Russia Botches Another Rocket Launch 119
astroengine writes "Three hours before a new crew arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, bringing the outpost back up to full staff for the first time in months, Russia racked up its fifth launch accident within a year. A Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a military communications satellite failed to reach orbit after blastoff from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia. The botched launch is again due to an upper-stage engine problem."
No Vodka! (Score:2, Funny)
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They build rockets better when their drunk!
Re:No Vodka! (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Vodka! (Score:5, Informative)
Personally i though Gerald Bull had the right idea for launching unmanned payloads when he came up with the idea of using something similar to HAARP as a "space gun" but he simply didn't have the technology to make it work. Now that we have both rail and coil guns it should be easier to accomplish and ultimately lower the cost of putting objects into space. you could build the barrel on the side of one of those South Pacific islands we've had since WWII, build a small reactor to power the thing, maybe even use a small rocket for the final push after the energy from the firing has been expended so you won't have to build as big a gun.
The atmosphere is the problem with cannon-style launches as Bull proposed. The higher up you can position the muzzle of your launcher, the less muzzle velocity you need, and therefore the less energy you need, and the less accelleration the payload must endure, and the less heat the projectile must resist. So an island at sea level is the very worst place to position your laucher (save perhaps for Death Valley).
Inside a mountain in the Himalayas or Rockies would be a far better choice, with the muzzle emerging at the peak which is already halfway out of the atmosphere (and completely out of the dense, dusty, insect-filled, and humid part of the atmosphere).
The launch accelleration is a more serious constraint than probably any other aspect of the project.
Re:No Vodka! (Score:4, Insightful)
There's also a limit to how much an ablative heat shield can endure. After a certain point, the contents behind the heat shield will bake.
It would be best if the mountain was near water so that if there's a launch failure there's less danger of ground casualties and it also gives a splashdown option for the astronauts.
Perhaps Mauna Kea in Hawaii would be a good spot for such a launch. It's near the equator too so there would be a little extra velocity from the rotation of the earth for a prograde orbit.
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Let me just be sure on this.
You're advocating that the United States builds a giant railgun on a volcano. Are you trying to upgrade us from villains to supervillains? What's next, every Congressman gets a white cat and a monocle?
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That volcano isn't too active. We already have a couple of observatories on top of it.
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I like the idea of laser propulsion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion/ [wikipedia.org]. For example, how about the Heat Exchanger (HX) variant, where your rocket is just a big water tank with a nozzle on the bottom and a payload on top. You shine ground based lasers on the water tank (or dedicated heat exchanger) and the water heats up, squirts out the bottom, and you're off to the races.
It's nice because you leave all the complicated stuff on the ground, and if you use many lasers in parallel, an individual
Re:No Vodka! (Score:4, Insightful)
You really don't understand the maintenance of alcoholism, do you? To much booze, and they're worthless. To little booze, and they are worse than worthless. You have to know the individual alcoholic, and maintain him at the proper level for maximum production, while keeping an eye on that weak link, the liver. At some point, the liver will fail, but you want to maximize production, while balancing a possible reduction of useful life.
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Though given a chance, even if the odds were 5% ending up as an "IN SOVIET RUSSIA, rocket does NOT launch YOU!" joke, there'd be no shortage of volunteers for something like a Mars mission.
How many of us, when we were kids, would have been willing to risk a 50/50 chance for a moon ride?
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Hell, I'm over 50, and I'd still volunteer for a Mars mission, given a 50/50 chance of failure! The moon? Better make that an 80% or better chance of success. Mars is where it's at!
Why so angry? (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary reads like an angry teenager implying that they could do better.
Really? Do yo have any idea how hard it is to actually manage launching something like that in to space? We should be more amazed when everything goes right and a rocket actually makes it there. The rocket failing is, of course, not a good thing... but at least they are trying in the face of failure, instead of giving up and whining about for a decade like the US did after the shuttle disasters.
Launching a rocket into space is a marvel of just about every discipline involved.
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Actually that's the tone of the Discovery News story. I was somewhat surprised at the tone too when I read the story earlier.
Re:Why so angry? (Score:4, Funny)
Because if the Russians can't launch rockets anymore who are the US going to pay to send stuff into space [executivegov.com] for them ?
"NASA is reportedly paying Russia $1.5 billion over the next five years to transport its astronauts to and from the International Space Station."
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Re:Why so angry? (Score:4, Informative)
The actual total cost of the shuttle program through 2011, adjusted for inflation, is $196 billion.[5] The exact breakdown into non-recurring and recurring costs is not available, but, according to NASA, the average cost to launch a Space Shuttle as of 2011 is about $450 million per mission.
