Friday, September 21, 2007
FREE SMS
FREE SMS, FREE SEND SMS, SMS GATEWAY, KIRIM SMS GRATIS, SMS GRATIS, PULSA GRATIS. SILAHKAN KLIK LINK YANG TERSEDIA DI ATAS MAUPUN DIBAWAH POSTING INI.
Hybrid hard drives: Why they are failing
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Back in 2005, Samsung and Microsoft announced something that got the storage fans in the world excited: they had designed a hard drive with a bit of flash memory in it that would serve as a data cache.
The hybrid hard drive would cut down power consumption, increase battery life, and, most importantly, whack boot-up time, the companies said.
But so far, you don't see a lot of them on store shelves and the benefits are somewhat disappointing, said hard drive executives at Diskcon 2007, taking place in Santa Clara this week.
"The initial versions haven't delivered the performance consumers expected," said Dr. Richard New, director of research for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.
The problem, said New, might be correctable if drive makers put in more flash. Right now, hybrid drives have about 256MB of memory. If you put in 4GB or so, the flash could hold a lot more storage, which in turn would reduce power consumption and help boot-up time. That would raise prices, though.
The small amount of flash also means that boot-up time isn't that much shorter, noted Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing at Fujitsu Computing Products of America. From a cold start, boot-up time might drop from 28 seconds with a standard drive to 21 seconds with a hybrid, according to Hagberg.
"I don't see anyone paying for that," Hagberg said.
The sleep function on Vista also indirectly chips into the desirability of hybrids, added Richard Rutledge, senior vice president of marketing at Western Digital, the number two maker of drives. The company, which doesn't market a hybrid, conducted a bunch of tests comparing boot-up times of different versions of Vista from a cold start with boot-up times with computers resting in Vista's sleep state. Boot-up from a cold start with Vista PCs ranged all the way up to 70 seconds, depending on the version of Vista (Vista Home Premium is the slow one, by the way.)
Vista PCs, however, would come out of the sleep state to being operational in four seconds. Western Digital tried seven variants for Vista and it always came to around four seconds. Thus, with the sleep state working as it does, you don't need a hybrid, he said.
The hybrid hard drive would cut down power consumption, increase battery life, and, most importantly, whack boot-up time, the companies said.
But so far, you don't see a lot of them on store shelves and the benefits are somewhat disappointing, said hard drive executives at Diskcon 2007, taking place in Santa Clara this week.
"The initial versions haven't delivered the performance consumers expected," said Dr. Richard New, director of research for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.
The problem, said New, might be correctable if drive makers put in more flash. Right now, hybrid drives have about 256MB of memory. If you put in 4GB or so, the flash could hold a lot more storage, which in turn would reduce power consumption and help boot-up time. That would raise prices, though.
The small amount of flash also means that boot-up time isn't that much shorter, noted Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing at Fujitsu Computing Products of America. From a cold start, boot-up time might drop from 28 seconds with a standard drive to 21 seconds with a hybrid, according to Hagberg.
"I don't see anyone paying for that," Hagberg said.
The sleep function on Vista also indirectly chips into the desirability of hybrids, added Richard Rutledge, senior vice president of marketing at Western Digital, the number two maker of drives. The company, which doesn't market a hybrid, conducted a bunch of tests comparing boot-up times of different versions of Vista from a cold start with boot-up times with computers resting in Vista's sleep state. Boot-up from a cold start with Vista PCs ranged all the way up to 70 seconds, depending on the version of Vista (Vista Home Premium is the slow one, by the way.)
Vista PCs, however, would come out of the sleep state to being operational in four seconds. Western Digital tried seven variants for Vista and it always came to around four seconds. Thus, with the sleep state working as it does, you don't need a hybrid, he said.
NASA pundits launch debate over space flight
PASADENA, Calif.--At the 50th anniversary space conference here Thursday, a fight over the future role of NASA's space program inadvertently took off.
If it were up to Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer known for building a suborbital rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize, NASA wouldn't be developing a spacecraft to put another man on the moon by 2020. That government mission has already been accomplished, and a repeat performance is "silly," Rutan said during a panel held at California Institute of Technology, CalTech, which runs NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
"Taxpayer-funded NASA should only fund research and not development," Rutan said. "When you spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a manned spacecraft, you're...dumbing down a generation of new, young engineers (by telling them) "No, you can't take new approaches, you have to use this old technology."
