Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis) • Hacker News Board

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#81

Post by fhars » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 10:00 PM UTC

sukuriant wrote: post #69

fhars wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a horrible failure. It was projected for 75 launches a year at about 25M$ (thats million dollars, not a software company in Seattle) per lauch from 1977 until the late eighties when it was scheduled to be replaced by something better. Instead it was 135 launches in 30 years at 1.6G$ per lauch, and it totally crippled NASA's capabilities to develop a replacement.

you may want to change G to B. In the United States, where dollars are used, G is more likely to mean "Grand", or 1k. B would be billion. Or, when all else fails, just type it out.

Exept that billion is ambiguous, it might either be 10^9 (Giga) or 10^{12} (Tera).

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#82

Post by sukuriant » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

fhars wrote: post #81

sukuriant wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you may want to change G to B. In the United States, where dollars are used, G is more likely to mean "Grand", or 1k. B would be billion. Or, when all else fails, just type it out.

Exept that billion is ambiguous, it might either be 10^9 (Giga) or 10^{12} (Tera).

Not in the United States where the USD originates. And like I said, when all else fails, write it all out.

Billion in USD in the United States is 10^9.

Gigadollars is a made-up SI-ified term in the US

G is short for grand, like "that car costs 100G's" for a $100,000 car, making it further unacceptable.

Long story short, to be most easily understood, it's a good idea to use the vernacular of the area

[edit: changed asterisk-asterisk to ^. Apparently two adjacent *'s aren't recognized]

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#83

Post by ugh » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 10:36 PM UTC

chrisjsmith wrote: post #79

ugh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Soyuz is more reliable than the Space Shuttle.

As far as we know. The Russians weren't always that honest about who they blew up by accident.

Aha, and what’s your evidence for that?

Soyuz 1 (1967) and Soyuz 11 (1971) both ended with fatalities. Four cosmonauts died. The Soviet Union did not hide those fatalities. Here is what best illustrates that: All their names are on the Fallen Astronaut memorial on the Moon, put there during Apollo 15, only a month after Soyuz 11 ended in disaster.

There have been no fatalities on Soyuz flights since Soyuz 11, all fatalities occurred early on. That’s forty years without fatalities, and that’s mostly why Soyuz is so safe and reliable.

Sure, more astronauts died during Space Shuttle missions but the Space Shuttle also brought many more astronauts into space than Soyuz. If you look at the percentage of fatalities Soyuz is only doing marginally better – one more dead cosmonaut and the percentages would be about the same. It’s not so much the raw numbers, it’s the forty years. Soyuz is a mature spacecraft, all the kinks have been worked out, the Space Shuttle was always too complicated to ever really work out the kinks, to ever really be considered safe.

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#84

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 10:42 PM UTC

sukuriant wrote: post #72

TeMPOraL wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He probably meant "giga". Things like kUSD or M$ appear to have come from science - it's putting an SI prefix to a unit. Personally, when I write M$, I mean one megadollar, not 1 milion dollars.

That's fantastic; however, that's not how the general public writes it

You don't write M$ or G$ to general public at all.

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#85

Post by sukuriant » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 11:44 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84

sukuriant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fantastic; however, that's not how the general public writes it

You don't write M$ or G$ to general public at all.

Agreed. Though we do sometimes write $5M, which is functionally equivalent. I've noticed in internet communication, it's common to say a numeral before the dollar sign. For example, "You're going to end up spending 100$ on that".

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#86

Post by szany » Sat, Jul 09, 2011, 12:35 AM UTC

OstiaAntica wrote: post #24

jgrahamc wrote: post #7

It's sad to see the Shuttle go without a replacement. And to jog my own memory of the day I saw the shuttle in the UK, here's a set of pictures from the day Enterprise visited Stansted Airport in the UK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_ward/sets/7215760339467228... I was there as a boy standing against the wire fence with my father to see this amazing machine. Bloody marvellous!

