Why did you become one?
I wanted to use my love of physics to contribute to a cause that I believed in, specifically the exploration of space.
I also wanted to challenge myself intellectually and see what I could accomplish.
Why did you become one?
Can you explain how moon produces waves?. May be a silly question but is not clear for me.
That's an interesting point of view. What makes you think that we're regurgitating the work of Von Braun and Kuznetsov? We've made great strides since them. Speaking overall, that is.
When talking of rockets directly, however, there is more cause for concern. There hasn't been a large national priority on the construction of large-payload rockets, so the technology hasn't advanced much beyond the adjustments necessary for your next deep space mission. Most of the development hasn't been in propulsion, it's been in the design of spacecraft and their component parts, and the application of robotics, which account for most of the technological difference between the rockets of today and that of the 1960's. Nevertheless, the field is advancing on all fronts, but in terms of new technology it's mainly held back because designing a rocket is not easy. A lot can go wrong. That's why the axioms espoused by many of the great rocket designers from back in the day are still looked to for guidance. Even most of Von Braun's designs were catastrophic failures.
In airplane design, however, America is doing fantastically. Engineers are developing new and better technologies all the time and the United States is handily leading the world when it comes to aeronautical engineering.
If I had to attribute the gully between the relative "success" of these branches to anything, I'd say it was funding that was doing it. There's a lot of government cash that goes into the air force and in all NASA jet design and supersonic flow labs, and private industry is constantly trying to develop new ways to improve their airfleets. This itself is because there are a lot of goals that are easy to identify, and there's a healthy incentive to fulfill them: there is considerable talk about trying to build private jets that can go at supersonic speeds... and don't cause a sonic boom. How it's done is pretty cool, but the status of airplanes as high-technology, high-expense items means that, as long as there exists an absurdly wealthy upper class, the industry will do quite well when it comes to innovation.
As for rockets, well, it's much more difficult to design a rocket than an airplane, and because the number of people who specialize in that field are shrinking the knowledge-base for designing a rocket from scratch is also starting to disappear. There is very, very little incentive to go into rocket design because it's twice as much work for almost a third less of the money.
Can you explain how moon produces waves?. May be a silly question but is not clear for me.
Thanks for the reply. I'm talking very narrowly about LEO vehicle design and their propulsion systems. The lack of innovation to go beyond the stacked vehicles with single use elements should be a primary concern I would think. We're still stuck dreaming about exotic launch systems that hasn't gone beyond the drawing tables of concept artists.
"Space Launch System" seem to be all applied science and not theroretical/visionary science. I guess my question is, does your school have courses on exotic/next generation systems or are you all thought to construct&maintain old rocket designs?
All I know for rockets is the software side in that programming control software for the Space Shuttle took 400 programmers and 4 years. Admittedly it was back in the day when computers weren't so developed as they are now.
I once got in an argument with someone who said that people like me were making the air force obsolete because of our designs for unmanned flyers. I couldn't convince him that UAVs are there because they're small and can take off from anywhere, which makes them ideal for recon. I also couldn't convince him that the air force will always have a use for pilots because we can't model for every possible condition in flight, given the complex nature of airflow, and the experience of a pilot is somehow more valuable in weird situations than a one-million dollar computer. Pick your poison, I guess.
That's true, but more developed computers also gives us the opportunity to develop more complex software, so those programmers can remain quite busy.
To give an example, in jet design a big priority for the control systems guys is modeling software so that they can know how the jet behaves. They want to design autopilot systems that can take over in the case of user error (it happens more often than you might think and it's hard to fly a jet or helicopter - personally I'm amazed that air force pilots can do anything with how much they need to know).
I once got in an argument with someone who said that people like me were making the air force obsolete because of our designs for unmanned flyers. I couldn't convince him that UAVs are there because they're small and can take off from anywhere, which makes them ideal for recon. I also couldn't convince him that the air force will always have a use for pilots because we can't model for every possible condition in flight, given the complex nature of airflow, and the experience of a pilot is somehow more valuable in weird situations than a one-million dollar computer. Pick your poison, I guess.
Keep the hard questions coming, guys. Your indictments about the uncreativity of rocket scientists is providing valuable introspection on my end. I appreciate it and we can maybe all walk away a little more knowledgeable about all this.
But I wonder whether the pilot will need to be in the plane in the future air force. There are a lot of systems that are just there to keep the pilot alive. If you can drop this and let the pilot steer the plane remotely you might be able to build a much better plane.
If you have a secure broadband data-link to your plane, you could just feed the information to a pilot somewhere who then reacts on the information. Like a video game, but with a real plane. And then playing video games will become a patriotic duty for the youth to train for the air force.
But I wonder whether the pilot will need to be in the plane in the future air force. There are a lot of systems that are just there to keep the pilot alive. If you can drop this and let the pilot steer the plane remotely you might be able to build a much better plane.
If you have a secure broadband data-link to your plane, you could just feed the information to a pilot somewhere who then reacts on the information. Like a video game, but with a real plane. And then playing video games will become a patriotic duty for the youth to train for the air force.
Oh yes, programming is the devils work no doubt, it never ends. Always just the tip of the spear. Flying indeed is amazing, especially those who fly Harriers and other VTOL aircraft because they have to know and be good at flying both helos and jets to properly control them.
Unmanned flyers are the way of the future; the transition step being fly-by-wire at least until those neurosynaptic chips that DARPA is hogging right now combined with some interesting developments in cultured neuronal networks come into play. Then we could very well have intelligent and autonomous unmanned flyers. The wisdom of that is however discussable.
That assumes you can be absolutely certain of your communications. Your enemy is trying as hard to disrupt those as you are to maintaining them.
That being said, the fact remains that radio signals are relatively easy to jam from a defensive standpoint, and no amount of technological advancement will ever not make this the case (waves will be waves). Unmanned aircraft will have their place, but those that need attendant operators will need them on-board if they're expected to go deep (all jet fighters).
If you just try to communicate on a single frequency, then yes, it will be easy to jam with a narrowband source. But there are a lot of tricks you can do with current electronics that make jamming significantly harder. For example, you can implement fast frequency hopping to frequencies that are only known to the sender and receiver. If the enemy does not know the frequency sequence, he would have to jam all possible frequencies which would require a lot of power (and the jamming station would have a big "hit here" sign on it).
So the success of such a strategy would rely on being ahead in electronics. I admit that one might not want to rely on that.
On what do rockets stand when they are on the launchpad?
Has anybody ever used the expression "it's not rocket science" when trying to explain something simple to you?
I don't understand what you mean. The scaffold?
No no the scaffold. On which part does the rocket rest when standing on the pad. I cant imagine it stands on the nozzle
Where in the solar system is the best place to position and hide a nuclear arsenal? Assume size is 500 warheads and it is designed for two scenarios
1) A covert second-strike capability, returning in retaliation to an attack on NATO
2) A covert first-strike capability, where it will be brought back to Earth as rapidly and stealthily as possible in a surprise first-attack on hardened facilities.
Can you estimate the expense/possibility of deploying such a system?
Where in the solar system is the best place to position and hide a nuclear arsenal? Assume size is 500 warheads and it is designed for two scenarios
1) A covert second-strike capability, returning in retaliation to an attack on NATO
2) A covert first-strike capability, where it will be brought back to Earth as rapidly and stealthily as possible in a surprise first-attack on hardened facilities.