"I think it's absurd they're doing Orion development at all. It should be done commercially," he said, referring to the name of the lunar spacecraft. Rutan and other panelists also question the importance of space flight at a time when environmental concerns are paramount.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin responded to Rutan's vision in a speech following his panel. "Unlike Rutan, I will continue to think space programs are important," Griffin said.
Of course, Rutan has a big stake in commercial development of spacecraft. As founder and president of Scaled Composites, he develops rockets for future commercial space tourism. Rutan is among a cadre of technology entrepreneurs, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Paypal co-founder Elon Musk and Virgin CEO Richard Branson, who are working on ventures to send people into space.
Rutan designed SpaceShipOne, the rocket that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize by breaking the Earth's atmosphere twice during a set time. And his company is building SpaceShipTwo for Branson's Virgin Galactic, which aims to launch its first commercial flight in 2009. But Scaled Composites recently suffered a tragedy when two people were killed in an explosion at the company's facility in Mojave, Calif.
In his speech, Griffin talked about NASA's budget for the last 50 years, adjusted for inflation. He said that the most money NASA has ever received from the government was not the period during the Apollo missions, but over the 10 years from 1989 to 1998. "So we get more money today than (what was) given the agency during Apollo" (during the 1960s and 1970s.) NASA's budget for 2007 is $14 billion, or about 15 cents a day of a taxpayer's money, according to Griffin.
Part of Rutan's argument against NASA's development program was that after the early 1970s, when astronaut Alan Shepard golfed on the moon, there wasn't "much innovation."
Griffin didn't respond directly to whether or not there is a lack of innovation. But in response to criticism on an earlier panel that NASA's science budget has waned, he said the first decade of NASA's budget was proportionally the same as its most recent budget. During the first 10 years of the space agency, he further clarified, 58 percent of its budget was devoted to human spaceflight, 17 percent to science, 6 percent to aerospace and 10 percent to new technologies. In contrast, in 2006, 62 percent of NASA's budget was earmarked for spaceflight and 32 percent was for space science, he said. Last year, NASA didn't have a budget to develop new technologies.
"There is a mythology that science has been decimated by human spaceflight. That's not right." Griffin said.
He added that the current missions back to the moon and onto Mars by 2035 are sustainable programs, ones that wouldn't likely be stemmed by a change in administrations.
"We have here a program which is affordable, sustainable and which can be highly correlated to historical successes and developments from the past," said Griffin.
Rutan said that the goal of private space tourism is to reduce the cost of space travel and exploration. "If we go through a time period where the focus is on flying the consumer, these 'payloads' who pay to fly and can be reproduced with unskilled labor...with tools around the house," he joked, "there will be a breakthrough to enormous volume."
If it were up to Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer known for building a suborbital rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize, NASA wouldn't be developing a spacecraft to put another man on the moon by 2020. That government mission has already been accomplished, and a repeat performance is "silly," Rutan said during a panel held at California Institute of Technology, CalTech, which runs NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
"Taxpayer-funded NASA should only fund research and not development," Rutan said. "When you spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a manned spacecraft, you're...dumbing down a generation of new, young engineers (by telling them) "No, you can't take new approaches, you have to use this old technology."
"I think it's absurd they're doing Orion development at all. It should be done commercially," he said, referring to the name of the lunar spacecraft. Rutan and other panelists also question the importance of space flight at a time when environmental concerns are paramount.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin responded to Rutan's vision in a speech following his panel. "Unlike Rutan, I will continue to think space programs are important," Griffin said.
Of course, Rutan has a big stake in commercial development of spacecraft. As founder and president of Scaled Composites, he develops rockets for future commercial space tourism. Rutan is among a cadre of technology entrepreneurs, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Paypal co-founder Elon Musk and Virgin CEO Richard Branson, who are working on ventures to send people into space.
Rutan designed SpaceShipOne, the rocket that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize by breaking the Earth's atmosphere twice during a set time. And his company is building SpaceShipTwo for Branson's Virgin Galactic, which aims to launch its first commercial flight in 2009. But Scaled Composites recently suffered a tragedy when two people were killed in an explosion at the company's facility in Mojave, Calif.
