Just to clarify - Orion is a partially reusable spaceship, developed by NASA with Lockheed Martin as the prime contractor, while SLS is a non-reusable launch vehicle, developed by NASA with Boeing as the largest contractor. SLS has been a poster child for cost overruns and delays - but so far is still intended to launch the crewed missions to Gateway, while it was never intended to launch the non-crewed Gateway launches.
NASA is looking at domestic commercial launchers powerful enough to reach lunar orbit for non-crewed elements of Gateway. As far as we know now of what will be available at the intended launch time in 2024, that will be SpaceX Falcon Heavy, ULA Vulcan, or Blue Origin New Glenn.
Falcon Heavy has the advantage that it's already in service. The other two are currently expected to make their maiden flights late this year.
It's possible that SpaceX could get Starship ready for launch by 2024 too, at their aggressive rate of development, which would be super cool, though it's early to order for launch services.
I'm super excited about returning people to the Moon. But Lunar Gateway is a bad mission architecture that really reduces the cost-effectiveness of returning to the Moon. It costs way more delta-v to reach the Gateway and then proceed to the lunar surface than just to go straight to the surface.
After the Asteroid Redirect Mission got canceled, the gateway is a solution in search of a problem. It's like a vestigial organ that sticks around even after natural selection has removed its reason for existing in the first place.
To really get my respect he needs to kill off ads in the Windows start menu and the pervasive Cortana surveillance.
To really, REALLY get my respect: I would like to see Microsoft be a pure, best-practice software company. Do GREAT things independently of Windows. Make native Mac applications that are truly great. Make a better Mac application than Apple can. Make better iOS apps. Be a champion of Linux. and so on. Strive for greatness on every platform, embracing that platform's uniqueness.
I wasn’t aware that this was an old school Apple vs Microsoft debate. But alas.
I don’t know if you’ve actually used the latest Office for Mac. It’s better than the older versions, but it’s still obvious that MS isn’t fully proficient in macOS development. For starters, the interface doesn’t respect the scaling settings on my 5K iMac. I’d expect that sort of shoddy UI from Steam or something.
The fact that iTunes for Windows is trash doesn’t change this fact at all, so I don’t knkw what you’re getting at.
I think Microsoft IS doing great on other platforms, and even open-source stuff. Of course I'm blinded by having a fanboy level love for them.
Except Windows 10. Reading Raymond Chen's blog, I was always led to believe Microsoft wanted to give the user the power, no matter what, even if it mean shooting yourself in the foot. Windows 10 seems to be the end of that. Stop taking away my power as a user Microsoft. I paid for the damn computer, don't act like it's your property.
1. 2006 Bill Gates stepped down as a Chief Software Architect
2. 2014 Satya Nadella became CEO after Ballmer.
Gates was good CEO but he was not a good Chief Architect. He had the knowledge, the intelligence and skills, but he had no ability to do good high-level choices. Chief Architect needs to know when to sacrifice in details to get the whole slightly better.
Microsoft is not known for innovation,but they should have been able to do gradual refinement better under Gates. Microsoft was really starting to crumble under the completely unprincipled approach to large scale architecture.
Can't really agree on this point.
Microsoft has historically done a lot of research and innovation, what they weren't really good is making a product out of that and bringing it to market.
They aren't. Almost most innovation they've tried to implement in the market have gone underappreciated or forgotten. That means they're "not known" for their innovation. I don't think Nokinside is saying Microsoft is not an innovator.
Then again, most of their money comes from products that are specifically borrowed concepts, competitively forced into dominance, with more purchase incentives than their competition, and before other companies could even get a foothold. So maybe that's what Nokinside meant.
Either way, I'm not surprised when people kick Microsoft for a lack of innovation. Nadella's focus on increasing innovation at Microsoft alone is evidence that they haven't been doing enough.
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Most patents are probably not valid, and most patents used in licensing offers / threats are probably not strong enough to avoid being invalidated or found not infringed if litigated, but the would-be licensor / troll counts on the threatened party to settle rather than pay millions of dollars for litigation.
While there aren't any easy tactical solutions and a policy fix is a dim hope, we should be able to at least partly solve the problem by training an AI to do automated and thorough prior art search and analysis relevant to a patent, so a lot of the legwork of a patent litigation threat becomes orders of magnitude faster and cheaper, and it becomes vastly easier and less intimidating for a trolling target to respond to a patent threat like this, and quickly get their focus and resources back to developing their technology. Software eats patent attorneys, and reduces the burden of patents on the technology community.
(disclaimers: I am a patent attorney and I'm currently working full-time on coding a patent search & analysis AI service, this is not legal advice, etc.)
The author, Andrea Ghez, is one of the leading researchers on observing the center of our galaxy, and the stars that orbit the central black hole, among other things.
Looking for more, Paul. This from a Swiss news site says he had previously reported threats to the police, S3's data center was broken into and flooded with a fire hose, and that he remained in the hospital in serious condition with burns on his torso, arm, neck, and face, and would likely need transplants:
So their plans for 2016 is to "open a spaceport" and for 2017 - "assemble a shuttle". Sounds like either a money laundering setup or a massively overhyped startup. Combine with the fact that they have Russian version of the site and it might be safe to assume that the guy had a run-in with unhappy "investors".
PS. The 24heures news article says that his car was stopped when he was driving through the forest, severly beaten, douzed in gasoline and set on fire. Now that is pretty damn close to how they settled fiscal disputes back in post-Perestroika times. I'm pretty damn sure he just took money from wrong people and didn't deliver what he promised.
