* Posts by John Smith 19

16326 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Somerset council review criticises Southwest One

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Good to see SAP still maintaining its reputation.

for a while it looked like various pre-configured versions (for real drop in work pre-configured on a brand new server in the SI's offices then bought in and swapped over) were going to make all those SAP horror stories a thing of the past.

This sounds likes like a real old school SI f***up.

It's a *gross* stereotype but I always had trouble shaking the impression that it's a bit authoritarian in its approach. It was *very* easy to imagine someone like SVP (are they still around?) introducing their work as...

"We haf studied your industry und identified the most efficient methods used, as vell as your firms veeknesses. Now you vil implement the superior methods. Resistance will not be tolerated."

OTOH at least they didn't go with a *totally* bespoke solution because *our* local authority back offices services are *totally* unlike every other local authorities in the *world*.

And before anyone starts I *am* aware that (in theory) SAP *is* highly configurable through its internal language.

*Provided* you have developers who know what they are doing.

And how the various functions interact.

And *document* the changes

And maintain proper change management.

Etc..

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I fear I have mis communicated.

I meant *actual* costs now the thing has been set up for real and is doing *real* work, *not* the hypothetical-most-optimistic-set-I-could-pull-out-my-a** set likely to originate in some con-tractors tender document.

Although a comparison of costs against planned costs would also be interesting.

OTOH It would seem *large* parts of the savings will remain hypothetical for some while yet.

I hope this makes things a little bit clearer.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Obvious question. How much did it *cost* to set this up?

Only if it cost > savings over life of contract its a complete waste of money.

One *obvious* possibility is if *other* bodies within the County Council area (or even neighboring areas) start to use them as well. Presumably there are various other local government bodies within the Somerset County area.

This *might* work provided *all* bodies move toward common ways of doing things to eliminate umpteen different procedures to say book a holiday.

Note I remain *highly* suspicious about *any* cost savings whenever some council "partners" itself with one of the "usual suspects."

BTW AC@10:30 Nice use of the word "alleged."

Antimatter hangs around at CERN

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AC@10:58

Then you'd probably want to read the last part of Jame's Blish's Cities In Flight series called "A Clash of Cymbals."

Like the author, it does not end well.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Still a bit off the anti matter fuelled spaceship

More strictly the anti proton catalysed fission/fusion system proposed by U.Penn.

1 atom down 10^17-1 to go.

New 'liquid smart metal' can go hard or floppy

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Raw material sounds a bit expensive.

Your choice is Gold (quite expensive) or Platinum (*very* expensive).

Nott exactly something you'll find sloshing round the spare parts bin.

HP welds data center containers into EcoPODs

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

So does this make the designers and production staff

POD people?

You can guess what 50s SF movie I've got in the pocket.

IBM guns down Neon's mainframe accelerator in Texas

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Unhappy

There are ways to speed up mainframe work *legally*

Back in the days of OS/390 a scheduler company reckoned that they could cut 25% off CPU hours *simply* by handling program termination (normal ends and ABENDs) better. Obviously it depended how the work flow was structured but for the right sort of job mix that could delay adding CPU's or main memory by *months* which could save serious cash.

Sadly (like most of their competitors) they are now part of CA so likely gone right down the pan.

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So you don't *really* control your hardware you're merely allowed to own and operate it.

Remind me again of how this is *not* like owning an iThingy.

Google pits C++ against Java, Scala, and Go

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Happy

@Charles Manning

"If you leave things too late you probably can't change and optimise easily."

True.

My old copy of Code Complete pointed out for best results you need to start with the actual *algorithm* you're going to use first.

Poor choice (bubble sort anyone?) here will stuff *any* amount of code tuning.

However a well *partitioned* architecture will let you swap out the poorly performing modules and replace them with something better. Doing this partitioning well seems to be quite tricky.

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@Ken Hagan

Nice.

Often forgotten.

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@bazza

"and discover just how old some of these ideas are and realise that there's nothing fundamentally new about languages like node.js, SCALA, etc. "

It's a point *well* worth reminding people about.

