* Posts by notowenwilson

143 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Oct 2013

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SpaceX: launch, check. Landing? Needs work

notowenwilson

Re: Nah

Or perhaps a locking system that actually locks. In an empty stage all the weight is at the bottom. I expect you could have a pretty massive rolling motion and still stay upright... if the legs stay locked.

Test burn on recycled SpaceX rocket shows almost all systems are go

notowenwilson

A 5-6 axis stabilised grabber that can grab hold of a moving rocket and can move fast enough to deal with a rolling/pitching/heaving/surging/swaying barge and is strong enough to take the weight of the rocket is not a small thing to build and will be expensive the first time your rocket crashes into it cause something went wrong. You still have to have all the guidance and control and fuel to get the rocket to the grabber in the first place, the only thing you don't need is the legs, which would have to get replaced by something equally strong and heavy for the grabber to get hold of since you can't just grab hold of the body of the rocket. I think it's ULA who are looking at dumping the fuel tanks and recovering the engines (the expensive bit) with parachutes. That makes a hell of a lot of sense is you're not game to land a tail-sitter. But eventually the tailsitter will win.

There's a story (that may or may not be true) about the first jet airlines. The runways of the time were pretty short. In the US Boeing decided to say, 'screw the airports, we're going to build what we want to build and the airports can deal with it' and we got the 707. In the UK they went 'extending runways is expensive, so we'll compromise on performance and build something that can take off on short runways' and we got the VC-10. Turns out the airlines were more interested in their own ongoing profits than those of the airports so in the end they chose the more efficient aircraft and the airports had to pay the one-off costs to extend the runways. The parallel with spaceX is that they have decided that the one-off development cost (which is largely funded by government contracts anyway) to perfect the tail-sitter (the most efficient way to recover the first stage) was better than having something that is more expensive long term. ULA (or whoever was going to recover the engines by parachute) are going the VC-10 route and saving on capex at the expense of opex. I don't think there is any question that SpaceX will win out on that one. Boeing sold the 707 nearly 20:1 to the VC-10 and I expect SpaceX won't be too far behind.

notowenwilson

Re: Launch Window

The first stage of a reusable is just as expensive (actually substantially more expensive) as the rest of the bus because it has (in the case of the F9) nine stonking great engines in it that cost a small fortune each. Adding the capability to land a tail sitter is a relatively small marginal cost once you know how to do it. Learning how to do it is the expensive part.

Hacks rebel after bosses secretly install motion sensors under desks

notowenwilson

Re: So don't sit

I (literally) have my desk jacked up on 4 boxes of office paper. Apparently I need a doctor's note to explain why I want a standing desk. I can't get a doctor's note though, because having been working standing up for the last 2 years I don't have back pain anymore.

notowenwilson

Re: Yes seriously, if used properly

The OH&S side of it is indeed a very valid point and one well made. Not sure why the downvotes.

The likelihood of this sort of thing being able to be confined to OH&S is, of course, vanishingly slim. as soon as you create that sort of data someone in management is going to use it for purposes other than originally intended. There's a great story of the second time the US rolled into Iraq. They had 'blue force trackers' on everyone so that they could avoid friendly fire. Sounds great until the guys really high up started using it to tell the guys at the lowest level what to do. One general in particular was watching the map and called up a platoon commander to tell him that he wasn't moving fast enough (skipped about 4 levels of command structure to do so). The platoon commander, clearly panting over the radio told him he was moving as fast as possible. Turns out the general had his map set to the wrong scale. Oops.

Another general in Afghan spent an afternoon trying to get their drone and attack pilots to take out a 4wd with bad guys in it that he was watching on the drone feed. Never mind that they were miles away from the large scale firefight (involving friendly casualties no less) that he was actually supposed to be focused on. Sometimes it's best not to generate the data until your organisational culture is ready to handle it.

notowenwilson

Seriously? If your worth to a company can be measured by how long you are at your desk for or how long you spend on youtube, you must be doing a pretty basic job... the sort that robots will be doing soon.

