The principle of orthogonal design is something I learned in CS, but hardly anyone mentions any more. The idea boils down to building software parts in a consistent way such that can be combined and re-used to form new things. The way you can accomplish this is by having very few rules. The more "syntaxy" a language is, the less orthogonal it is.
Which year Lexus RX are you referring to? The Lexus RX SUV has been around a long time, and was originally based on a car platform which I believe was the Toyota Camry / Lexus ES platform.
Nope, just fat fingered that one while typing up my response. I'll keep you in mind if I need someone to check my posts for typos in the future though!
We have telescope technology to thank. The quality and the number of telescopes is constantly increasing. We don't just look in the sky any more, we watch the same spot over time and look for changes. We are seeing more spots, more time, and more changes. An investment in telescopes is an investment in physics.
I love that fact that there are "usual procedures" when it comes to humans going back and forth to our 20-year-old SPACE STATION!
Maybe we don't have the space program of our dreams. But we've certainly accomplished the goal of having "routine" operations in space over a long period of time. How much have humans learned in that time!
Without heroes the public will turn against it and not give a damn about robots and computers. I think we need manned space programs to keep the momentum going. Otherwise everyone will be like "why are we in space when the homeless don't have homes". I know it's stupid logic but that the way the masses think quite often.
Most people I know were, and still are, pretty excited about Spirit and Opportunity. Those were exciting robots at the time. Especially the fact that they worked for so long! 14 YEARS. The design is validated, let's have an assembly line cranking them out and tweaking them.
I love that fact that there are "usual procedures" when it comes to humans going back and forth to our 20-year-old SPACE STATION!
Next, we'll have real-life gritty action heroes who admit to "making it up as I go along?" (Actually, that was Neil Armstrong when we manually piloted the first lunar landing.)
Nothing in space in usual or "safe". There is always a relatively large chance that you can end up in a fireball relative to say getting on an airplane or driving to work. I wouldn't ever take space for granted at this point.
For more reading and discussion on this topic: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1035...