Planetfurry BBS

[Tygon]

Well, it was you who said "Shame on you" to me for agreeing with the article, wasn't it?

[Nameless]

Yes, governments are terrible at managing money.

But if you think private firms are better, then you have not ever worked for a large corporation. Cooking the books, selling the assets and leasing them back, ... whatever it takes to make this quarter's numbers look better.

I don't think any corporation can handle long-term investments, mainly because today's investors want a huge Return of Investment and they want it now, not in a few years.
Space exploration promises huge returns, but years, tens of years down the road.

And, suppose, a few years down the road, we have a "Mars, Inc." that wants to terraform Mars and settle it. Would they do it so that people can settle there, or so that they work for them, more or less as slaves. The best profit can be made when you have a monopoly, and that is what practically any corportation wants to achieve.

Investment and research are only there to achieve that goal.

[Tygon]

Okay, Nameless has pointed out something I didn't think of. Unfortunately.

Oh, and corporations are still much better with money than governments. If they weren't, why are the governments all in depts and the corporations making money.

BTW: I never thought that it would actually happen that the USA will sell the NASA. I just think it would be better for space research.

Anyway, another solution might be to put the NASA and all other space exploration and reseach facilities (after all, the NASA is by far not the only one on the planet) under international control. That could archieve similar results.

[Fishburne]

[Cateagle]

NASA really should go back to what they do best, basic and applied research in aeronautics and space, that's what their predecessor organization, NACA did so very, very well. What they clearly don't do well is operations, those shold be spun off to a new public or private entity (personally, I'd like to see launch sites operated like airports and leave the actual transportation to private firms).

It's not as if private firms can't do the job, but they can't do the job as long as bureaucrats are protecting their bureaucracies (the efforts that shut down Roton and Beal come to mind as merely the latest items).

Thoughtfully,
Cateagle

[Elfen_Furry]

My, did I miss a lot on this forum...

OK- experience from my point of view is that corporations try to horde information and technology to the demise of the industry itself. Just look at the computer industry through out its entire history, compared to what we have today- yucky machings on bloated operating systems running buggy software requiring huge data storage space to hold a tiny amount of information.

As far as Aerospace- the comapny that made the Concorde went broke when the last one was built and eventually dissolved from existance a few years later, leaving the transportation companies of Air France and British Airways to keep the expensive maintenence of these fine birds. The American version never fly out of the R&D stage because companies were too worried about getting an ill-repute on gas-guzzling planes that only seat a few people. Mind you, this was back in the '70s when such protests occurred.

But t the sametime, once a product is out, companies try their best to conceal dangers in their products. Exploding Gas Tanks in Pintos were not the only model Ford had to deal with at the time: Marverk, Comet, Falcon, Mustangs, even the LTD, Galaxy 500 and several others that had the filler neck behind the license place, was the problem; today the problem is in the Crown Victoria, but for a slightly different reason.

In the Aircraft industry, LearJet has a problem with internal cabin seals giving way, killing passengers and crew while in flight, but Learjet only comments that "they'll look into the problem." This problem has plagued them for more than I can remember, and thats been over 20+ years.

DeHavelin denied alligations about faulty designs in their Comets, causing them to burst while inflight, until the Royal Aviation Administration forced them to comply to tests and studies, where they discovered that their square windows design was the cause of metal fatigue. Boeing has several problems with the 737: Run-away rudder assemblies, exploding canopies, frayed wiring, etc... They addressed some of the problems but not all. Now that McDonald-Douglas is owned by Boeing, Beoing also has to contend with tail problems and door/hatch problems on those aircrafts, but makes no mention of it. When a plane falls out of the sky, they say, "we're looking into the matter..."

NASA has done its best with what little it got for so long, what it does can be considered as miracles. It has pushed the limits of technology, introduced new technologies to the market place, and literally reinvented all notions of what such limits are. To say that "people are still picking up Columbia pieces scattered all over the country side" means something because 90% of anything entering this planet's atmosphere of that size vaporizes. Sorry to say that they'll need another seven astronaunts, but they work they do, most corporations are too scared to do for that reason. But people working at NASA knows that their jobs entail risks and dangers that no other job has... airline pilots do not have to worry about their planes falling from the sky becuase that put a blind eye of faith to their maintenence teams to keep their birds healthy, strong and flyable. NASA, with its top and elite engineers, knows- "hey, there is a chance I might die in this thing, but you know... "

Do you want to sit in your car that some company built and you spent money on maintaining it, and actually think, "hey, there is a chance I might die in this thing..." before you drive off to your morning commute? Or do you want some guarentees?