This process of threads -> processes and pipes -> sockets sounds almost like a candidate for pairs of macro definitions with a flag to shift (SOLO?) to determine which set of definitions gets used.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Always remembering *the* golden rule

*Premature* optimisation is the rule of most evil.

NASA 'deep space' ship: Humans beyond orbit by 2020?

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Happy

@beachrider

I'll begin with an apology for a misunderstanding. I'd believed the MPCV was required to give SLS a mission to carry out.

I realize this is absurd. SLS's capacity of a mimimum of 70 tonnes (but with design margin up to 130 tonnes according to the act) is stupidly in excess of MPCV's mass. Depending on altitude both Delta IV Heavy and Falcon 9 Heavy *could* carry it

That leaves SLS with *no* payload it's *needed* to carry, *except* the paycheques of NASA and various major con-tractors for a few years more.

"I can see where you get your material."

No ironically I found the videos on the day I posted the comment, although the two on Apollo do sum up my impression of the Senators who have *ordered* SLS to be built.

My opinions come from several decades study of human spaceflight programmes both as technology and as political systems and their *repeated* inability to deliver significant improvement. My background is engineering, not IT supplemented by background reading of various text books on the subject, along with following the relevant news groups since the early 90s with further assistance from the NASA technical reports server. Learning about the insanity of the US federal budget "system" was a more recent exercise and an almighty PITA, as I'm not a US taxpayer. I've just been amused by what they have let their legislators do to them.

"OK, finally someone has blogged something on YouTube about NASA that is in line with you comments. I"

That's not encouraging. The YouTube poster is an active blogger, which you would know if you followed this debate through blogs or news groups

I asked what is your point of view. I'll look at your answers.

"Black Letter means that they are explicitly stated, not indirectly interpreted."

This appears to be more of a legal term than one drawn from engineering standard.

"MCPV is a limited production device that is more useful as a standard than as an overall technology. I doubt that anyone will make more than 4-5 of them before their technology is significantly changed. "

The question was did you think it was a good idea to do it and was it something NASA requested or is it being foisted upon them.

"I am in favor of privatization of lifting devices, so long as they don't limit the scope of what-is-lifted too much."

That appears to be an actual opinion.

" Falcon Heavy doesn't lift as much as SLS, so I am concerned about using MCPV on Falcon Heavy."

A quick check indicates F9H can lift the *entire* Apollo stack minus the SIVb departure stage.

MCPV based on Orion seems to be about 28 tonnes. It would have to bloat a *lot* before F9H could not handle it. It's original mission duration was substantially longer so if anything MCPV should weigh *less* than Orion, again eliminating *any* SLS need.

" I don't want to see a Nikon/Canon situation where incompatibilities sap the funding for deep-space work."

Nor would anyone in their right mind. The sapping of funds to fund SLS and MCPV is *highly* likely. It's happened with every other NASA human spaceflight programme, ISS (or SS Freedom, or Alpha) and launcher replacement attempts (X33 and its predecessors).

"I am not convinced that SpaceX is committed to an MCPV lifter by 2020."

Barring *major* bloat in MCPV mass F9H is MCPV capable in 2012 and Delta IV Heavy *might* be capable right now (depending on orbital parameters and MCPV fuel loads). SLS looks more like a jobs programme.

"They need to generate profits from LEO for a few years to build up the capital & experience to go through a product development cycle for this."

They've gone through *two* PDC's for launchers and *four* for their engines since their founding. They appear to have a fairly healthy worldwide order book for launches *other* than NASA.

" I don't believe that they will do it any faster than NASA's suppliers, either."

Adam Harris of Spacex stated Dragon took 4 1/2 years and about $300m to develop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JtjztdtCnw

Although AFAIK this does not include the NASA $75m to deliver an escape system to make it human rateable.

Constellation has been running since 2004 and consumed IIRC $11.4Bn.

Perhaps you could confirm if that figure is accurate and how much of it went toward Orion.

"They will probably do it more cost effectively, though."

Seems likely does it not?