In his speech, Griffin talked about NASA's budget for the last 50 years, adjusted for inflation. He said that the most money NASA has ever received from the government was not the period during the Apollo missions, but over the 10 years from 1989 to 1998. "So we get more money today than (what was) given the agency during Apollo" (during the 1960s and 1970s.) NASA's budget for 2007 is $14 billion, or about 15 cents a day of a taxpayer's money, according to Griffin.
Part of Rutan's argument against NASA's development program was that after the early 1970s, when astronaut Alan Shepard golfed on the moon, there wasn't "much innovation."
Griffin didn't respond directly to whether or not there is a lack of innovation. But in response to criticism on an earlier panel that NASA's science budget has waned, he said the first decade of NASA's budget was proportionally the same as its most recent budget. During the first 10 years of the space agency, he further clarified, 58 percent of its budget was devoted to human spaceflight, 17 percent to science, 6 percent to aerospace and 10 percent to new technologies. In contrast, in 2006, 62 percent of NASA's budget was earmarked for spaceflight and 32 percent was for space science, he said. Last year, NASA didn't have a budget to develop new technologies.
"There is a mythology that science has been decimated by human spaceflight. That's not right." Griffin said.
He added that the current missions back to the moon and onto Mars by 2035 are sustainable programs, ones that wouldn't likely be stemmed by a change in administrations.
"We have here a program which is affordable, sustainable and which can be highly correlated to historical successes and developments from the past," said Griffin.
Rutan said that the goal of private space tourism is to reduce the cost of space travel and exploration. "If we go through a time period where the focus is on flying the consumer, these 'payloads' who pay to fly and can be reproduced with unskilled labor...with tools around the house," he joked, "there will be a breakthrough to enormous volume."
Patent law overhaul: Bad for start-ups?
WASHINGTON--Silicon Valley start-ups and independent technologists will suffer if Congress's proposed overhaul of the U.S. patent system succeeds, the brains behind the Segway and Apple's QuickTime video argued Thursday.
The list of companies favoring the proposed Patent Reform Act of 2007, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in a 220 to 175 vote earlier this month, seemingly includes all of today's major tech-sector players--including Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Google, eBay, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon.com and Oracle. But opponents of the bill say a tech-oriented side of the story is getting drowned out by those powerful lobbying forces as politicians press ahead with the most significant patent system changes in decades.
Among the inventors who showed up to deliver that message at a press conference here just steps from the U.S. Capitol building were Dean Kamen, best known for conceiving the Segway, and Steve Perlman, the chief developer of Apple's QuickTime video technology in the 1980s and inventor of WebTV, one of the first TV set-top boxes offering Internet access.
They--along with other members of the Innovation Alliance, a coalition of academic institutions and patent-dependent firms from the manufacturing, biotechnology and nanotechnology world--also planned to pay visits to politicians' offices later that day.
Kamen and Perlman claimed the proposed legislation will devalue patents and discourage investment, by making it easier to challenge patents and more difficult for patent holders to receive the damage awards they believe they deserve in infringement suits. Kamen, for one, said the bill would be bad for anyone like him who holds many patents but does not actually build his own products, leaving that instead to deeper-pocketed companies through licensing arrangements.
"I had learned from all the experts that a troll, which is a bad thing, is somebody who's abusing the patent system, and someone who abuses the patent system is somebody who never actually makes their own products," said Kamen, who runs a company called DEKA Research & Development. "I would sit there thinking, 'Hmm, that sounds awful, that describes me.'"
Joking aside, Kamen said he recognizes that patent system abusers exist, but he suggested the bills in Congress are not the way to go about addressing that issue.
To be sure, the bill that passed the House and a similar version pending in the Senate propose a number of significant changes.
In an attempt to weed out questionable patents, each would set up an out-of-court process within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for challenging recently issued patents.
One of the most contentious components of each bill would also change the way courts award damages to patent holders that win infringement suits, generally basing them on the value of the patented component, not the entire market value of the product. The bills' tech-industry supporters say that's necessary because their products often contain hundreds or even thousands of patented components, creating the potential for inflated settlements or damage awards unless Congress makes those changes.
Kamen and Perlman said they recognize that the U.S. patent system isn't perfect, but they suggested the best course of action is to start by beefing up the number of patent examiners in an attempt to deal with a backlog of more than 600,000 pending applications.