The Shuttle program is coming to a hard stop because the program was a failure. The Shuttle is monstrously complex, killed astronauts on routine low orbit missions, and its runaway costs enveloped NASA's budget, crowding out any alternative manned platforms. There is no next-generation Shuttle or iteration of the Shuttle because simply running the current version of the Shuttle consumed NASA. After this last mission,…

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#87

Post by brudgers » Sat, Jul 09, 2011, 4:45 AM UTC

lhnn wrote: post #55

brudgers wrote: post #17

In 1979, I watched the Enterprise+transporter fly in to Kennedy for the first time from the Indian River - that was a long time ago. Hell, it's even been 25 years since I turned on the TV to see Dan Rather using a model to explain the various external tanks and knew something bad had happened. So while it is the passing of an era, with the ISS at the sharp point of manned space flight, I'm not about to let nostalgia…

> it doesn't matter whose hardware gets us off the ground and out toward the stars. On this, I disagree. Flying in an even older device (Soyuz) provided at a ridiculous rate from a "business partner" (calling Russia an ally is not quite accurate) is not the way we should be letting ourselves get into space. I know the shuttle is far from perfect, but we should have had the Dragon or Orion capsule ready before shuttle…

>"not the way we should be letting ourselves get into space."

It would be interesting to see some rationale for this position besides the implied jingoism.

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#88

Post by InclinedPlane » Sat, Jul 09, 2011, 8:13 AM UTC

jordan0day wrote: post #32

OstiaAntica wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shuttle program is coming to a hard stop because the program was a failure. The Shuttle is monstrously complex, killed astronauts on routine low orbit missions, and its runaway costs enveloped NASA's budget, crowding out any alternative manned platforms. There is no next-generation Shuttle or iteration of the Shuttle because simply running the current version of the Shuttle consumed NASA. After this last mission,…

While I have to agree with your overall point, I'm not ready to cede that the shuttle hurt manned space exploration more than it helped. Despite its' shortcomings, the Space Shuttle has been a point of national (and I would imagine international) pride, it's an incredible machine that has inspired the dreams of millions. Perhaps it did hurt more than it helped, in that it made the phrase you use, "routine low orbit m…

50 years. The wright brothers flew in 1903, by 1953 there had been tens (maybe even hundreds) of thousands of aircraft built, and millions of people had flown on them. Commercial jet aircraft and supersonic military aircraft were being introduced. Air travel was expensive but within the reach of even the middle class with some savings, 20 million people a year were flying.

"Only fifty years", indeed.

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#89

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Jul 09, 2011, 10:43 AM UTC

sukuriant wrote: post #85

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't write M$ or G$ to general public at all.

Agreed. Though we do sometimes write $5M, which is functionally equivalent. I've noticed in internet communication, it's common to say a numeral before the dollar sign. For example, "You're going to end up spending 100$ on that".

In this case it is, but it isn't in others (like kUSD or G$).

Oh, I always thought that you write a numeral before the dollar sign... Thanks for pointing that out. It differs between currencies - for example, british pounds are written before numeral (£42), but polish złoty are written after (42zł).

Re: Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

#90

Post by Retric » Sat, Jul 09, 2011, 12:46 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #88

jordan0day wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I have to agree with your overall point, I'm not ready to cede that the shuttle hurt manned space exploration more than it helped. Despite its' shortcomings, the Space Shuttle has been a point of national (and I would imagine international) pride, it's an incredible machine that has inspired the dreams of millions. Perhaps it did hurt more than it helped, in that it made the phrase you use, "routine low orbit m…

50 years. The wright brothers flew in 1903, by 1953 there had been tens (maybe even hundreds) of thousands of aircraft built, and millions of people had flown on them. Commercial jet aircraft and supersonic military aircraft were being introduced. Air travel was expensive but within the reach of even the middle class with some savings, 20 million people a year were flying. "Only fifty years", indeed.

Yet after another 50 years flying has not become all that much cheaper. Unlike flying reaching Mach 25 takes a ridiculous amount of energy and there is little reason to suspect it will become cheap in the next 50 years.