And here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#10 [nasa.gov]
Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle? A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.
In other words this five year agreement costs about as much as three Shuttle launches.
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Sure, it's cheaper to hitch a ride or take the bus than it is to drive the car. It just seems to me there was a time when the US wanted to do more of the driving.
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Re:Why so angry? (Score:4, Informative)
The Soyuz-2 is also not particularly unsuccessful [wikipedia.org], with 1 failure and 1 "partial failure" out of 17 launches.
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If by "whining about" you mean "taking time to fully investigate what went wrong and correct errors" and by "giving up" you mean "trying again when ready" then sure. Two shuttle losses in 30 years and 135 missions. The American's "giving up and whining about" seems to be working for them.
Meanwhile, Russia's strategy, which you seem to like, has resulted in 5 fuckups in a single year.
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Re:Why so angry? (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation needed. I don't think anyone is saying "Russia bad!" -- especially since we (the US) now rely on the Russians for human transport missions.
Instead, we're saying "Russia, what the hell, this isn't like you. Get your shit together."
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America good! Russia bad! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Unfortunately, when it comes to space tech, a lot of otherwise intelligent people never seem to be able get beyond that mentality, despite the Cold War having been over for a generation. Not that mindless nationalism is limited to space, of course, but it's one of the major hot buttons.
The article had not one whit of pro-USA rah rah. You pulled that out of your own ass, apparently just to take the opportunity to trash the US. We get it... America Bad. Why don't you just put it in your sig to save yourself the typing?
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We get it... America Bad. Why don't you just put it in your sig to save yourself the typing?
Your comment history makes it pretty clear that you're one of those people who thinks that anyone who doesn't think America is 100% the best at everything, all the time, is anti-American. Well, screw you. "My country right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right." That's real patriotism, and it's something that flag-waving cheerleaders like you will never understand.
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America good! Russia bad! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Unfortunately, when it comes to space tech, a lot of otherwise intelligent people never seem to be able get beyond that mentality, despite the Cold War having been over for a generation. Not that mindless nationalism is limited to space, of course, but it's one of the major hot buttons.
Not to defend prejudice, of which all peoples are very capable of, regardless of nationality, but the US is on average a much better country in all respects compared to Russia. Technologically, socially, economically, you name it. Many smart Russians fled Russia and prospered in America.
What I am trying to say is that not all negative attitudes towards Russia are due to mindless prejudice. When a country is infamous for its high level of corruption, widespread poverty despite enormous resources, lack of pol
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Hopefully Russian space engineers are all well-paid so they can give their all when it comes to building quality space tech. But I doubt it, otherwise why would NASA outsource their space program.
They are...by American companies for working in America as naturalized American citizens who were "refugees" from the former Soviet Union in the early 90's.
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On the other hand, the Space Shuttle (for example) had only 2 catastrophic failures out of 135 launches. Can't seem to find a list of NASA's failures or how frequent they were, but 5 in one year seems like an awful lot.
but at least they are trying in the face of failure, instead of giving up and whining about for a decade like the US did after the shuttle disasters.
Yes, "whining", by launching the shuttles dozens of times afterwards. And then retiring them like they should have done 20 years ago.
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The failure (foam knocking off heat shield tiles) occurred during launch. Nobody noticed said failure until fiery disaster ensued upon reentry.
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Indeed. Look at practically every rocket from any country (yes, even the United States), and notice that there are numerous failures spread throughout the launch history. Luckily, almost all of these are unmanned. The true tragedies are the manned missions that result in loss of life. Consequently, there are far higher standards for a manned launch (part of the reason it's so incredibly expensive to send humans into space).
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Really? Do yo have any idea how hard it is to actually manage launching something like that in to space? We should be more amazed when everything goes right and a rocket actually makes it there.
The only reason that commercial air travel is as safe as it is, is because nobody listened to your grandpa when he said the same thing in 1912.
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That doesn't make rocket science any easier. Rockets are fundamentally about strapping a bomb to your underside and hoping that a very controlled explosion takes place away from you.
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We do a lot of things that aren't easy. Putting over a billion transistors on a chip the size of a stamp and doing almost a trillion calculations per second with them isn't easy. Extracting enough energy to run a city from a few glow-in-the-dark rocks isn't easy. Even ordinary air travel requires continuous hard work from a large number of highly skilled people to perform efficiently and safely. None of these things are 'solved problems,' yet we still do them, and we get better at them over time.
