NASA has lost it.

This is why we need more private companies like Space X taking these things on. Competition in the private sector leads to innovation.
 
wanttaja said:
A while back the launch of a new French booster went awry, and they had to push the boom button. They re-ran the telemetry from the attitude control system, and found the guidance commands had suddenly started turned to gibberish. Some bright spark happened to run it through an ASCII converter, and the gibberish spelled, "DIVISION BY ZERO ERROR." Turns out the rate system had been used from an earlier model rocket with less capabilities of the new one.
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To be fair, the failure of Ariane 5 is nowadays used as a textbook example of very bad computer programming.

Had they ran a simulation, it would have resulted in exactly the same result.

They didn't realize, that they were running higher acceleration values than the old platform, and thus they didn't realize that they were converting a 64-bit float point number to a 16-bit integer, which overflowed with such high acceleration values.
This value was not protected against overflows(which is the main issue in my opinion).
Even without the division by zero sent in ascii as position data to the autopilot, the unit would have crashed.
 
NoHeat said:
Looking at it with the assumption that it is all NASA, and every problem is a failure of NASA, is simply misinformed.
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Agreed.
I will be making fun of NASA as soon there is another equivalent organization anywhere on this planet that can do more in space for every $1 they spend. So far there is none, not even by a long shot.
 
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Flyby44 said:
This is why we need more private companies like Space X taking these things on. Competition in the private sector leads to innovation.
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The problem is, private companies are commercial enterprises. Where's the profit in a science-gathering trip to Mars? What's Space X's motivation to employ hundreds of scientists in case the US wanted to send a mission to, say, Jupiter in five or ten years? How many Elon Musks are out there, willing to fritter a fortune away into a vacuum?

Plenty of the exploration of the world in the 16-19 century was privately funded, but it was mostly oriented toward profit. Columbus wasn't trying to sail to China to gather hydrographical data; he was trying to find a faster route to the fabulous fabrics and products of the orient. Drake didn't circle the globe to make better charts; he was out to rob the Spanish gold, silver, jewels, and spices. Did it, too...came back a millionaire before the term had even been invented.

So: What's the equivalent motivation today?

Well, there isn't none. There may be gold out there, but no one know where it's at. The Spanish expeditions were often triggered by just pure myth (the Fountain of Youth), but the rumors of wealth were borne out just often enough to keep more explorers coming...and the freebooters to steal their hard-earned wealth.

Part of the problem is that we don't have the technology to support any attempt at commercial spacefaring. Chemical rockets are the equivalent of rowboats. Takes too damn long to get anywhere, and with the harsh environment, there's too much chance the humans aboard won't make it.

Without something better than chemical rockets, we're not going to get far away from Earth.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Flyby44 said:
This is why we need more private companies like Space X taking these things on. Competition in the private sector leads to innovation.
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And yet, without the benefit of past NASA R&D and current NASA / US Gov't missions to fly, SpaceX would not be anything like what it is today, and quite probably would not even exist at all.
 
wanttaja said:
Plenty of the exploration of the world in the 16-19 century was privately funded, but it was mostly oriented toward profit. Columbus wasn't trying to sail to China to gather hydrographical data; he was trying to find a faster route to the fabulous fabrics and products of the orient. Drake didn't circle the globe to make better charts; he was out to rob the Spanish gold, silver, jewels, and spices. Did it, too...came back a millionaire before the term had even been invented.

So: What's the equivalent motivation today?
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Actually, this is a pretty simple question. What would start a space "gold rush"?

Simple: Discovery of alien technology off-Earth.

You'd have the Chinese, the Russians, NASA, private industry, EVERYbody throwing a rocket together to try to get to it first.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Without something better than chemical rockets, we're not going to get far away from Earth.

Ron Wanttaja
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Actually, the reality is, without something other than profit motivation, we won't get very far away from earth. People do have ideas on how to cross the cosmos faster and survive the trip, but the will to spend the money to do such endeavors just doesn't exist.

I still hope that eventually someone will figure out some fantastic product, or commodity that can only be made in space due to low gravity, or high vacuum, or both that will kick off the space "gold rush". I hope I live long enough to see it happen.
 
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