Posts by John Smith 19

Re: "I blame you for the moonlit sky and the dream that died with the eagles' flight."

During the Apollo era NASA funding was roughly 5% of US GDP (at a time when the USG was involved for a decade in a little unpleasantness in Vietnam)

Today the *whole* NASA budget is 0.5% of GDP. c$18Bn.

The US spends $27Bn on home *pizza* delivery.

The DoD spends $40Bn on the aircon for overseas military bases.

F9/Dragon Cargo, Antares/Cygnus, Dragon Crew, SNC Dream Chaser and Boeing CTS100 (regardless of which ones are funded) will return US *independent* crew and cargo transfer to ISS (as well as *potentially* putting the US back on the list of countries would consider *affordable* for their satellite launches) for a cost to date of (roughly) 2 yrs Shuttle support costs.

They may *also* open up the field of staying at *non* government orbital sites and the idea of orbital "servicing" of satellites to extend their lives, bringing Hubble style life expectancy and upgrades to comms sats and other users.

Re: Manned spaceflight

"In fact I am pretty sure if we tried to go the moon again today we might not even be able to do it. "

Which suggests you have no idea that NASA has been running a programme to do *just* that.

Do you actually know *anything* about the recent and current US space programme?

Re: Manned spaceflight

"So apart from wasting $billions subsidizing Boeing to make up for the end of the cold war, being used as an excuse to spend more $billions keeping the Shuttle flying to keep a few senators with Nasa facilities happy - the ISS serves no useful purpose."

Wrong.

Without ISS and the fact the Shuttle has been retired there would be *no* reason to go anywhere in low earth orbit for the US.

Meaning there would be *no* reason for the USG to partially fund new launch vehicles, cargo and (ultimately) crew carriers *not* owned, operated and managed by NASA for their *exclusive* use.

Which breaks the NASA *monopoly* on carrying people into space in the US.

Which could start a whole *new* industry of transporting people into LEO, given Virgin Galactic signed up 5000 early seats for just a *sub* orbital flight.

Re: And the only people to be effected by the system...honest law abiding citizens

"(to be subsequently resold by PC Bent of the Met to NewsCorp!)"

Well a policeman's salary is not what it was!

IIRC the going rate for car license plates was £200.

What will be the price for you "A. Celebrities" phone/landline/email message traffic data for say the 3 months they were seeing someone when their spouse was filming that movie?

Or perhaps just the location of that spouse who had the *audacity* to go into hiding because you had to administer some "tough love" to them and they ended up in the hospital?

Of course those "services" will not be available to the general public.

Re: They have no plan

"Where the bulk of the cash is going to go is very well hidden."

You can do what Duncan Campbell did at the New Statesman when he wanted to profile the new (early 80's) MI5 Registry system.

Work out a rough idea of what's needed and who would be *trusted* to supply it. At that time that was ICL

Then study the Computer Weekly staff wanted adds to get a feel for the scale of the operation.

In this case I'd suggest you start with BAe Systems subsidiary Dettica.

Before they start with you of course.

"Anyway... I recon £2billion is more of a yearly budget."

Nope. £1.8Bn over 10 yrs is what they *claim*.

But they *also* claim this will lead to *savings* of £500m to the govt.

I'm unaware of *anyone* explaining that one.

Re: uh-uh

"oh dear, this is going to mushroom, like no other gov project has mushroomed before.

But you won't know about it.

The Labor Govt IMP was described as "The *biggest* civilian UK govt IT programme *ever* from its *inception*, not like the NHS IT programme (about £5Bn to start with but ended *up* about what £11Bn? £12Bn?

Re: How they got £1.8Bn

"Anyone who thinks that it'll be able to actually look at (or even want to look at) the content of the messages is either an idiot or maybe just likes to make up wild accusations that have no basis in fact for what ever reason."

Or is using AC to float a strawman argument.

The Bill lists "communications data"

Which includes source *and* destination addresses for email, mobile phone and landline phones. Email headers etc.

And of course *where* that mobile phone (minimum of nearest tower ID but if it's got lat & long coordinates they'll take that as well) will also be recorded.

The Reg gave a figure for the new Labor Interception Modernization Programme* under her Wackness

It was somewhere near £8-11Bn IIRC.

*I rather suspect run by the same team at the CCIP unit.

Different pols, *same* policy, same data fetishists.

Oh, you though this is about actually catching the *real* terrorist threat.

Silly fellow.

Bureaucracies feel threatened by *citizens* or "subjects".

It targets their *real* enemy.

You.

Re: "That's a secret"

"£1.8bn seems a bit low for what they're intending. "

That's the bit they will be paying the ISP's to look after the (probably) Dettica supplied snoop boxes.