Rocket
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We do a lot of things that aren't easy. Putting over a billion transistors on a chip the size of a stamp and doing almost a trillion calculations per second with them isn't easy. Extracting enough energy to run a city from a few glow-in-the-dark rocks isn't easy. Even ordinary air travel requires continuous hard work from a large number of highly skilled people to perform efficiently and safely. None of these things are 'solved problems,' yet we still do them, and we get better at them over time.
Rocket science may be a difficult endeavor, but that's no excuse for it to become less reliable over time.
Well yeah...But rocket science is a whole different kind of difficult.
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It was botched and it was the 5th failure. What is wrong with stating that? If it was an American launch there would be 2 dozen far worse taunting posts about it.
And, for what it is worth, I *do* know exactly how hard it is to launch something like that into space.
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Re:Why so angry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they are angry for the same reason I am. We had a space program that was scrapped instead of trying to fix it for politics reasons. These are the guys we were going to bum off of.
It is like we sold our Hummer because of the pathetic gas mileage with plans on getting a hybrid, decided the hybrid cost too much, and the best idea would be to pay out neighbor gas money to ride along in his duct-tape on wheels mobile.
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Or get together with your neighbors and petition your government to build a commuter train [wikipedia.org]?
You had a couple of wars which cost $ (Score:2)
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All cars do.
Re:Why so angry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why so angry? (Score:5, Insightful)
My theory is that between 1990 and about 2004, the Russian space industry lost and could hardly retain any yound engineers. As the result, it now lacks the most professional and mature 40-50 something space engineers who have energy to lead design projects. The few old workers who weathered the dark years are getting retired, while the last generation taken in the last few years hasn't yet got the experience.
Re:Why so angry? (Score:4)
Because they can do better. Starting from the Soviet Union days, the Soyez [astronautix.com] launch systems had an amazing success record. All the problems they've recently point to a falling of standards. From the bottom of the page:
Angry? Probably more terrified. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only access to the ISS is via the Russian Soyuz, right now, and this will remain the case for at least 20 years - the time it'll take for a functional Shuttle replacement to be designed, built, tested and launched given the current available funding (or lack thereof), the very limited number of rocket designers in the US (rockets are updated regularly, but when was the last time the US actually invented one from scratch through to completion?) and the extreme age of all existing launch facilities.
If a Soyuz carrying US astronauts reaches orbit but cannot dock with the ISS, the astronauts will be stranded. There's no rescue service possible. (Even with the Shuttle, there was a case where Russia almost did lose a Soyuz capsule with astronaut in space - it would have taken far too long for a Shuttle to have been readied and the altitude would have made it extremely difficult if not impossible.) More likely, if a stage failed, the rocket would be remotely destroyed along with the crew. Or it would smear itself over the landscape with much the same effect. We're increasingly aware that space is unsafe, but nobody is willing to stump up the cash to make it safe enough. It would also require total trust and cooperation between the US and Russia - and that would be political suicide for anyone in either country to suggest, let alone try.
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There was such thing on the STS (in case it badly veered off the course into America's populated areas during launch), but I've never heard of a remote destroy mechanism on Russian manned space launches. There is a remotely activated capsule rescue-and-landing sequence, though.
Re:Angry? Probably more terrified. (Score:4, Insightful)
Next time do even some research before spreading worthless garbage. Did a Russian rape your mother or something?
Seriously, I can't find one sentence in what you wrote that isn't false, that's downright impressive.
this will remain the case for at least 20 years
The Space X Dragon Capsule had it's first test flight in 2010.
the time it'll take for a functional Shuttle replacement to be designed, built, tested and launched given the current available funding (or lack thereof)
The Shuttle was a giant worthless dangerous money sink that should never be resurrected.
rockets are updated regularly, but when was the last time the US actually invented one from scratch through to completion?
Falcon 9- First Launch in 2010
Antares- First Launch to be in 2012
extreme age of all existing launch facilities.
I wish someone invented some way of building new things, boy would that be a wonder. Also, SpaceX is building a launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base right now. Guess someone did invent a way.
If a Soyuz carrying US astronauts reaches orbit but cannot dock with the ISS, the astronauts will be stranded. There's no rescue service possible.
So the ISS is populated by magical fairies that give the Soyuz their magic to get back to Earth and it can't de-orbit without their help?
More likely, if a stage failed, the rocket would be remotely destroyed along with the crew. Or it would smear itself over the landscape with much the same effect.
Unlike the stupidly dangerous Shuttle, the Soyuz system is perfectly capable of ejecting the capsule to safety even before launch. In fact, in one instance the they did do just that moments before the rocket exploded on the tarmac. Everyone survived.
We're increasingly aware that space is unsafe, but nobody is willing to stump up the cash to make it safe enough.
