Back when NASA was testing the X-43, they said something that has stuck in my mind ever since. The X-43 is a scramjet test vehicle. The thing is boosted on a Pegasus to near mach 10, then the scramjet is fired for 10 seconds. Afterwards, the vehicle is not recovered. "The only thing we get back from this mission is data."
When you think about it that way, all the robotic space missions are like that. We just get back data. No artifacts, no samples, just bits. We then assemble those bits back into knowledge back here on the ground. When we talk about the $800M SDO mission, we are spending the $800M to get those bits, so they better be valuable. Furthermore, I paid for those bits so I should have access to them.
The NASA Technical Report Server is where the knowledge collected from those bits go. It is now closed.
They claim that it is due to an ITAR review, and that it will be reopened when that is complete. There are over a million papers on NTRS. That is never going to get the kind of review they are implying.
So: For all those mission that only send back data, the only evidence that we have that they even happened is now gone. We spent $XB a year on NASA, and what we paid for is now locked up. This is a bad precedent. Furthermore, the NASA library is now untrustworthy. We build libraries to hold knowledge, and if they close at random without notice, they fail to serve their purpose.
Similarly, I now don't think that the kernels for reconstructed entry of MSL will ever be released.
This is not a good way to start the day.
Showing posts with label I want a pony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I want a pony. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Gem of the Week: The Free Market
Or: They had Opportunity, in their very Community
Dear Princess Celestia,
Recently there was a severe shortage of apple cider here in Ponyville, which we had the opportunity to remedy, but because of short-sidedness on the part of some of your subjects and your apparent policy to grant monopolies in too many areas of the market, we chased that opportunity out of town.
In Ponyville, the cider franchise is granted to the Apple family of Sweet Apple Acres. Their orchard is a relatively small business and is incapable of supplying the demand. Cider prices are also too low, due to your policies of price control on cider, so the Apples are losing out as well. As a consequence, hundreds of ponies, a good fraction of the citizens of Ponyville, are deprived of cider, and those that do get it are forced to pay for cider with their time rather than with bits, by camping out at the gate. The time that they are granted, all those moments that will never exist again, they were forced to spend waiting rather than doing what they wanted.
If it seems cruel and heartless to give priority to ponies just because they have more bits, consider that your current policies are cruel and heartless as well to those who don't get any cider because they don't have as much time to waste in line. Even those ponies who do choose to spend those moments that will never exist again, pay for cider with both bits and time. Those customers spent that time to no benefit to anyone -- not themselves, and not the Apple family. If time were bits, it is as if those bits of time were carefully collected, from both the ponies who got cider and those that didn't, and dropped into Tartarus, never to be recovered, and never doing any pony any good. Even worse, those ponies who don't end up getting any cider pay time for cider they don't get.
A pair of entrepreneur ponies, the Flim Flam brothers, tried to remedy this, but because of the cider monopoly, they were unable to simply purchase the Apple family apples as a raw material and make the additional cider the market demands. The new business attempted to enter into collusion with the established players, but were unable to negotiate a cartel, which may have been even worse than the monopoly. By denying market competition, they were forced to compete in other ways, in this case a single-elimination to-the-out-of-business contest of pure quantity of production, rather than the ability to satisfy customer demand. In this competition, the Apple family was forced to work far beyond its sustainable capacity to near-exhaustion, and the Flim Flam brothers were forced to compromise their quality control, leading to inferior cider and tired, thirsty ponies.
If your policy of granting monopoly franchises was rescinded, the Flim Flam brothers could have just purchased apples from the Apple family or other suppliers at the market rate, and the Apples and Flim Flam could have worked together without having to collude. If your policy of cider price control was rescinded, the Apples could have raised the price of their cider to the point that some ponies would have decided that the cider wasn't worth it. The same number of ponies would have been served, the Apples would have made more money, and those ponies at the back of the line but more willing to pay would have been able to get their cider. With another supplier, more ponies would have been able to be served, and even if Apple family cider is better than Flim Flam cider, something is better than nothing, and the market would have decided that Apple family cider was worth more, and would have paid more. Those unwilling to pay that much would have been able to pay less to get Flim Flam cider.
