Posts by Joe Cooper

Don't get it

I can clearly see the point that the Eurofighters aren't filling a need right now, but since they have to be bought so far ahead - development cycles are like ten years now, ownership for three to four decades - how can you possibly look that far ahead?

The fact is that jets do exist which are competitive with Eurofighters, and those jets are up for sale.

To say you can see so far ahead and know a country owning those jets will never get in a spat with you is kinda presumptuous, isn't it?

I know you feel that it's "fighting the last war", but if you realize that dictator swatting IS the last few wars, and that you're 100% focused on fighting it to the point of ignoring any other possibilities, it becomes a little funny.

Still love reading you though.

Journalist

Twice this week I've seen Associated Press articles about the nuclear disaster slip doom quotes from people who are actually talking about the financial situation.

My favorite was "The worst-case scenario doesn't bear mentioning and the best-case scenario keeps getting worse".

From Perpetual Investments.

That's neat

But the sight of that man with a ponytail really gets me so I can't enjoy it.

Interceptors

The anti sat shot with the SM3 was dramatically harder. I don't know why this particular gizmo is boring, but it's an engineering problem. Hitting a bullet with a bullet is a bad analogy because the final stage guides itself to the target. This has been accomplished multiple times before and has nothing to do with tracking the sat before hand; the unpredictable nature of the solid fuel rocket stages, atmosphere and (in the case of ship based missiles) means that it is only possible to do this by working out the details in the final stage.

These mid course shots should be easier. The prior stages do need more delta v to reach the target but that is only a matter of size and money. The target is at its lowest speed - dramatically slower than a satellite - and subject to minimal aerodynamic forces.

As more difficult shots have been done before, including the already deployed SM3, it is fair to say this is embarrassing.

As to whether or not the whole the whole concept of missile defense is a good idea, I don't know. Haven't thought about it.

The megabyte mobile telephone is coming!

Soon you won't need any hard drives or floppy disc backups; the one megabyte telephone is coming, and it will be able to store all the MIDI files and plain text erotic stories you could ever write!

They also never break or get lost, stolen, or confiscated by airport security, so you never need to backup up anything.

Is this serious?

3D web? I thought people got tired of bringing this up over ten years ago. Does anyone remember VRML?

I can't really even go into why its a dumb & superfluous idea without feeling like I'm spraying a straw man with napalm.

Meanwhile, there are already 3D virtual worlds online built for fantasy purposes.

It doesn't make shopping or working easier, but its great if you want to pretend you own a spaceship.

F-15E == F-22??

The article linked clearly spells out that the Eurofighter nailed two Strike Eagles -- the fatter, less fighting-oriented version of the 30 year old F-15.

Where's the confusion coming from?

SETI

"We've got the SETI folks, who, consensus says should have found something by now, if any of those predictions are right."

I disagree; there is absolutely no data to put a timeframe on when we should expect SETI to spot something. Could be tomorrow, next year, next decade or never. Any estimate of any kind is only a reflection of personal biases.

However _alien life_ ought to be discovered within 15 years by observing spectral data of extra-solar planets to spot oxygen-rich atmospheres.

Free oxygen is rare because oxygen readily bonds with everything. The Moon, for example, is 40% oxygen by weight. The only other places we know of with free Oxygen in the air are the mindblowingly sparse atmospheres of some icey outer planet Moons. The main natural free oxygen producer we're aware of is photosynthesizing life.

So if there's tons of free oxygen, that means plant life. And if there's edible plants all over the place and free oxygen, than you'll have animal-like and fungis-like life to utilize these resources.

I'd bet by savings that this is how we'll find ET, and it'll be 20 years, tops.

A 3rd search effort is NASA's on-site studies of Mars & the outer planet moons (Europa, Enceladus, Titan, etc.)

However the turnaround time on these missions is pretty darn long--over 20 years between outer planet missions--so if they don't find life on Mars with the next rover, I don't see the landers winning this race even if there is life on Mars.

Rockets do save lives

"Rockets have no saved lives quite as directly, however they have allowed a lot of research that has saved people's lives."

http://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/

Over 26,000 people rescued worldwide by the NOAA's SARSAT (Search & Rescue Satellite) system.

Howabout all the people who _haven't_ died lost at sea thanks to GPS?

Howabout the fact that we can see deadly hurricanes coming far in advance thanks to Earth observing satellites?

Satellites don't help people...Unless you live in a place like Florida that gets pummeled by hurricanes all the time. Or unless you're at sea and get ample warning of an impending storm.

That more than covers the people who died building and being shot at by the V-2, and nuclear ballistic missiles have never actually been used.

So I'd say the liquid fuel rocket (here represented by the V-2's engine though Goddard actually came up with it) has saved lives.

Comparable to the x-ray? Heck no! But its not nothing by nerd fodder. It is very relevant to many millions of people's livelihood.

No, it IS technically correct

There is no continent called America.

There is a North America, and a South America, but no America, sorry.

There is also no United States.

But there IS a United States of America, commonly called America for short.

There is also a Federative Republic of Brazil, commonly called Brazil, and a People's Republic of China, commonly called China.

If you cannot say "America", than you better not say "China" or "Brazil" either.

As I like to say, if you must go, go all the way.

@Shadowman2009

"Why was it necessary to crash the 2nd craft? If they had kept it intact then they could have used it again for another go. Or are they hiding something?"

Simple physics.

The 2nd craft traveled with the upper stage the whole way, going the same direction at the same speed, splitting at the last hour or so.

This means that at the end, they were _both_ heading straight for the Moon at about 9,000 kph.

Of course, the point of LCROSS was to get observations of the actual impact, which means it cannot change course; it _must_ be there when the upper stage hits the dirt.

The LCROSS is only 4 minutes behind, at which point it would require a few times its own mass in fuel to avoid collision.

Not to sound patronizing, but look up the Rocket Equation and play with it a bit to see what it really takes to change your velocity by 9,000 kph! Then compare it with how much fuel the thing actually carried...

Anyway, its all irrelevant. Once the upper stage goes in, the LCROSS has nothing left to observe; there can't be a 2nd round because there's no 2nd bullet!

Giving LCROSS the ability to become a lunar satellite after the mission would have radically driven up costs in ways you haven't even thought of.

It would be superfluous because the whole point of the upper stage was to send the LRO (the main lunar sat) into lunar orbit. LCROSS was just a scheme they conjured up to do something with the upper stage instead of throwing it away.

The goal here is cheap, cheap, cheap!

Upper stage bombs

"NASA will not just be sending an object to the moon with the resulting force of a collision."

Yes they are.

Its just a bog standard "upper stage".

An upper stage is big dumb rocket that's responsible for "throwing" a probe beyond Low Earth Orbit.

This one just has a special flightplan.

Thousands of upper stages have flown during the space age. Most of them ran into something sooner or later.

Another way to think of an upper stage is as a one-time-use "space tug".

Upper stages have been flying for almost 50 years.

You wouldn't use one as a weapon because once you order one, you also have to order a launch vehicle, and all that takes many many months to get it all together, and tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars per shot.

Better to just use the Standard Missile 3 which can pop a sat from any AEGIS cruiser for a fraction of the price.

The government absolutely has anti-sat weapons, but that doesn't mean you can point at any space thing that goes bang and cry foul. If anything, they were quite open about the last one, even going so far as to show it popping a sat on TV.

You can also find pictures of an F-15 firing an anti-sat missile in the '80s. Look up ASM-135.