The Soyuz hasn't killed anyone in forty years, despite probably being run in a borderline criminally negligible manner for the last twenty. The Shuttle was handled with kid gloves in comparison and we still lost two of them. A capsule is just inherently an order of magnitude easier to shove with safety and failsafe features. More than once the Soyuz has reentered the atmosphere upside down while still strapped to it's orbital module. No one died. Imagine if the Shuttle did that.
It would also require total trust and cooperation between the US and Russia - and that would be political suicide for anyone in either country to suggest, let alone try.
The Russians seem to be doing rather well so far and I don't doubt SpaceX won't have much trouble either.
Once is an happenstance, twice is a coincidence (Score:2)
Three times is enemy action.
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The summary reads like an angry teenager implying that they could do better.
The Russians had a reputation for rocket reliability. They previously marketed based on that reputation, releasing press releases after successful launches trumpeting how much more reliable they were. They are now rapidly losing that reputation. This will impact their competitiveness in the launch market.
And it isn't just US media saying it. After the Phobos-Grunt launch failure, Medvedev threatened to punish those responsible. [reuters.com]
but at least they are trying in the face of failure, instead of giving up and whining about for a decade like the US did after the shuttle disasters.
This is robotic spacecraft, not manned space. The US has not even paused in
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I like your attitude. And, I'm tired of hearing my country whining. We see the same problem with "unemployment" among the younger generation. If the little fuckers won't get off their asses, they will never succeed at anything.
I heard my dad say a thousand times, "Do something, right or wrong." I've lived my life that way. I just can't sit around and watch life pass me by. Today's America is doing exactly that. Space exploration gone stagnant, jobs being exported, science and engineering pretty much
Wondering ... (Score:2)
... if USA didn't ditched the Space Shuttle program too soon...
Re:Wondering ... (Score:4, Interesting)
They ditched it at the right time, the problem is that we let budget cutters prevent NASA from funding the replacement we should have had 15 years ago. I remember in the late '80s seeing speculation about what the next space vehicles were going to look like. It's been over 20 years since then and they still haven't produced a final prototype.
This stuff is complicated, but it's hard for me to believe that they couldn't have produced a retooled shuttle with newer innovations in 20 years time. At very least they ought to have been able to redo the controls and keep the same basic design. It's complicated, but hardly new territory like it was when they built the first shuttles.
Re:Wondering ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you need an "s" on the end of "replacement". NASA has shut down a staggering number of Shuttle replacement projects over the years. Politicians also caused many of the problems that eventually killed the Shuttle (such as causing the boosters to be chopped up for long-distance transport, removing the escape mechanisms that the original Shuttle design was supposed to have, slashing the budget to the point where the Shuttle was too small to carry the payloads intended and/or needed, etc).
There was an effort to keep the Shuttle program going for a couple of years, but by the time it was in a position to do anything, all the factories had been shut down, all the expertise had been dissipated and all the infrastructure had been repurposed. So the effort came to nothing.
It would have been good if NASA and Russia had been free to work together to get the Russian Shuttle fully operational, but US law prohibited any such international project at the time and still interferes horribly with collaboration with other nations today. You don't do space solo. You especially don't do space solo on a shoestring budget, a packet of airline peanuts and a promise by Government appointees to not blow you up next time.
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... if USA didn't ditched the Space Shuttle program too soon...
Of course they did. Yeah, the Shuttles were expensive. But you do not replace a platform until you have a replacement ready to go. A real replacement, not pie in the sky stuff like the Orion program.
The reality is, it would be too expensive to refurbish existing shuttles. We'd be better off just building new ones in that case. But either we have to come up with a new rocket soon, or try something like bundling several Titan rockets together. Because it's not terribly bright to leave the fate of our heavy li
Botched? Really? (Score:3)
A lot of Russians put effort in trying to get it right. Why verbally piss on them like that?
Disclosure, I'm American.
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It's not the submitter's fault. The phrasing is verbatim from the Discovery News story.
engineering ftl (Score:2)
Science? These problems sound like engineering issues. Did the US brain drain all the engineers in Russia?
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Did the US brain drain all the engineers in Russia?
No, China did.
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Military Satellite (Score:1)
Since it was a military satellite, they can destroy as many of them as they want, we don't need them to be able to find an excuse to NUKE.
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Yeah, I'm sure they really want one. Or is that perhaps just you?
Failure is an option (Score:2)
P.S. American here
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usually when an American rocket "fails" it tends to explode horribly but I guess that is the down side of using two huge solid boosters on your rockets.
"Usually"? The recent US rocket failures have not been explosions, either. For example, the failure with Glory was a fairing separation problem.