"My conjecture is that MCPV is about 'getting to some deep space transport that isn't safe to fire in LEO'."

I'll presume you mean a nuclear thermal engine. There is AFAIK *no* provision for such long term development in the current NASA act and I'd hazard a guess that it's timeline would be even *longer* than the MPCV development schedule it there were. So unless there's a large nuclear thermal engine in the black budget that will be de-classified I think that's wishful thinking.

" Perhaps some Lagrange point or some NEO asteroid. I am surprised that there isn't more discussion about the usefulness of the MCPV as a 21-day-limited deep space transport."

Perhaps because people doubt it will *ever* be built or launched.

Here is a reminder of some of the elements discovered by the Augustin Commission

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkOZWhSImGg

In particular from roughly 07:30 onward Jeff Greason explains why an SLS launcher at 130 tonnes is useful but far from *mandatory* for *any* mission below a mission to Mars.

His other point is there are *lots* of tasks NASA *could* investigate which *would* enable people in space and improve US capability. How NASA does business could make as *big* a difference in this area as *any* technical development it makes.

My regret is I am unable to find a video where he draws an analogy between the Senators involved in funding process and baby crying for its rattle.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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For a beginners guide to NASA's situation, funding and situation see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2HeHfVSybo

part 2 focuses on the SLS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_RMphRObEo&NR=1

While I have met the writer I have no involvement with his work. His criticism is much more informed.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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@Beachrider.

I'm not sure what "hare BLACK LETTER" means so I'll skip my opinions and simply ask yours are.

What *is* your point of view? Specifically weather MCPV and SLS are good ideas and weather they are at NASA's request *or* foisted on NASA by Senators and Contresspeople keen to top up the port barrel.

Saying "Too many unsubstantiated judgments" *repeatedly* makes you seem like you're avoiding questions. Which makes you look like someone with either a personal stake in the outcome, some kind of PR shill or flat out troll.

A simple explanation of your point of view can then be argued against or agreed with or corrected.

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@Stuart Duel

3 Things.

BAU. Business-As-Usual. 1000 page "procurement" contracts with *lots* of prescriptive clauses (we don't just *want* this done, we want it done *this* way), pre-design-reviews, Preliminary Design Reviews, Critical Design Reviews, change control.

Cost plus contract, *despite* the fact that basically what it comes down to is "Give us a Saturn V lifting capability to LEO" which has been done once successfully already (and at least one *complete* example exists to study, mostly on the law out front of various NASA buildings). I like to think of these as more cost++.

It'll be executed by "Big Aerospace" who will probably set up a whole "Division" to do this (which of course will need a VP or two to oversee matters and make sure that fat budget is "properly" spent).

The proper example to study would be the DC-X programme of the early 90's under Jess Sponable, whose airframe was *also* built by Scaled Composites (BTW Scaled is actually part of Northrop Grumman, who seem to be smart enough to leave them well alone most of the time).

DC-X. 0-M3. 4x RL-10 Hydrogen/Oxygen powered rockets, uncrewed built for the SDIO.

Price 60m.

It's amazing what you can do when your organizations goals have *nothing* to do with *how* something is achieved, they simply want to get it *done*.

WW2 naval dazzle-camo 'could beat Taliban RPGs'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Sounds like the best advice is still that they used in Armagh

Drive fast at *all* times especially over culverts (probably not too common in Afghanistan).

Gov 'skunkworks' to develop e-petitions system

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

It's good everyone here understands the "skunkworks" reference.

Otherwise people *might* get the idea of a *huge* government sponsored greenhouse.with 24/7 lighting and a big bailing machine in the corner.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Interesting stratgey. *curious* choice of project

Given the fact the last administration totally *ignored* them anyway.

*Tempted* to go with Fanbois or Windows user icon, but for now I'll just go with

<-

Government plans cyberweapons programme

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Happy

@Dante

Goatse is mocked at your peril.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

@Adam Foxton

"The actual 'okay, so how do we do that?' makes bugger all difference to the people at the top. Moss would be a pretty terrible military leader, but if you needed someone to design a system to a spec he's totally the guy to do it!"