Perlman was particularly animated about the bills' movement, arguing that there has been an utter failure by its sponsors to seek out the perspective of Silicon Valley start-ups. He said Capitol Hill staffers told him they had sought input from eBay, whom they considered representative of the Silicon Valley set, but he scoffed at the idea that anyone would equate the online auction giant with a start-up. (Even he alone owns more than the 25 patents eBay has to its name, he said.)
Larger technology companies backing the patent proposals would be wise to consider the negative impact he and others believe those changes will have on the ability of Silicon Valley start-ups to obtain and enforce their patents, Perlman warned. Smaller venture capital firms have voiced similar concerns to Congress--albeit before a small-business committee with no control over the direction of patent law.
'Part of an ecosystem'
"A lot of the companies that are for the bill depend on the start-up companies that feed them," Perlman said. "We are part of an ecosystem. "They have market power, we don't. If we don't have patents, we cease to exist."
Perlman, who now runs a venture called Rearden Companies that bills itself as an "incubator of art and technologies," knows something about having his inventions scooped up by bigger firms. After all, Microsoft bought his WebTV venture back in 1997.
Although Perlman admitted he was "late to the party" and only found out about the patent reform proposal after it passed the House two weeks ago, others present at the press conference claimed the bill's sponsors have been ignoring the interests of engineers and inventors more generally. (Kamen, for his part, has testified at patent law-related hearings in recent years.)
Keith Grzelak, chairman of the intellectual property committee for IEEE-USA, which represents American electronics and electrical engineers, said his organization has long been aware of the movement toward patent system changes. "We were champing at the bit to have a say," he said. "We were not asked to participate in any of these discussions."
Claims that independent inventors and other stakeholders have been left out of the process aren't accurate, said Shanna Winters, chief counsel to Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the primary sponsor of the House patent bill.
"From the beginning, Mr. Berman reached out to independent inventors to try to get their perspectives and in fact made a number of changes to the bill based on what the independent inventors asked for," she said, adding that an inventor was asked to testify at a hearing about the bill earlier this year but was unable to attend.
Passage of patent law changes this year is hardly a sure thing, although the bills have moved further along than in any previous sessions of Congress. Berman has already acknowledged that the House version isn't perfect and has pledged to continue negotiating further changes. The prospects for the Senate version, which would have to be reconciled with the House bill even if passed, are even less clear.
The list of companies favoring the proposed Patent Reform Act of 2007, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in a 220 to 175 vote earlier this month, seemingly includes all of today's major tech-sector players--including Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Google, eBay, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon.com and Oracle. But opponents of the bill say a tech-oriented side of the story is getting drowned out by those powerful lobbying forces as politicians press ahead with the most significant patent system changes in decades.
Among the inventors who showed up to deliver that message at a press conference here just steps from the U.S. Capitol building were Dean Kamen, best known for conceiving the Segway, and Steve Perlman, the chief developer of Apple's QuickTime video technology in the 1980s and inventor of WebTV, one of the first TV set-top boxes offering Internet access.
They--along with other members of the Innovation Alliance, a coalition of academic institutions and patent-dependent firms from the manufacturing, biotechnology and nanotechnology world--also planned to pay visits to politicians' offices later that day.
Kamen and Perlman claimed the proposed legislation will devalue patents and discourage investment, by making it easier to challenge patents and more difficult for patent holders to receive the damage awards they believe they deserve in infringement suits. Kamen, for one, said the bill would be bad for anyone like him who holds many patents but does not actually build his own products, leaving that instead to deeper-pocketed companies through licensing arrangements.
"I had learned from all the experts that a troll, which is a bad thing, is somebody who's abusing the patent system, and someone who abuses the patent system is somebody who never actually makes their own products," said Kamen, who runs a company called DEKA Research & Development. "I would sit there thinking, 'Hmm, that sounds awful, that describes me.'"
Joking aside, Kamen said he recognizes that patent system abusers exist, but he suggested the bills in Congress are not the way to go about addressing that issue.
To be sure, the bill that passed the House and a similar version pending in the Senate propose a number of significant changes.
In an attempt to weed out questionable patents, each would set up an out-of-court process within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for challenging recently issued patents.