Russian Weapons Tests Conspiracy Theory. (Score:2)
An anti-counter-missile-assault-defense testing propaganda free press strategy that masquerades as a failure of Russian technology.
The "Bay of Possums" or Sputtering Sputnik Space Race
Sounds like they expected "botched" (Score:5, Interesting)
FTFA:
"There is aging of many resources. We need to optimize everything. We need to modernize," Popovkin said.
"It’s also aging of human resources," he added. "Given the troubles we had in the '90s, quite a lot of people left and nobody came to replace them."
Maybe some of those things should be done before you just fire off another rocket. Those sound like serious, deeply-rooted issues. To do "rocket science" you need "rocket scientists" and apparently quite a lot of them have left the program.
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It's not just that they have left the program. It's that they have left the country.
And I very much doubt the jobs pay well - government jobs in Russia are usually bottom of the barrel, pay-wise - so few people would want to get into this now.
Russia bad! (Score:1)
Wave at each other going by (Score:1)
Wouldn't that be ironic: they end up using American rockets to launch unmanned missions, and the US is using Russian rockets to launch American astronauts.
maybe getting into space is really hard (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems most people see launching things into LEO is routine but talking with people who actually do the work (instead of armchair QB and paperpushers on the upper floors), rockets are very complex with so many parts and components. All (with exception of items covered by redundancy) must work in order to achieve speed and altitude to sustain orbit. Are they scaling back someplace that impacts quality? Of course USA hasn't had big failures with human carrying vehicles since 2003 (but then we don't fly such anymore).
Sorry, I cannot come up with a "In Soviet Russia..." or a car analogy. But this thread is just begging for one.
Botched (Score:2)
Really inappropriate word. This shit is really hard.
Things fall apart... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing seems to work quite right these days, does it? The Russians can't launch rockets from a family of launch vehicles that has over half a century of heritage. The currency of continental Europe is on the verge of collapse and the French and Germans are near powerless to stop it. Stimulus packages on top of bailouts have failed to make a dent in a global crisis that has now been going on for three fucking years.
Do we have some kind of species-wide dementia or something? Why can't we do stuff anymore that we used to be able to do?
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Ayn Rand? Seriously?
If anything, going on the comments the Russians are making, they are suffering from a lack of socialism not an excess. R-7 derived rockets became very reliable towards the end of the Soviet era.
Speaking of which, Ayn Rands most infamous brainfart, Atlas Shrugged, which claimed that only capitalists were capable of innovation, was released about a week after Sputnik was put into orbit. That is some pretty epic timing fail LOL
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Do we have some kind of species-wide dementia or something? Why can't we do stuff anymore that we used to be able to do?
Because we're driven by the almighty dollar in a race to the lowest common denominator. Where it's better to plan obsolescence into products so that the customer needs to buy a new one over and over again. More resources consumed, more money exchanged, more GDP.
Short term gains over long term quality.
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In short? A politicians (postulated) wet dream of equality for all over last few decades with corresponding onsets of affirmative action and good sprinkling of PC has pretty much destroyed last two generations. So yeah, we are all equally dumb now.
And then there's the old quote at the end of the cold war (can't quite find who said that now though): "We are going to do to you most cruel thing possible - take away your enemy".
Rockets are not easy (Score:1)
Correction fluid! (Score:1)
There are always problems with any Space Travel. The Rocket is nearly 50 years old for gods sake! NASA knows that they cannot continue with their space program or shuttle due to the amount of space debris it creates and this is a serious problem for all craft.
Most people are not told about the knocking out of satellites and the threats. But the international space station is just a piece of space junk. Either way you shall see the Russians' excel in space travel.
NASA needs to get a grip and tell the truth!
JAXA? ISRO? (Score:2)
If the Russian rockets are having so many issues can anyone tell me why they aren't using JAXA (Japan) or ISRO (India) rockets? Cost issues? Technological limitations? I know the JAXA rockets put up satellites and probes, they put a satellite up about two weeks ago... but I honestly don't know much past that.
And yet, the neo-cons (Score:2)
Well at least they are still trying. (Score:1)
I hope they solve the problem soon
Flash Gordon (Score:1)
That's right I am Flash Gordon. Dispatch war rocket AJAX to bring back his body!
Those without a shuttle program.. (Score:1)
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A somehow-independent human colony buried 1 km underground on Earth would be in a safer, cheaper, more easily reached location than anywhere known in space, and would survive any war/famine/pestilence.
Terraforming the Earth from its state in 2100 will be easier than any other known location.
Space is no solution to our problems.