The GCHQ bit is *really* secret.

It will be *much* higher

BTW IIRC it's common for Govt IT projects to be 3x their *initial* estimate.

Re: Though

"It depends on the relative probability of "the failure in an engine which takes everything with it" vs. "the failure in an engine which just shuts the engine down"."

Not so.

In addition to the engine out F9 has each engine *enclosed* in a Kevlar blast shield, somewhat like the nacelle of a jet engine on commercial aircraft.

But the engine did *not* explode. Spacex state the engine was running and experienced a pressure rise, which blew out some panels *designed* to relieve that pressure.

However the revised trajectory seems to have been *much* less efficient and so the 2nd stage had to burn more to compensate for the losses, stuffing the plan to plan to place the Orbcomm satellite in its planned orbit (but it's still working).

Re: I thought the cold war was over? Like, 20 years ago??

It's called ITAR and it's hit the US aerospace industry for several $Bn. There are drafts before both houses to lighten their grip but they seem to being killed by a Republican congressman. The CoCom regulations and the "Export Control List" still seem to be very much in business.

The rules AFAIK have *never* gone away despite "The end of the Cold War" as people like to think of it.

That said at the component level how much is *not* dual use?

They would not be the first company driven into bankruptcy fighting a Federal court case (EG Austin Code Works).

Re: Some Big Assumptions

"Why do these theories always assume that Aliens think like we do on earth? Or rather like the person thinking up the theory. "

Because it's the only model we've got, perhaps?

"at least one assumption that may not be at all valid: namely, that there are no tipping points in this process that would dramatically change the rate of sea-level rise once passed. "

That is a fair point.

"Oh, that's right, you can't, because they burned up on re-entry, despite the fact that the best mathematical models predicted that the damage to their heat shields shouldn't have been enough to put them at risk."

No. The models predicted no damage from being *hit* by a piece of foam. Leading edge damage was expected to be lethal.

Re: Of course this is a *computer* model of the climate.

"1. A model is by definition incomplete. If it were complete, it would be the thing it models."

Something climate modellers might make more of an effort to remind people of.

"Revision is the process of making changes to a model based on evidence that the model is not producing accurate results. "

It's not that I don't understand what it is. It's the fact that climate modellers seem to be rather slow in *doing* it, or acknowledging that it *needs* to be done.

"Setting aside your unscientific and unfounded pejorative term "fudge","

A "fudge","fiddle" or "safety" factor has a long and valuable history has a long and cherished history in *engineering*.

One of the New York bridges built in the 19th century was built with a safety factor of 6 because the designer knew there were forces he could not model but could guess the *size* of. It's still standing, many of its contemporaries are not.

But that's engineering, *not* science. Especially not science which calls for multi $Bn changes in energy, housing and transport policy.

Historically both biochemistry and astronomy have had good track records of getting together and agreeing either nationwide or worldwide goals. In the 1950's and 60's IIRC conferences at Cold Spring Harbour (US) set the research agenda and allocated specific projects to various labs to make progress faster. In astronomy "decadal surveys" are carried out to decide which objectives should be pursued across the *whole* community.

"or that there is a good chance that either the observations or the results are being manipulated to produce the "perfect" match."

I'd quite agree. I'd be *exceptionally* suspicious of any "scientist" whose reaction to the request to release the base data was "I'm not going to do that as you're only trying to find holes in the work." I'd suspect in fact 1) Their data analysis chain was FUBAR and they could not re-construct how they got to their result (incompetent but not fraudulent) or 2) They made the results up in the first place.

PS. Real commentards use HTML.

I date from a time when HTML input was rare and not entirely trustworthy.

Re: As a matter of interest, How DO you measure (or even define) sea level?

"As a matter of interest, How DO you measure (or even define) sea level? "

It's called the "geoid"

I think there's a nice bit about it in the AIP Physics & Chemistry Handbook.

Re: "A nuclear power station @AC 11:58

Looking at the 2nd graph I note the biggest shift in production comes from "Hydraulique" which I presume would include the rhone barrage as well as the rest of the French Hydroelectric schemes.

Occam's razor suggests use the *simplest* to control system rather than the most complex.

Re: @proto-robbie

"You are welcome to your opinion as to the beauty of wind, personally I find them quite elegant. "

It's the <26% duty cycle (for onshore wind) and the fact *something* (probably connected to a fossil fuel supply) that will have to take up the slack I find rather ugly.

Although I've heard their low frequency/high amplitude noise output is pretty irritating as well.

Re: On a more serious note

"A few years ago Vancouver (BC) police found that a pig farmer to the south of the border had been going to the red light district, murdering prostitutes and feeding them to his herd."

You mean the rather tasteless dialogue sketch described above is *true*?