that budget and/or schedule as standard.
I think that under the UK Major Project Authority that would be a Red traffic light.
"Solid rockets on man-rated vehicles are risky, but manageable as the Russians have proven. It's strapping them onto liquid rockets that makes them a disaster-in-waiting."
Which solid fueled Russian rocket did you have in mind?
You are aware the boosters on the Soyouz are liquid, right?
"If you don't have your own man-rated rocket then you're committing to being dependant on buying rides on the rockets of a government you're not exactly on good terms with. "
You do get that this report is about SLS?
SLS has nothing to do with getting people to and from ISS.
That's due to the planned Commercial Crew Transport Programme, which Congress have tried to strangle with the same vigor they continued to feed this cuckoo.
"They aren't. That's why independent security testing is required.
Insider threats are something every company has to consider."
Indeed.
True companies lemming like desire to wire themselves up to the internet has certainly made hacking the in house system a game almost anyone can play but the insiders still have the edge.
There's an old novel called "The Consultant" in which a bank is scared into conducting a security audit. As the auditors point out the person you have to worry about is already inside. :( .
"Pay us or we'll steal from you/your customers? What is the difference between that an extorsion?"
I guess you didn't read the rest of what I wrote.
"This is a Board level issue. Someone saves you a $m+ hit from a hack a script kiddie could mount at any time and you want to hand them a f**king tee shirt? How about $100k instead?"
The implied but not stated point of that paragraph was twofold.
1) If a major part of the value your business adds to it's products or services comes from your in- house software that development process (including bug handling) should have Board level representation.
2)The reward should be proportional to the potential damage. Some would say 10% is not generous. But it depends how bad is the software your company writes.
Keep in mind time is usually a factor with these things. You seem to be thinking that the first finder who reports to the company is a) The 1st finder ever and b)They will be the only finder.
Both of these assumptions are naive.
If they didn't the first you'd find out about it would be when exploits appeared and started hitting your (or your customers) bank accounts.
So make it worth their while.
And if you're worried that too "generous" a reward encourages people to go bug hunting on your software why don't you institute better development methods to catch them before release?
This is a Board level issue. Someone saves you a $m+ hit from a hack a script kiddie could mount at any time and you want to hand them a f**king tee shirt? How about $100k instead?
Thumbs up for some simple sensible guidelines.
"The ICL VME target architecture used data descriptors to try to avoid unintended data overflows. IIRC that effectively established a hardware range protection specifically for each data item"
The Burroughs machines also seemed to use this. A mainframe sized stack based processor built in the early 60's and programmed in something like ALGOL at a time when the common state of practice was still assembler.
I've long joked proper software could be 1/4 the size it is if you could just make 2 assumptions about the users. 1)They always know exactly what they are doing 2) They never make mistakes.
IRL both are a total fantasy.
Is the bug count really rising or is it simply that more software is being (in the widest sense of the word) "written"?
Just to be clear the #1 fail is buffer overflow at about 25% of all bugs and about the same of critical bugs.
IOW teaching people only how to do this part of their job properly would eliminate 1/4 of all web vulnerabilities.
And that's been the case for the last quarter century.
"Another policy. Helper elephants for old people. They've got to have extra-wide doorways because of wheelchair access, so the elephants will fit in your kitchen, they can pass you the stuff you need with their trunk. And help with other household tasks. They'd be great at bath-time."
You need to spend more time with some real old people.
That sense of smell will make the elephants head explode quick quickly.
I always associated it with Lemsip as "Something for a tickly cough."
IE B**ger all use for back pain.
A Codeine Paracetamol mix is meant to be pretty good if you don't mind potential constipation (even at low doses).
That said I found a little gentle stretching and staying mobile cleared up my back pain within a few days.
But I fully admit I was damm lucky.
"I did have a few ideas, seems that the big problem was the tendency for voltage fade as power increases due to self heating of the ceramic, and eventually the heat causes the ceramic to fracture."
Oh I know this one. It's from a Frank Herbert short story called "Committee of the whole."
You cross connect a Peltier cooler so the more current it draws the more the Peliter module cools it.
I was never really comfortable with the whole Dune thing. A bit too epic, but his short stories (and the Dragon in the Sea) were fascinating.
"That's a funny spec... I don't think that's standard for anyone.
Most of the world uses 220-230v, and IIRC, 50Hz is more common than 60Hz.
The USA being the big 60Hz fan, although I'd have thought they'd be terrified of the idea of the 240 volts."
I think the Americans have some weird thing they do when they want to wire up a cooker or other high usage device to the mains. It's some cross wiring between 2 phases at that junction box. Seemed a bit of a kludge to me but apparently it's what they use when they don't want full 3ph but do want high power.
Like maybe a small server farm?
You've got X Kw (I can't find the FAQ so I've not seen an actual number) Volume and temperature.
And of course the cost
Big items (and big ticket items) have been things like transformers, smoothing capacitors and switching transistors.
Do you need a transformer? Possibly not. Capacitor tech has gotten a lot better (electrolytics are no longer the only choice here) and there are those wide band gap semiconductors.
Personally I'm not convinced the performance improvement they can deliver is worth the cost over a good Silicon power transistor.
The big joker is that temperature limit without liquid cooling. Does that mean no heat pipes to spread the heat? Clever heat sink designs to generate turbulent flow? Hanging curtains of pyrolytic carbon fiber (150W longways)? Forced air? PZ fans?
"Riiiight, John Smith. I'm sure that's your real name."
Thing is you can look up all my posts and form an opinion of what my views are, as I can of you.
Climate stories attract lots of SEL's and what looks like various kinds of astro turfing.
So I'll normally stick a down vote on that wheather I agree with them or not.
Is that a little clearer for you?
"2. lots of disturbing imagery can scar a child and still get past the filters (e.g. in recent studies pictures of tony blair or david cameron could leave an innocent child so traumatised they would not remember their own name)"
True.
One shot of that big shiny face could leave a child having nightmares for months.
"And then you realise that if YOU can get around the filter with a VPN, so can they. So what was the point of blocking content at the ISP level again?"
It scored the back bench non entity a job in charge of preventing "Child Exploitation and Sexualization" IIRC.
And just think all because Ms Perry could not work out how to set the parental controls on her browser.
And oh look the HO does not have good quality project management data (so not sure it was heading for a Red light with the Major Project Authority. At least I think £300m+ is a major project, but I'm not a government)
It's going to merge/integrate 20 different systems, some software, some paper into 1.
But it seems the Home Office has finally given a figure for how many files are really in the immigration backlog.
It is in fact 300 000 with 31 000 > 7 years old. Presumably that includes the 60 000 found in a store room in Liverpool. And yes that really does give the astonishing figure of > £1000/ case.
You can bet there's no "Captain" going down with this "flagship."
Something like a small platform with a rotating head, ideally including some kind of 3d laser scanner to get the size and depth back into the shadows (which will be very dark). anything that moves the viability of a human outpost forward is a good thing.
Targeting it so it goes right down the pipe is likely to be pretty tricky however.
When people talk of "data mining" they rarely think of this sort of thing. Reviewing old(er) scientific data for new discoveries yet that is exactly what this is.
Well done.
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