NASA Astronauts do sign a waiver which absolves any responsibility NASA may have in possible accidents. But its only because they know they are flirting with death when they do go on missions. Training can only cover but so much.

[Cateagle]

Well, Elfin, let's see. The companies that built the Concorde are still around today, just merged into bigger operations. On the British side, BAC absorbed the only other major British aircraft company, HSA, to become BAE and on the French side Sud-Aviation was merged into what today is Aerospatiale. The American SST was running late and over budget at a time when the growing cost of fuel would've made it economically unfeasible to operate it, not to mention all the environmental protests (mind you, IMHO, the country would've been better served if Lockheed had gotten the SST contract and Boeing had gotten the C-5, but that's another story).

Learjets have had a number of accidents over the years, but not all have been due to seal failures. The switch from CAR3 certification to FAR25 certification, esp. when they went for the additional certification for flight at 51,000 feet did wonders for cleaning up the design. Mind you, the aircraft is something of a "hot rod' and not for every pilot (same goes for the MU-2 twin-turboprop which has a similar fleet wide loss percentage). Which reminds me, there have also been crashes due to pilot requested unauthorized mods, esp. "go fast" buttons that disable the "Mach-limiter" function on the autopilot; the Learjet is placarded at Mach .79 under manual control and Mach .82 under autopilot for a very good reason, above that there's a chance for an excursion in speed to Mach .85 at which point "Mach-tuck" sets in and the aircraft is on it's way to digging a hole in the ground (unless the pilot immediately blows the landing gear down to slow the aircraft - the ordinary speed brakes are useless in this condition).

Having been through a FAR25 ceritification (yes, at Learjet), I will admit there are some aspects fo the original DC-10 design that I wonder how they ever got approved. One of them contributed to the Chicago crash but wasn't remedied until a near accident some years later.

Thoughtfully,
Cateagle

[Tygon]

[Elfen_Furry]

Yo Cat, nice to know that I can be pointed out to proper facts. I remember that the company that created the concord went belly up. Depending on one's reference to the business venture, being absorbed could mean a dying company looking for another to take over its operations and bills to help keep it alive. But thats business.

If I remember, its illegal to approach Mach 1 in a civilian jet in the USA airspace. If radar does not catch you, the defense dept. satellites will. The few who are daring enough to own their own fighter jets, just for shows and personal recreation, are always warned not to push the envelope becuase they can.

I remember the American SST project, too bad it turned out the way it did.

Ah yes, I remember American 191. I hang out at crash sites like vampires at a blood bank!

Very few things impress me, but last Saturday morning, I Was Highly IMPRESSED!

[Bearion]

[Elfen_Furry]

Windows ME: Newest Things from Microsoft in terms of TOTAL INCOMPATIBILITY!!!

[Fishburne]

you people. Honestly.

Windows ME?

Windows YOU!

There, my curse quota for the day

[Elfen_Furry]

[Cateagle]

[Elfen_Furry]

Very Nice... I'm a fanatical buff, especially in the early century stuff, esp: WW1. Few Jets please me: SR71/YF12, StarFighter, A6-A8, as well as the heavies. Accidents I study until I draw my own conclusions, and only rarely does things match up.

I only flew as a student for a short time, and when I can afford it, will fly again. Then again, I spent too much time on simulators and RC craft, it should be valued as something.

The Space race is included in all this. But in the catagory of "Those who can- do, those who cant- teach" -You can, I teach. Thumbs up to you and your works. But as for the Computer Industry.... Oh God. Mom was right, thinking jobs wears you out faster than manual labor; I should have been a furniture mover instead of a Computer Guru.

[Unfortunately- before the last upgrade to hubble, I knew the J.Levinson- he built and programmed the Fairchild radiation hardened cpu system that was on the Hubble. Then they upgraded to a 486DX system designed and programmed by Microsoft. This sort of thing makes me puke.]