So I guess El Reg should shorten future references to General Jonathan Shaw to "Jen" instead..

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

"We need a toolbox of capabilities"

Aren't *several* of these available on the black market at present?

Of course if you buy them with a *genuine* credit card that says HMG you are asking for a serious kicking.

£650m for *what*?

Hot bodies get super-slippery when wet

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Bottom line is power saved on engines > power used to create vapour layer ?

Because this is a *dead* failure if it's not as essentially power = money.

Water has both a high specific heat capacity and a *very* high heat of vaporisation. Getting this much water *to* boiling point is *nothing* compared to the energy needed to boil it.

The torpedo situation might be a bit different. The benefits of speed might outweigh the cost of doing it. You might make life a bit easier by using a film heater (a metal foil pattern like a high power strain gauge) backed by an efficient insulator to dump nearly all the heat into the water.

Strange to say it but the Russian torpedo with the rocket exhaust in the nose does seem to be the *simplest* way to do this. Anything that involves changes of state (solid->liquid->gas and vice versa) *always* involve large amounts of energy. They might be better off trying to build a porus torpedo casing and bubbling high pressure gas (at 100m the gas has to be > 10atm to escape and that rises 1atm for every 10m of water depth)

Feasible in theory, but worthwhile IRL?

Francis Maude goes back 110 years for cybersecurity strategy

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Headmaster

Just a reminder. Governernments have *no* money of their own.

They get it from taxpayers.

That is all.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Go

Britards. Don't say it here.

Write to the man himself.

You owe it to give him a gentle tap with the clue stick.

That is all.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Data fetishists come out of their nests.

Didn't take long for them to find an ear for them to start whispering their mantra into.

"Identifying *everyone* online and tracking their every move is the *only* way to keep them safe"

"you just don't understand how *many* pedophiles, terrorists and pedophile terrorist (the *worst* kind) there are *out* there"

"think of the children"

I'm going with p***ed off but boy does that Fanboi icon look tempting.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

"Self fudning" National ID Card.

You mean where the UK Government uses *taxpayers* money to buy a shed load of hardware and establish a cradle-to-grave log of every UK subject and then *charges* companies for access to prove you are who you say you are to meet identity confirmation laws *passed* by the same government?

Verity Stob and the super subjunction

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Headmaster

"Thixotropic" is correct

Paints and "multi-grade" car lubricating oils have this property.

Stiff and resistant to motion at low speeds (IE dripping down a wall) but easy to move when move at high speed.

The English equivalent would be something that *seems* to make perfect sense spoken (at normal speed) but is actually rubbish when read.

Name that donkey: Barbarella battles Bathsheba

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Not sure about Borland

Wouldn't that be a dead donkey?

Entire London 2012 Olympics' cultural events database held on Excel

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Excel is *surprisingly* powerful, but *should* you use it for this app?

That's pretty much the core question.

Lots of people think not.

I'd suggest the questions would be a)How many people add data (and how many ways are there to f**k it up). b) How many people view it. c)How complex and how many ways are the information to be presented d)Does everybody have a compatible copy of Excel.

Lots of people who think Excel is the best thing since sliced bread are used to running full copies of it and *expect* everyone else to have one.

UK gov to create central procurement team

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Does this make John Collington

The Chief Government Procurer?

FCO to cut one-third from IT and telecoms spending

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Moving to skype?

Just asking.

Biodegradable products are often worse for the planet

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

While landfill *stays* the cheapest way to dump waste it'll be used.

There is an EU wide landfill tax which is rising.

Guess what. The use of landfill (and the opening of new landfill sites) is falling.

Of course correlation is not causality but....

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@bitmap animal

"Waste sorting is the problem "

Hits the nail right on the head.

Sorting and *separately* and then keeping them apart so each wast stream is dealt with as necessary is *the* big issue for domestic waste.

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@Greg J Preece

Actually for many places incineration *is* the most efficient way to shrink the volume of rubbish by a *large* amount.

In Europe the heat is usually designed to supply district heating and electricity generation, giving a de-centralised robust heat and power system.

