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Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: Low Earth Orbit on the Cheap

From the article:

   The Russians have achieved a low-cost, reliable launch capability because,
first of all, they used simple, damage-tolerant designs that were less than optimum by Western standards (from a performance and weight minimiza- tion standpoint). The Soviet boosters and their subsystems were designed to be highly modular, allowing vehicle customization for various missions with- out always requiring completely new launch systems. Soviet launcher modu- larity also provided the opportunity for large manufacturing economies of scale for many components. Either because of pragmatic engineering judg- ment or because of economic necessity, the Soviets reused existing designs for decades, making minor modifications only when necessary. Their launch operations emphasize off-line processing and minimum pad time; and their simple, rugged launch vehicles have required minimal launch pad testing. Also, Russian boosters have enjoyed high launch rates, thus en- hancing manufacturing economies of scale and driving unit costs down. It is interesting to speculate on how well US industries would do if they applied these simple factors in a completely commercially-driven venture. After all, the reliable, low-cost Russian launch capability has been built by a country in which inefficiency and waste have been historically endemic.

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

Think of this as empowering people who will not use vi or emacs, but prefer Eclipse or Visual Studio, to have a visually appealing arsenal of tools which can be chained in a pipelined fashion.

What is wrong with that? Yahoo pipes for example provided pointy clickety interface to mashing up data. Lot of people used it to do useful work.

It really does not matter if a even single sysadmin who already uses the shell does not start using this. It just needs to have its OWN users that is all. If you just consider ALL Eclipse users + ALL Visual Studio users, that is a HUGE user base... Now the vi/emacs user may feel superior to the others...

but in reality anyone in this world can have their own reasons to create products and use various tools. All the best to the author of this tool for taking the pain to code this...

If it works out and gains users... awesome... else it shows we still find Old tools useful. We have not stopped using Fire or Wheels today though they very OLD technologies. Whether the shell is as important as fire or wheels OR transitionary like Hydrogen blimps or something in between only time will tell...

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: Poll: Do you support software patents?

I would prefer a world without software patents. If that is not possible, * At least the courts should charge exponentially high prices for each extra claim you want to make beyond a limit. * All publicly listed companies will have a cap on total number of patents they can apply for (probably proportional to R&D spending) after which the price increases exponentially. * Any person or institution found patent trolling should find further litigation exponentially expensive. All these and more measures won't solve the problem... but at least increases the threshold for trolling behaviour...

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: Telescopictext

I hope some one writes a javascript library that takes a suitable formatted text and has an expandTo(length) function so that the same info can fit into various screen sizes without having a scrollbar.

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: The most surprising demographic crisis

I suddenly realized by accident that Chinese children do not have brothers and sisters. I mean just imagine a whole country... hundreds of millions of children... not one has a brother or a sister. Imagine a sixth of a population of the planet shudder when it hears words like "brotherly affection". Life must be so different there.

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: Why the US can beat China: The Facts about SpaceX Costs

India got independence only in 1947. All growth till then made the British richer. Till the 1990s india had a strange cross breed b/w socialism and capitalism where large govt factories and govt organization employed most people and had low productivity.

One major gain was a strong focus on education many of them learning English. However most of it is rote learning centric. It is only in recent years that India has been able to make a place for itself in the BRIC economies.

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: Startup Idea: Draw usr specified art on moon using teleoperated robot

SpaceX has brought down the cost of space travel by an order of magnitude. If Ad Astra succeeds in their VASIMR effort, they will bring it down further. Many things you could only dream about in the past will soon be economically viable.

Just because something is possible does not mean we need to do it. And that is something I figured today!!!

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: Startup Idea: Draw usr specified art on moon using teleoperated robot

You bring up a very important aspect of quality control. i.e. How to prevent it from turning into a restroom wall. Of course it will go through an editorial process.

Something magical has prevented HN from turning into a rest room wall when many others have failed. "Processes" and communities can make that magic happen. Anyway as I said elsewhere I have abandoned the idea :).

I love the community here... Validating an idea can get over in a few hours especially if the decision is to toss it away...

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: Startup Idea: Draw usr specified art on moon using teleoperated robot

sure...

I would go onto say we should not have not moved out of Africa at all.

Most people would agree that we humans somehow end up making places less beautiful by own standards by inhabiting them and exploiting them.

But we NEED to do it. We can just ensure that we restrain ourselves from crossing a commonly accepted limit. I had never suggested turning moon into a billboard in the sky.

Think of it more like rock painting made by a caveman. in certain restricted parts of the moon.

Sudarshan | 15 years ago | on: Startup Idea: Draw usr specified art on moon using teleoperated robot

I understand and appreciate your sentiments. America and Australia would have been a lot more "beautiful" without the European settlers ruining it.

But in a strange way mankind needs to move "forward" "whatever" that means. We need to colonize the Solar system, then the galaxy and then spread to the other galaxies.

Governments prefer to fight religious wars by spending orders of magnitude more than the NASA budget, because it is easier to garner votes with war. It appears as if free enterprise is the only force that will take man beyond the gravity well of this planet.

It is natural to dislike crass advertising. But we should remember that even Google is just an advertising company. Without Google we would have been worse off. Yes worse off even without SEO, SEM and so on.

The situation is not black and white. Formula 1 racers are covered in Ads. But we still watch the games and enjoy them too. The moon is our common heritage. We cannot let it turn into an eyesore. But it will some day be mined, some day, there will a number of ads, whether you or I or another person objects to it will hardly matter. What we can do is strike a balance between growth and beauty.

It will no longer be as beautiful as it was. But as a civilization we will be better off. If you consider we are better off today than in the stone age. That itself is subjective. But this world belongs to 6.5 billion people. It is for them to decide quality of life v/s beauty by abstaining from exploitation.

We have taken steps like having sanctuaries, of leaving Antarctica alone and so on... Maybe we will do something similar to the moon as well. Maybe no development will be permitted on the visible side of the moon at all. It does not matter. Maybe no structure larger than the limit of visual acuity will be permitted.

Free enterprise abiding by the laws we give to ourselves has to take us beyond the shackles of this planet. Let us be pragmatic. Every penny that the Space industry will make will take us off this planet... not in hundreds... not in millions... but in billions...

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