How about this for an alternative; you are measured by the quality and quantity of your work. If it is acceptable, then who cares if you're at your desk or having lunch at a strip club. If it's not then you need to explain yourself and only at that point do they start talking about installing tracking collars to find out if you're actually slacking off.

I don't measure my car's fuel consumption by looking at my bank balance even though the two are related. It's pointless trying to measure performance based on attendance.

Beware the terrorist drones! For they are coming! Pass new laws!

notowenwilson

I, for one, would love to see the ring of dead and broken drones at the exclusion limit around some prime target. It does of course then just become a matter of momentum. Sort of a real life version of angry birds crossed with ICBM targeting.

US Marines kill noisy BigDog robo-mule for blowing their cover

notowenwilson

Re: So what's wrong with a mule?

I, for one, am glad that we didn't listen to the guy who said 'sometimes simplest is best, why do we need cars/airplanes/steamships when we already have horses/ships/sailing ships'.

The great advantage of a robotic mule thing is that you can switch it off and leave it on its own indefinitely without having to worry about it. Doesn't work so well for a live one.

notowenwilson

Yes, methanol fuel cells are readily available and, for that matter, you can get H2 storage systems that store the hydrogen as a solid and won't explode if damaged/shot/whatever. They have similar storage density to traditional hydrogen storage. They have the up side of also producing water which is kinda handy if you're in a situation where you are so far from logistic support that you need a robotic dog to carry your stuff.

SpaceX launch is a go for Sunday after successful static fire completed

notowenwilson

A wise astronaut may well walk away. And they will, no doubt, be walking away from any chance of ever going into space. Your point that astronauts are generally smart and sceptical is fair enough. But that didn't stop White, Grissom and Chaffee climbing into a 100% O2 atmosphere. Booster issues didn't stop the 7 Challenger crew climbing in. Shedding of foam didn't stop the 7 Columbia crew getting in either. In all those cases either the crew weren't aware of the threat, in which case they weren't quite as well informed as you might suggest, or they were informed and decided that the risk as they understood it was worth it.

As you said, every western loss in space has been due to management (arguably, every western achievement in space is equally the result of management, you can't blame management for all the failures and credit the engineers and scientists for all the successes; someone had to manage the projects and make the final call of risk vs cost vs schedule, engineers will always recommend the lowest risk approach but sometimes you just don't have the cash/time/whatever to be able to take that approach. Without the managers you've just got a disorganized rabble of nerds). Ultimately management will decide whether to launch a crew in a Dragon perched on top of a Falcon. Each crew member will decide if they are happy with the risks and if they aren't they will be replaced with someone who is.

Grim-faced cosmonaut in ISS manual docking nail-biter

notowenwilson

Re: правильный материал

Amazon.

http://amzn.com/0262134977

Available on Kindle too. Read it, you won't be disappointed.

notowenwilson

Re: правильный материал

Digital Apollo is a brilliant book. Well worth a read. There's another one called Moon Lander by Thomas Kelly which covers the development of the Lunar Module that is equally brilliant. The two books overlap somewhat but are both well worth a read.

http://amzn.com/1588342735

Taxi for NASA! SpaceX to fly astronauts to space station

notowenwilson

Re: Boo, hiss

It's worth looking at how NASA do reliability, it's quite a departure from how most companies do it. (this is all from a couple of books I've read on it, no doubt someone will correct me). They decided a while back that if you're getting custom hardware built in small quantities and using it in applications that are really hard to simulate accurately you're going to have a hell of a time getting accurate MTBF figures. To get anything statistically significant would be impossible. So the alternative is to build things as well as possible and then all through the test phase take the approach that there are no unexplained failures. For example if you had a hard drive on a computer that failed, normally if it failed after a few thousand hours you'd just accept that these things happen and move on with your day. It would only be flagged as an issue if the same thing kept coming up again which is hardly meaningful if your sample space is 1 or even 10. The no unexplained failures technique means that when your HDD fails you then start digging and keep digging until you find the cause of failure and then fix the root cause. If you keep doing that process you end up eliminating the root cause of every known failure mode and hence increase reliability of your system. Expensive yes, but the only real way of ensuring reliability of a system that is effectively a prototype.