One of the most contentious components of each bill would also change the way courts award damages to patent holders that win infringement suits, generally basing them on the value of the patented component, not the entire market value of the product. The bills' tech-industry supporters say that's necessary because their products often contain hundreds or even thousands of patented components, creating the potential for inflated settlements or damage awards unless Congress makes those changes.
Kamen and Perlman said they recognize that the U.S. patent system isn't perfect, but they suggested the best course of action is to start by beefing up the number of patent examiners in an attempt to deal with a backlog of more than 600,000 pending applications.
Perlman was particularly animated about the bills' movement, arguing that there has been an utter failure by its sponsors to seek out the perspective of Silicon Valley start-ups. He said Capitol Hill staffers told him they had sought input from eBay, whom they considered representative of the Silicon Valley set, but he scoffed at the idea that anyone would equate the online auction giant with a start-up. (Even he alone owns more than the 25 patents eBay has to its name, he said.)
Larger technology companies backing the patent proposals would be wise to consider the negative impact he and others believe those changes will have on the ability of Silicon Valley start-ups to obtain and enforce their patents, Perlman warned. Smaller venture capital firms have voiced similar concerns to Congress--albeit before a small-business committee with no control over the direction of patent law.
'Part of an ecosystem'
"A lot of the companies that are for the bill depend on the start-up companies that feed them," Perlman said. "We are part of an ecosystem. "They have market power, we don't. If we don't have patents, we cease to exist."
Perlman, who now runs a venture called Rearden Companies that bills itself as an "incubator of art and technologies," knows something about having his inventions scooped up by bigger firms. After all, Microsoft bought his WebTV venture back in 1997.
Although Perlman admitted he was "late to the party" and only found out about the patent reform proposal after it passed the House two weeks ago, others present at the press conference claimed the bill's sponsors have been ignoring the interests of engineers and inventors more generally. (Kamen, for his part, has testified at patent law-related hearings in recent years.)
Keith Grzelak, chairman of the intellectual property committee for IEEE-USA, which represents American electronics and electrical engineers, said his organization has long been aware of the movement toward patent system changes. "We were champing at the bit to have a say," he said. "We were not asked to participate in any of these discussions."
Claims that independent inventors and other stakeholders have been left out of the process aren't accurate, said Shanna Winters, chief counsel to Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the primary sponsor of the House patent bill.
"From the beginning, Mr. Berman reached out to independent inventors to try to get their perspectives and in fact made a number of changes to the bill based on what the independent inventors asked for," she said, adding that an inventor was asked to testify at a hearing about the bill earlier this year but was unable to attend.
Passage of patent law changes this year is hardly a sure thing, although the bills have moved further along than in any previous sessions of Congress. Berman has already acknowledged that the House version isn't perfect and has pledged to continue negotiating further changes. The prospects for the Senate version, which would have to be reconciled with the House bill even if passed, are even less clear.
Scientists ponder next 50 years of space exploration
PASADENA, Calif.--In the next 50 years of space exploration, scientists are hopeful that we will find other life in the universe.
Weeks away from the 50th anniversary of space flight, a group of aerospace engineers, space entrepreneurs and astronauts met here Thursday at the California Institute of Technology to reflect on the past and discuss the coming 50 years of space exploration.
The two-day conference, called 50 Years in Space, is marked by the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, astronaut and former U.S. senator, called that event an "intellectual earthquake" for science and the first trigger of interest in space. To be sure, the United States formed NASA in November of the following year; and in 1961, President John F. Kennedy promised that Americans would land on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed the first man on the moon.
More than that milestone, early space flight paved the way for decades of technological innovation and scientific discovery and brought about a multibillion-dollar space industry. Scientists believe that new technology and knowledge about the universe will easily push us further in the years to come.
"The first 50 years have given us a new view of the physical places in the universe, new knowledge; and obviously new technology was essential," Ed Stone, director emeritus of NASA's research center, the Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech, said during a morning keynote speech.
"An unexpected diversity in the universe has given us a new view. That diversity promises that there is so much more to be discovered and beckons us to expand new frontiers into space."
Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at JPL and professor at Caltech, added that considering that all of the matter on Earth comprises only 4 percent of what's in the universe, "the next 50 years may well reveal (whether) we have company."