Note also that like *all* static large power stations it's possible to mount *very* efficient pollution controls in such systems

I agree with the report. It's time to end landfill. Methane collection *has* got better. It's better not to *generate* Methane in the first place.

Space shuttle Endeavour: 'An incredible ship'

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Happy

And thus the American Empire finally falls

Sounds like someone who got a pink slip in with their pay cheque.

Firstly (despite efforts by the President to stop this waste of money) *substantial* work still continues on MPCV or son-of-Orion and the definition of the Shelby Launch System. The *one* bright spark is that Administrator Bolden has promised to be honest about the *full* development costs of them. This *might* finally force the kind of put-up-or-shut-up funding decisions that the Augustine Commission should have settled.

If you equate American efforts in space with NASA they are certainly going to be doing less crewed work in space but the US still supplies the bulk of ISS funds.

OTOH if you mean work on access to space that is *not* designed/owned/operated by (or on behalf of) NASA the future is currently looking pretty good.

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@Daedalus

If you run the numbers of payload versus takeoff weight of the whole stack it works out that somewhere between 1-1.5% of the GTOW is payload.

That roughly what is expected of a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle.

Multi stage expendable rockets normally do 3-4%, but of course you throw *everything* away.

In short STS gives you SSTO payload (not good) *without* the benefits of 1 piece, no integration/replacement/refurbishment design.

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@Uncle Slacky

IIRC quite a lot of it has been used on a *few* missions. We're talkin <10 and c90% of the full x-range.

But the big steal-a-red-sat-from-orbit-and-bring-it-back-to-the-takeoff-site-in-one-orbit never happened. Much like WW3 (which would be the only situation insane enough for it to be considered).

But boy did it drive a *lot* of those wind tunnel hours (c40-50 000 IIRC).

Their requirement to *triple* the payload (c 20000-66000lb) and up the payload bay size because spy sats are getting bigger) did not exactly help things either.

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@Gene Cash

"I consider Nixon directly and personally responsible for the Challenger and Columbia deaths."

That would be because between his dislike of the space programme and the OMB funding rules instituted at his orders (I seem to recall the name Caspar Weinberger mentioned in connection with this) he was.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

The *very* best architecture that *could* be designed (and I *will* justify that)

That would meet the Nixon's OMB funding profile (which was *nothing* like the funding profile seen in *real* large projects for either space or otherwise EG Bridges, World Trade Centre, Channel Tunnel etc.

That would keep the various "stakeholders IE NASA centres (MSFC made it *impossible* to not use a high pressure staged combustion engine0, suppliers (*especially* the SRB mfgs in Utah who lost the design competition 1st time round), the USAF and the Senate and Congress more-or-less happy with the project.

BTW stakeholders *never* included the US people *directly*. They were just meant to cough up the cash for it.

NASA studied *dozens* of "Shuttle" vehicles in the Phase A & B design competition.

I'd suggest *most* would have been better.

But *very* few would have been *cheaper*.

2 Last points.

Ariane 5 also uses large SRB. You might wonder why they have no hassle with them. The *empty* SRB cases are made in Italy (were steel, not sure if they've already moved to carbon fiber) and shipped to Guyana where they are loaded in a special propellant mixing/loading/curing building *at* the launch site, which was how IIRC Lockheed proposed to do their SRB.s

*Despite* what some might think NASA has *several* manuals on project management.

*All* recommend getting the budget *realistic* first, and *explaining* why it's so big and what it gets in *detail* rather than get some cash (*any* cash) out of Congress first and then keep going back for cost overruns to get the *real* cost of the project out of them.

Guess which approach NASA went with for STS?

This post is to explain some of the background, *not* to excuse the behavior or the result. There was *no* reason for 7 people to die in the 80s and another 7 to die in the 90s.

In some respects it's *amazing* it took off at all and lasted so long.

In others (despite being V0.9 tech at best) it could have been *so* much better.

Livescribe Echo Smartpen

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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I think it's used a lot by utilities.