Taking this back to our current discussion and you're right on point. Yes there are failures, they get analysed, the root causes get eliminated and we end up with a safer rocket. What we should really be looking at is how the various organisations deal with failures and less about how many failures they have had.

notowenwilson

Re: Boo, hiss

Fairly certain that there were no unmanned shuttle missions.

Some stats:

Up until Challenger exploded the space shuttle was 1 failure from 25 launches (96% success)

Up until Columbia it was 2 failures from 113 launches (98.3%)

Final total was 2 failures from 135 launches (98.5%)

Falcon9 is currently 1 failure from 19 launches (95% success)

It's probably worth noting that the Space Shuttle was man rated from day 1 and so had a much more stringent test process before it was launched, to say nothing of the development cost.

After both Challenger and Columbia there was around a 2.5 year delay before the shuttle flew again. 8 months between Apollo 13 and Apollo 14 and it looks like SpaceX will have around a 1.5-2 year gap between this year's failure and the first crewed ISS flight (although there will be unmanned launches between now and then). The massive delays for the shuttle program were largely because the first flight back had to be manned so they had to be absolutely certain that they fixed the problem. And also they lost the crew which is always going to make people nervous. The really remarkable one is Apollo 14. You'd need balls of steel to be the first guys to get on the rocket that soon after a very nearly life ending situation like Apollo 13.

notowenwilson

Re: My God, it's full of stars

Interesting line of argument. It seems that you're suggesting that since Musk didn't largely fund the whole effort out of his own pocket that SpaceX somehow isn't doing a good job. if you take your arguments for why SpaceX are unworthy and apply them to any other space equipment provider you'll find that they are all guilty of the same transgressions. SpaceX get paid by the government to ferry stuff into space. Just like DHL get paid by the government to ferry stuff overseas.

When NAA built the CSM for Apollo they did the initial development work out of their own pocket up until the point where they could prove that they had the capability of actually delivering the goods. Once the contract was awarded, everything after that was paid for by the government. NAA banked the profits from building the CSMs, some of which paid for the initial development work since NAA aren't a charity and they don't build spacecraft for the fun of it. And no, when Apollo 13 went bang, NASA didn't go to NAA and ask for their money back even though that failure led to a complete failure of the mission. At the end of the day the human race (and capitalism) was the winner. How is that any different to SpaceX?

As far as knowledge goes, NASA are a (relatively) open government agency, they publish mountains of technical data about everything they do, it's not hard to learn a whole lot about what they do without even having an ISS supply contract. From their point of view it would be highly irresponsible NOT to share everything they know with their suppliers as it makes for better hardware.

Finally, just wanted to check that you do realise that NASA don't actually make spacecraft right? The space shuttle was built by Boeing, Apollo CSM was NAA, Apollo LM was Grumman, Gemini was McDonnell Douglas. In every one of these cases NASA paid commercial rates for the hardware and contributed money and knowledge to the development. SpaceX building rockets for them is nothing new.

Microsoft quietly slips out patched patch for Outlook – in camouflage

notowenwilson

Re: Why after all these years....

Sooo... Don't ship anything until it is perfect? How long is that going to take? I for one would be happy with an OS that was 99% perfect if it meant I could get a copy of it 10 years before the version that was 100% perfect. There are some situations where it's worth going for the most reliable system available (nuclear weapons, space craft etc) but overall we're going to get a better outcome by moving faster with something that's not perfect and sorting it out as we go.

