Posts by John Robson 6736 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2008
"$100bn is a bargain compared by the mile"
Not exactly a normal comparison, and I wasn't comparing the per mile expense.
Just looking at the approximate costs of the two systems, neither of which have launched their final versions.
I personally think that the progress shown by the SS/SH program is pretty decent, and I'm looking forward to the next few flights...
Technically Orion has done the loop... though it was lofted by SLS - but my comment was directly in response to:
"has it even launched in its final, full size, fully loaded version yet ?"
No, SS/SH hasn't, but neither has SLS.
SLS was also due to fly in 2018... that missed by four years
SS/SH has flown 11 times since SLS last destroyed a launch tower, and it might actually be 12 by the time SLS actually gets anywhere.
The two programs are about as similar as chalk and cheese in terms of the engineering approach - SLS is hardware starved, SS/SH is hardware rich.
Yet SS/SH seems to be managing on a shoestring compared with SLS.
Planetary Society data suggests that the SLS/Orion/EGS cost has been basically $50 billion to 2022 (ignoring inflation). Later figures referenced show somewhere over $100 billion inflation adjusted by 2026 (though that figure does include an amount spent on HLS, a significant proportion of which went to spaceX - so it's closer to 95).
In comparison SS/SH was estimated at ~$5 Billion to 2024, let's assume it was $10, and it's now up to $20... that's still a drop in the bucket.
SLS/Orion aren't doing much that's new - yes, there is an amount of new hardware. SS/SH are aiming for reusability, which is genuinely new, and they're managing to do that on a fraction of the budget spend on SLS.
> There should be a lot of "standing on the shoulders of giants that came before"
There should be, absolutely... but there will also be new things.
> Trying to set a cannonball run record with a car you just finished building the night before
Is pretty much how these things are done isn't it... Every cannon ball run I've ever seen has either been in a production vehicle (boring), or a machine that was put together basically the night before.
Because they were a very different missions and spacecraft.
Note that they launched each Apollo mission on a single stack, but that the lander massed a little under 5 tons dry.
The HLS based on SS is likely to have a dry mass of ~20 times that.
The Apollo stack was also fully expended, whilst the aim with HLS is to recover the SH booster, as well as all the ships (other than the HLS itself which won't return from lunar orbit).
The SLS/Orion stack is closer to the SV stack... The Apollo CSM was ~12 tons, the Orion is ~ 9 ton from the capsule and a further 6 for the service module.
It's substantially less capable as a heavy lift than the SV (140 tons) with just 95 tons to LEO in early iterations - it does play a bit of catchup with 130 targetted for block2.
So because people who are exceptionally successful in their field are pointing out that the move would prevent anyone in the field getting any success at all (like enough food to eat) means that we should ignore them.
It;s not that they're the beneficiaries, but they're names you've heard of who know that without recompense there is no creative industry.
AI companies are quite welcome to license the works they ingest and regurgitate.
Keyboard navigation should be rapid and simple.
It does two main things:
- It means you don't need to move your hands from the home row, which is always faster than moving the whole arm to a mouse, trackpad, trackball or other pointing device
- It enables assistive technologies - remember, "the disabled" are the only minority group you can join at any time
At which point the halon system should have an additional test, more than the "someone tripped and broke the glass on the alarm"
The sprinklers in the rest of the facility might well be activated by the alarm, but again - it really should take something other than the activation of the fire alarm to deploy any automated suppression system.
Sending to the Lagrange points is not a good strategy... It's very expensive in terms of energy.
Just boost them to a parking orbit which won't decay anywhere near as fast. With an expectation that we may get to the point where we can do better things with those materials in the future.
What could we produce now, with the capacity of starship as an option?
Specifically the diameter of the primary mirror could be substantially larger (~8m/26ft cargo diameter rather than 4.6m/15ft)
And that's before considering origami on the scale of JWST - which could result in a genuinely astonishingly large primary (which is important for both light collection and for resolution).
They had to build with the technology they had...
It would be a shame not to at least push it out to a parking orbit, for possible servicing or retrieval at a later date.
It's to do with messaging etc on social media - where there is a suspicion that a young person's death was driven by "dares" "fads" or other online abuse.
At the moment, by the time the authorities get round to asking for that data it's already been deleted - which is really not very helpful. Mandating that these companies don't throw away evidence that might be relevant is a good thing here. There's no suggestion that they publish it, just that they don't destroy it, and make sure it is available when a court comes looking.
"Or to get back to basics what IS free speech?"
In the US the courts have a handy dandy reference:
https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does-free-speech-mean
To which must be added "anything the toddler in chief says"
We're in the midst of the one sporting competition a year I do tend to watch (the six nations).
We spent years without a TV license, but I'd fully support it being funded from general taxation, even though that would cost *me* significantly more than the current license fee.
There would be no need for licence fee dodging, or the continuous stream of firelighters they post if you don't have a TV license - no need for court cases etc etc...
And I'm not suggesting that the payment should be conditional on the approval of the government - heck the license fee is already "on the approval of the government" - with any ideas of political control that that entails, but that the payment would be there, predictable, and maintaining the current broad remit of the BBC, though maybe with a little less focus on finding an "expert" to counter any discussion, even if that discussion is whether or not the sun will rise in the morning.
As a hearing aid user... the advantages of having voice sent directly to/from my hearing aids is a game changer.
So long as I have reasonable reception the audio quality is fine, at least when talking to a person.
Occasionally I come across a call centre whose particular compression at their end, combined with the compression across the network and the recoding to bluetooth created something with "music" about 20% of the time and white noise (at 0dBFS) the rest of the time - that's just painful.
We could, but the effort required to get from 20% to 90% is significant - and 20% is already very capable as a reactor fuel, we just don't need to increase the concentration further for commerical reactors to be highly effective.
There's enough energy density here that reducing that energy density to 20% still results in several reams of paper...
Again - most SMRs use 5-20%, i.e. not highly enriched uranium.
There are other things you can do to increase reactivity - for instance increasing the neutron reflectivity of the jacket.
This is not highly enriched, and the gap between this and the stuff that actually matters for the "OMG think of the child terrorists" is absolutely massive.
But yeah, adopting the "move fast and break things" mindset on nuclear projects probably isn't wise.
It's not, but it's also probably not wise to have them wrapped in so much red tape that they can't happen. And at the moment the nuclear industry is quite effectively strangled with red tape - despite it being significantly safer than most other forms of electricity generation.
I've not read the proposal in detail, but given that the driving force behind it appears to be someone who thinks injecting disinfectant is a good idea - maybe there is a sensible middle ground?
"Loyalty is encouraged because it is cheap. Loyalty is never returned because it is expensive."
Some organisations do recognise that loyalty to existing employees is cheaper than training new employees. Of course that applies more if your position is harder to train for and/or requires specific experience etc.
Many do not however... and the P45 is probably the best gift they can give.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2026
