Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

After giving it much thought, I've decided I rather like gathering links and other short items into lists rather than publishing each as a separate entry. Don't know why, and I may change my mind. But for the time being, I'm continuing the ancient Contra custom.

• While in Chicago over Christmas, we watched a movie I wholeheartedly condemn: Knocked

Comments

[jetfx]

The article points out that apparently the Buran was designed with a number of the Shuttle's flaws in mind, with that particular Russian focus on adaptability and reliability.

While the Soviet space program suffered from awful organizational problems, like being subservient to the military and inflexible 5 year plans, as well as a habit of the Kremlin to play all the departments off one another - their technology was often better than NASA's. Not more advanced, but better suited. The old joke about the Americans spending millions on developing a pen to write in space while the Soviets just used a pencil has some truth.

For example, the cheap and reliable Soyuz launch system has been in use since the mid 60's with some modification and their hasn't been a fatality since 1971. And the Russians are planning on using the thing for the foreseeable future.

If only NASA could borrow some Russian commonsense on the engineering front, rather than building the most advanced expensive thing they can. At least they're starting to contract