If the testing regime is too hard you could always restrict your software to only run on specific hardware that you built, running programs that you approved and bingo! You've got iOS.

iPad data entry errors caused plane to strike runway during takeoff

notowenwilson

No, but the beginning of the end was explosive decompression. For those who came in late the rear pressure bulkhead failed and the pressurised cabin air blew into the tail area and then up the vertical stabiliser which then blew apart. In subsequent versions they sealed the base of the vertical stabiliser to stop this sort of thing happening. The closest similar event that I can think of was UA232 (of Sioux City rolling fireball fame) which somehow managed to land (in a way) with no hydraulics at all, instead relying on engine thrust to turn and climb/dive. The pilots of that plane managed to somehow get it onto a runway (mostly) and some people walked away from it. But they still had the tail. JAL123 didn't have a tail. It's a miracle that they managed to keep it in the air as long as they did. It's even more surprising that 4 people survived. I think asking the pilots to put it down anywhere is a big ask.

notowenwilson

Re: Using toys as tools...

Sure, but when you're conducting a reduced thrust takeoff and you cock up the 'feel' and set your thrust 10% too low the penalty is running off the end of the runway and killing a sizeable percentage of your passengers, and probably yourself. We can achieve better performance than we could in the past partly because our analytical abilities are improved so we can get closer to the edge without falling in. Relying on 'feel' just means you're dependent on one person's experience rather than the combined efforts of hundreds of engineers and scientists and millions of flight hours of data.

Once upon a time planes typically crashed because the pilot screwed up and flew it outside it's design envelope. These days the plane generally protects itself against bad piloting and instead we have pilots crashing into the ground because either they told the computer to do so (CFIT), or they didn't adequately deal with a failure of the computer (Upset Recovery). Pilots are just as necessary and just as susceptible to screwing up as they ever were. The difference between a good pilot and a bad pilot still comes down to training and innate talent, it's just that the training and talent are somewhat different than they were back in the good old days.

US Navy grabs old-fashioned sextants amid hacker attack fears

notowenwilson

Re: And the navigation systems for those Trident/Poseidon missiles?

Trident missiles have a combined INS and star-sighting system as they assume that during global nuclear armageddon someone would have managed to knock out GPS.

Blighty's Bloodhound 1,000mph rocket car unveiled ahead of record attempt

notowenwilson

Re: Awesome :-)

Whoa there! Steady on tiger.

Australia's biggest IT project failure/blowout may have started today

notowenwilson

Re: Talk About an Own Goal

Better yet, couldn't we just ask the Zuck to build it on as an extension to Facebook? He provides the service for free and in exchange gets all the personal data of anyone who interacts with the australian government.

As a bonus you could help pay for your Farmville addiction direct from your welfare payments.

Tech turned on its head: 'Dislike' button in Facebook, pay Snapchat $1 to defuse self-destructing sexy selfies

notowenwilson

El Reg... come for the news, stay for the facebook haters.

Re: Facebook

Perhaps for some. For me it's a convenient way to stay in touch with actual friends that I actually like and I actually hang out with in person. My grandma used to send out a typed letter detailing the last 3 months happenings 4 times a year to a hundred -odd people who she kept in touch with but generally didn't see in person since they lived across the globe. Last I checked no-one was bitching about her being a sad tw*t because she liked to tell people what's going on. I fail to see how that's so different to me and my friends keeping in touch albeit with shorter but more regular communications.

Being able to filter out irrelevant information is pretty much the core skill required to use the internet effectively. Sounds like you need some practice. Or Valium.

US to stage F-35-versus-Warthog bake-off in 2018

notowenwilson

There is really no comparison between the two. Look at the history of FAC/close air support and you'll have a hard time finding one fast jet that's really been up to the task. The A10 is the ultimate modern CAS aircraft; can carry truck loads of ordnance, has a high rate of fire and powerful gun, can loiter for extended periods, can fly slow enough to see what's going on and is the toughest CAS aircraft by far. The F35, on the other hand, is none of these things. No doubt the bean counters will win out over common sense, they'll retire the A10.