Stone named five frontiers of space: physical, knowledge, technology (developing the capability to travel to space), human and applications. "In the last 50 years, we've made remarkable progress in exploring and pushing those frontiers," Stone said. He gave some examples of new views of the universe brought about by work in those areas. Through the Cassini mission to Saturn, for example, scientists have seen plumes erupting from the surface, posing the question, "Where is this energy coming from?" Stone asked.
In another example, the Mars rover mission, which landed in 2004, has yielded findings from crater bedrocks that indicate there was once a vast amount of water on the planet. "Here on Earth, wherever you find water you find life," he said.
Gentry Lee, chief engineer for the JPL's Planetary Flight Systems Directorate and a science fiction author, said the changes in his profession as space engineer during the past 50 years have been dramatic, especially considering there was no such profession when he was a child.
He attributed one of the biggest changes to computers. At the beginning of the space program, for example, all simulations were done through hardware. Now, 99 percent of flight simulations are done through software, he said. For the Viking robotic mission to Mars in 1976, for example, the team might have run simulations of entry and landing on Mars all night on a mainframe computer. Now it would take "10 minutes on my desktop," said Lee, who worked on the Viking project for 12 years.
"Where the computer has been a magnificent tool, there is a downside, too," Lee said. "Often the people using the computer programs didn't have a hand in building them, so we as engineers must remember that the computer and processes are tools there to guide us, and not the engineering substance itself."
The one common denominator between now and 50 years ago, he said, is the human factor. "The right processes, tools and computers are not enough, you must have the right people who can tie it all together and reduce the risks," Lee said.
Weeks away from the 50th anniversary of space flight, a group of aerospace engineers, space entrepreneurs and astronauts met here Thursday at the California Institute of Technology to reflect on the past and discuss the coming 50 years of space exploration.
The two-day conference, called 50 Years in Space, is marked by the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, astronaut and former U.S. senator, called that event an "intellectual earthquake" for science and the first trigger of interest in space. To be sure, the United States formed NASA in November of the following year; and in 1961, President John F. Kennedy promised that Americans would land on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed the first man on the moon.
More than that milestone, early space flight paved the way for decades of technological innovation and scientific discovery and brought about a multibillion-dollar space industry. Scientists believe that new technology and knowledge about the universe will easily push us further in the years to come.
"The first 50 years have given us a new view of the physical places in the universe, new knowledge; and obviously new technology was essential," Ed Stone, director emeritus of NASA's research center, the Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech, said during a morning keynote speech.
"An unexpected diversity in the universe has given us a new view. That diversity promises that there is so much more to be discovered and beckons us to expand new frontiers into space."
Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at JPL and professor at Caltech, added that considering that all of the matter on Earth comprises only 4 percent of what's in the universe, "the next 50 years may well reveal (whether) we have company."
Stone named five frontiers of space: physical, knowledge, technology (developing the capability to travel to space), human and applications. "In the last 50 years, we've made remarkable progress in exploring and pushing those frontiers," Stone said. He gave some examples of new views of the universe brought about by work in those areas. Through the Cassini mission to Saturn, for example, scientists have seen plumes erupting from the surface, posing the question, "Where is this energy coming from?" Stone asked.
In another example, the Mars rover mission, which landed in 2004, has yielded findings from crater bedrocks that indicate there was once a vast amount of water on the planet. "Here on Earth, wherever you find water you find life," he said.
Gentry Lee, chief engineer for the JPL's Planetary Flight Systems Directorate and a science fiction author, said the changes in his profession as space engineer during the past 50 years have been dramatic, especially considering there was no such profession when he was a child.
He attributed one of the biggest changes to computers. At the beginning of the space program, for example, all simulations were done through hardware. Now, 99 percent of flight simulations are done through software, he said. For the Viking robotic mission to Mars in 1976, for example, the team might have run simulations of entry and landing on Mars all night on a mainframe computer. Now it would take "10 minutes on my desktop," said Lee, who worked on the Viking project for 12 years.
"Where the computer has been a magnificent tool, there is a downside, too," Lee said. "Often the people using the computer programs didn't have a hand in building them, so we as engineers must remember that the computer and processes are tools there to guide us, and not the engineering substance itself."
The one common denominator between now and 50 years ago, he said, is the human factor. "The right processes, tools and computers are not enough, you must have the right people who can tie it all together and reduce the risks," Lee said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)