They call it capitalism, but it isn't really an -ism of any kind, just the invisible hoof at work, ponies working towards their own benifit but supplying the needs of all ponies.
Please consider changing your economic policies to allow freedom to your subjects to pursue the interests that seem best to them.
It's a new world with tons of cider, fresh squeezed and ready for drinking -- and also plenty of quills, sofas, anemometers, and maybe even things nopony has even thought of inventing yet, but would if they had time to think and invent instead of waiting in line for cider.
Your Fellow Citizen,
St. Kwan the Just
Dear Princess Celestia,
Recently there was a severe shortage of apple cider here in Ponyville, which we had the opportunity to remedy, but because of short-sidedness on the part of some of your subjects and your apparent policy to grant monopolies in too many areas of the market, we chased that opportunity out of town.
In Ponyville, the cider franchise is granted to the Apple family of Sweet Apple Acres. Their orchard is a relatively small business and is incapable of supplying the demand. Cider prices are also too low, due to your policies of price control on cider, so the Apples are losing out as well. As a consequence, hundreds of ponies, a good fraction of the citizens of Ponyville, are deprived of cider, and those that do get it are forced to pay for cider with their time rather than with bits, by camping out at the gate. The time that they are granted, all those moments that will never exist again, they were forced to spend waiting rather than doing what they wanted.
If it seems cruel and heartless to give priority to ponies just because they have more bits, consider that your current policies are cruel and heartless as well to those who don't get any cider because they don't have as much time to waste in line. Even those ponies who do choose to spend those moments that will never exist again, pay for cider with both bits and time. Those customers spent that time to no benefit to anyone -- not themselves, and not the Apple family. If time were bits, it is as if those bits of time were carefully collected, from both the ponies who got cider and those that didn't, and dropped into Tartarus, never to be recovered, and never doing any pony any good. Even worse, those ponies who don't end up getting any cider pay time for cider they don't get.
A pair of entrepreneur ponies, the Flim Flam brothers, tried to remedy this, but because of the cider monopoly, they were unable to simply purchase the Apple family apples as a raw material and make the additional cider the market demands. The new business attempted to enter into collusion with the established players, but were unable to negotiate a cartel, which may have been even worse than the monopoly. By denying market competition, they were forced to compete in other ways, in this case a single-elimination to-the-out-of-business contest of pure quantity of production, rather than the ability to satisfy customer demand. In this competition, the Apple family was forced to work far beyond its sustainable capacity to near-exhaustion, and the Flim Flam brothers were forced to compromise their quality control, leading to inferior cider and tired, thirsty ponies.
If your policy of granting monopoly franchises was rescinded, the Flim Flam brothers could have just purchased apples from the Apple family or other suppliers at the market rate, and the Apples and Flim Flam could have worked together without having to collude. If your policy of cider price control was rescinded, the Apples could have raised the price of their cider to the point that some ponies would have decided that the cider wasn't worth it. The same number of ponies would have been served, the Apples would have made more money, and those ponies at the back of the line but more willing to pay would have been able to get their cider. With another supplier, more ponies would have been able to be served, and even if Apple family cider is better than Flim Flam cider, something is better than nothing, and the market would have decided that Apple family cider was worth more, and would have paid more. Those unwilling to pay that much would have been able to pay less to get Flim Flam cider.
They call it capitalism, but it isn't really an -ism of any kind, just the invisible hoof at work, ponies working towards their own benifit but supplying the needs of all ponies.
Please consider changing your economic policies to allow freedom to your subjects to pursue the interests that seem best to them.
It's a new world with tons of cider, fresh squeezed and ready for drinking -- and also plenty of quills, sofas, anemometers, and maybe even things nopony has even thought of inventing yet, but would if they had time to think and invent instead of waiting in line for cider.
Your Fellow Citizen,
St. Kwan the Just
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Mathjax
Here is a new cool thing: MathJax
\[x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a} \M{A} \MM{P}{^-_i}\]
Mathjax is apparently a TeX implementation written entirely in Javascript. It looks like it scans the source code of your page, looks for delimited equations, then interprets the TeX within and renders it using math fonts.