Next time someone needs air support they'll call in the F35s which will be in and out in a couple of minutes (since they don't have enough fuel to loiter) and won't be able to get low enough to do any good since they lack general survivability. End result is a bunch of dead grunts on the ground due to ineffective CAS. After that they'll stop calling the F35's and just call in choppers which makes a mockery of pretty much all the reasons for using F35's in the CAS role anyway.

Oz carriers to Attorney General Brandis: get OUT of our networks

notowenwilson

It's incredible that a government that is big on 'small government' and is ideologically welded to the notion that everything is done better/more efficiently by the private sector rather than by government should be so intent on centralising decision making in THE GOVERNMENT. If you're going to tell businesses how to run their operations, why not just nationalise them so you can run the business and then take all the profit?

ROBO-TENTACLE with mind of its own wields deadly electrical power – turns on Tesla car

notowenwilson

Re: Hentai jokes will abound

Most of Musk's engineering is based around the idea of "we could have done it cheap and just-good-enough but instead we did it more expensive and awesome". He's in the business of pushing technology forward rather than just doing the bare minimum needed to achieve a task.

Asimov's ghost! Oil and gas rigs could be taken over by robots

notowenwilson

In which case you'd probably be shutting down the plant.

How a Cali court ruling could force a complete rethink of search results

notowenwilson

Re: Exactly how is this a problem?

The difference is that when you ask amazon for item X they aren't saying "we don't have them, but here's item Y which are similar" they are saying "here you go then" and displaying item Y.

XSSposed launches pay-whatever bug bounty

notowenwilson

Sooo....

This is basically online blackmail as a service then?

Why is it that women are consistently paid less than men?

notowenwilson

Re: I haven't slept in later than 8am

I have plenty of empathy for non-parents. Which part of my post made you think that I didn't? I also have empathy for people in jail, just because I didn't specifically reference it in my post doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

If we're going to label having kids/not having kids as a lifestyle choice it seems only reasonable that those who don't have kids just roll over and accept that their lot in life is to provide the finances (in the form of tax) to support the society. The OP that I was replying to seemed to have missed that point.

notowenwilson

Re: Next question...

And when you get old, who are you going to pay to look after you? My kids! So if I, and all the other parents on here, decided that we don't like the child bearing lifestyle and decided to go without, you'd be left importing immigrants to wipe your butt once you're too old to do it yourself. And if there's one thing most people on the right like less than paying tax, it's immigrants!

Being a parent is not all about tax breaks and benefits, I've got 3 kids under 8 and I haven't slept in later than 8am on ANY morning when the kids are in the house since number 1 was born. I've got another 20 years of supporting them and they won't be paying for my retirement since they'll be struggling to pay their own mortgage and bring up their own kids. So where's the up-side of parenting? Where's the compensation for all the hard work and stress? The financial compensation from the government doesn't come close to covering the financial cost of raising kids.

RAF radar station crew begs public for cash to buy gaming LAN kit

notowenwilson

Cancelled

Looks like the kickstarter campaign has been cancelled.

Trans Pacific Partnership 'fast-track' bill dumped

notowenwilson

you can never have too many flags

http://www.theshovel.com.au/2015/03/04/tony-abbott-has-full-support-of-australias-flags/

DARPA's made a SELF-STEERING 50-cal bullet – with video proof

notowenwilson

Re: "imagine what a trained Scout Sniper can do"

An un-rifled barrel can be just as useful if you care to put fins on your bullets. All main battle tank guns are smooth bore and they generally don't fire guided munitions. Granted you're going to lose some accuracy over a rifled barrel but then again, how often do snipers actually shoot at really long ranges?