For paperwork around servicing gas and electricity supplies.

It's one of those ideas that look *really* dumb but are actually very useful in the *right * context.

Best of all it's tech that seems to meet users half way. It does not force you to change, although there are incentives if you do.

Thumbs up for everything but the price.

Second defence contractor targeted in RSA SecurID-based hack

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L3 should be a *major* account for RSA.

It'd be *incredible* that RSA did not give them more information about what has really been stolen.

Only it's starting to *look* as if RSA were cleaned out, *if* this and the Lockheed attack are linked to the RSA job.

OTOH if you want a paranoid conspiracy theory *somebody* wants to take over RSA and has created enough FUD for their share price to tank, making takeover fairly cheap. On completion RSA "discovers" that the hack was much less serious than thought and Lockheed and L3 discover the intrusion was from another source.

Confidence is returned, the RSA share price returns to normal and the new owners sell out, trousering a few $Bn.*

*Readers are reminded this is a *paranoid* conspiracy theory and in realty Occams razor works pretty well. I'd be looking for a big jump in the fortune of who ever is #2 in the business behind RSA.

Boeing reveals partners for MoD logistics

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FAIL

Trough, meet snouts

That is all.

US Supremes add 'willful blindness' to patent law

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Put simply the defense was "We *exactly* copied their product but who know they had patents on it"

Come on guys. Put that way does this not sound like pure BS?

The product is in *volume* production by a major mfg.

You've just reverse engineered it.

You did not think there was one *unique* feature about this design?#

Get f**king real.

Ofnuke: UK is not Japan

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Unhappy

AC@22:50

"Basically a dirt cheap O ring, a small but critical part of the solid rocket booster required to keep hot gases "

It's over 14 feet in diameter. That's not quite OTS. The one Feymen demonstrated in a cup of ice water probably was OTS but of the same material, which is what counts.

"When cold weather combined with probabilistic risk assessment said the shuttle launch should be postponed,"

Which suggests PRA was correct. In fact the temperature was *off* the bottom of their properties database. All that *could* be said for certain was the trend is not good and it's going *down*.

"NASA "management" overruled engineers concerns,"

Strictly in a telephone conference they put pressure on Thiokol management to suggest their engineers re-consider their opinion as they had the first woman teacher astronaut (Sally Ride) on board.

And like the team players they are Thiokol management duly did so.

This made the Challenger crew the first Americans NASA got killed *after* they left the pad.

BTW People think quantum physics is *far* from the real world and not very relevant to this sort of investigation. But in order to be good at it you have to be *very* aware of statistics, probability distributions and the result that *changing* those distributions will have on the outcome. Feyman understood those *very* well. He was also aware that reliability of estimates done by engineers were *very* much lower (x100 IIRC) than those of NASA management.

In some ways the Challenger management resembled the Hal Holbrooke character in Capricorn One. This is not a good thing.

IPO finally begins peer review pilot to test patent applications

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Hang on. The US *has* a peer to patent system since 2009

I'm pretty sure this has still let *lots* of rubbish computing patents in since then.

And for software they should have made it retro-active as well.

Flame because of the US rules on "I got an idea about something in software so gimme a patent."

I *like* the idea. Of course the devil is in the details.

Lockheed-Martin signs on for D-Wave prototype computer

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

I think I can explain the improvement in D Waves fortunes.

It's a dead cat bounce.

Time to be gone.

Robot air fleet can launch mid-air from cargo plane's ramp

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Notice Raytheon don't make *planes*

So not too bothered if aircraft use displaced by this.

Personal jetpacks and solar-powered ships

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Happy

30min on a jet pack would be *impressive*

IIRC the endurance of the 1960s era jet packs was somewhere around 8-12 minutes.

Note One problem with *all* these personal flying gadgets is the fuel is such a *big* part of their mass that you have to keep constantly throttling down to stay level, *any* constant throttle level will cause climb.

As others have noted it's *not* a jet pack and it's pretty bulky.

But honestly it's pretty impressive. Like something DARPA might fund.

Now how much is $NZ8m in *real* money.