Instructions for how to get it to work for Blogspot are here.
Now I get to go through all of my Kalman filter stuff and fix the math there into something actually readable.
\[x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a} \M{A} \MM{P}{^-_i}\]
Mathjax is apparently a TeX implementation written entirely in Javascript. It looks like it scans the source code of your page, looks for delimited equations, then interprets the TeX within and renders it using math fonts.
Instructions for how to get it to work for Blogspot are here.
Now I get to go through all of my Kalman filter stuff and fix the math there into something actually readable.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
More crazy ideas
This time for during/after the competition. First, if I think that I deserve a "victory lap" I will program the thing to go hover and spin over the center of the pond during the lap.
Secondly, the "Viking Funeral". When I am done with the robot, I go out to the middle of a big field, and program it to fly straight up. As soon as it sees that it is no longer going up even with full throttle, it cuts all power, and tumbles back to Earth. Very Antimov, if I do say so.
Also, I am now putting in acceleration into my IMU Kalman filter. I could split the filter into two pieces, one for the gyro and one for the IMU. But, I still have this sneaking suspicion that knowing the current acceleration (including gravity) will help out with the orientation. If I prove it doesn't, I think I save a factor of about 4 by splitting it. The order of the problem goes from O(16^3)=~4096 to O(7^3)+O(9^3)=~(343+729)=~1072.
Secondly, the "Viking Funeral". When I am done with the robot, I go out to the middle of a big field, and program it to fly straight up. As soon as it sees that it is no longer going up even with full throttle, it cuts all power, and tumbles back to Earth. Very Antimov, if I do say so.
Also, I am now putting in acceleration into my IMU Kalman filter. I could split the filter into two pieces, one for the gyro and one for the IMU. But, I still have this sneaking suspicion that knowing the current acceleration (including gravity) will help out with the orientation. If I prove it doesn't, I think I save a factor of about 4 by splitting it. The order of the problem goes from O(16^3)=~4096 to O(7^3)+O(9^3)=~(343+729)=~1072.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Literate Programming
Nothing I am doing on this project is pioneering. Nothing is original. It is just applying known solutions, figured out by other people, to my particular problem. I don't have an issue with this.
However, the reason I am doing it is partly to learn about the problem and its solution, and partly because I really want the rollercoasterometer. When I am done, my solution will exist in the form of a robot, all the code for it, this blog, and my other notes in other places. Somehow this should all be unified.
In Garden of Rama, Arthur C. Clarke mentions the artificial intelligence which controls Rama, making a report to its masters. He describes the report as being in a language which is not really translatable into English, or any human language, given that it is highly precise and has all the data necessary to support each conclusion attached and linked. In order to unify my report on my project, I need something like this language. However, Clarke is quite wrong, and was wrong when he wrote it, as we have such a language. We call it HTML.
So, what I want is some document form that I can run through one filter and get compilable code, and another and get a net of HTML pages. I want to write in wiki markup, to allow inclusion of math, pictures, videos, etc. I want to be able to attach Eagle files and generate schematics and board printouts. I also want a pony.
What are the closest existing solutions? The title gives this away. I want what Knuth described as Literate Programming. I want to be able to read my report and program like I read a good novel or textbook. But, I don't want to change the language. In a program, I want the document to be compilable directly without changes.
I don't want Javadoc or something like it adapted to C. This is really just for documenting at a low level. I want higher level stuff. I want to describe my design without immediate reference to any attached code. I want to have a section explaining the derivation of the various flavors of the Kalman filter, which is totally irrelevant to the program, since the filter is already derived.
I want something like a wiki, but with a blog. Every time I build the project, I want the documentation form directly uploaded to the wiki of my choice.
Update, 2022-12-31: Doxygen fits what I have in mind. I can document functions, classes, files, whole modules, and attach arbitrary markdown files. It can have attached pictures, and I can put arbitrary links. As you can see from the rest of this blog, I can attach arbitrary files like kicad designs etc.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)