Apple to devs: Watch out, don't make the Watch into a, well, a watch

notowenwilson

I have no idea about the Apple Watch, but my ipod nano of a few years back definitely had a mickey mouse clock face on it so there's still hope for you.

The huge flaw in Moore’s Law? It's NOT a law after all

notowenwilson

Re: Timing is everything

I'm told by a normally reliable source that the police bomb disposal groups are having issues with this. Previously there were plenty of applicants who had prior experience with backyard explosions, now, not so much.

Easy ... easy ... Aw CRAP! SpaceX rocket ALMOST lands on ocean hoverbase

notowenwilson

Re: Which is it?

As it happens, the russians just bought the american pens for a couple of dollars a piece and used them.

Using a graphite pencil in space is a really bad idea for a bunch of reasons. Graphite is conductive so any small bits of it floating around are likely to end up in some electrical circuit or another and cause a short. Pencils break much more often than pens which is a pain if you're in a time critical environment such as a space flight, and even when they aren't breaking, pencils still need periodic sharpening, hugely contributing to the first issue.

As far as I can remember, NASA didn't actually pay for the development of the 'space pen', it was developed privately to allow people to write on a vertical surface which would normally starve the ball of ink due to gravity draining the ink away from the ball. The whole 'space pen' thing was just marketing.

NSW premier pitches 'digital licence' as election stunt

notowenwilson

Bah! You're not serious are you? Oh, you are... crap

Does that mean if there is a power outage of more than 18 hours I'm not allowed to drive anymore since my phone would be flat by then?

Perhaps they should include some form of physical backup that was durable, difficult to counterfeit and could easily fit into a wallet, pocket or other such place.

Australia's PM says data retention laws think of the children

notowenwilson

Re: Electronic graffiti

Presumably there's no connection then between kicking back and waiting for your parents' documents to be processed and the negative effects on mental health for those kids. According to the RANZCP "There is now a large body of evidence to suggest that prolonged detention, particularly in isolated

locations, with poor access to health and social services and uncertainty of asylum seeker claims, can

have severe and detrimental effects."

Or so they say here: https://www.ranzcp.org/Files/Resources/College_Statements/Position_Statements/ps52-pdf.aspx

TITANIC: Nuclear SUBMARINE cruising 'Sea of KRAKENS' may be FOUND ON icy MOON

notowenwilson

Re: Why a sub?

Even if you wanted to sample the bottom sediment, you'd still be much better off with a ship and then deploy a sampling instrument on the end of a cable. Look at the oil and gas industry. They spend an inordinate amount of time doing things underwater and the vast majority of those tasks are done with ROVs and Divers which are both surface supplied. The main issue I can see with a ship is the weather. If you've got strong winds you're going to need a powerful engine which may become problematic (or failing that, put a sail on it and then you can skip the engine altogether).

Is modern life possible without a smartphone?

notowenwilson

As a proud owner of a Nokia 110 (in fact it's my third, the first two got destroyed by small children) I can confidently say you can leave the charger at home. I only have to charge my phone every 6 or so days and use it regularly for talk and text.

Ditch the FB/Twitter/Browser apps, they are rubbish. Enjoy the freedom of a phone that isn't constantly in need of charging, that you can drop without having a heart attack, that you can put in the same pocket as your keys without stressing about scratches, and that you can touch type an SMS on without looking at the screen.

Now THAT'S a sunroof: Solar-powered family car emerges from Ford labs

notowenwilson

Concentrator? Why bother?

If you're going to go to all the trouble of building a shelter with lenses etc, why not just put PV panels on the shelter and then plug in the car? That way any leccy car can use it and when you're not charging cars you can feed the power generated back into the grid?

So you want to be a solar racer? You'll need a laptop and some string

notowenwilson

Safety first

I'd hate to see the result of that laptop being launched into the face of the passenger when the airbag goes off.

And I'm pretty sure that fan only exists to cool the compressor that it's strapped to.

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