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I'm not impressed unless you can trace it back to the average width of a Roman horse's ass.

I suspect you've all seen this e-mail forward, but it was basically what this article reminded me of. http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html

Reminds me of this old story of how the design of the Space Shuttle was influenced by the width of a horses butt

You mean two horses' asses.

I don't quite get the big deal here

Because MS will set the specs. Since some customers will only buy Windows, all the hardware manufacturers will build within those specs. And those specs will be with us for the duration of Windows 7.

Why is it a big deal?

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site so they must be US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) or 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

I see, but why did the English build them like that?

Because the first railway lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Well, why did they use that gauge in England?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did their wagons use that odd wheel spacing?

Because, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads. Because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads?

The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The Roman roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts?

The original ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by the wheels of Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.

So even though we could've designed a better Space Shuttle, because of the limitation of Roman war chariots, the boosters are not optimal. Win 7 vs. netbooks might not be so extreme, but it's still a force that's going to insure the hardware isn't designed the best it could be... It'll be designed towards the Win 7 specs. (With thanks to http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html)

Which directly relates to the space shuttle.

Do you have any clue how little the naysayers know? You can be intentionally arrogant all you want, but stop pretending you have even bothered to check any facts at all.

Got yelled at in the spring for standing on the sidewalk casting a shadow causing the sidewalk to cool causing the ice to freeze on the sidewalk. Noted that in spite of my shadow, the trees budding out and the end of studed snow tires on cars. Was accused of not reading a thermometor.

After having read said thermometor showing 30 degrees above freezing, but droping because it is evening, shook head and moved on.

Yes I have looked at the sunspot cycle. I have looked at the SOHO records. I have looked at the polar ice caps on mars back a few years. (I even provided a link from National Geographic, not Fox News) Being accused of following a conspiriocy theory instead of the facts is a WTF??? moment.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=59498
http://calspace.ucsd.edu/Mars99/docs/library/scien ce/climate_history/polar_caps1.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/mission_overview.ht ml
http://www.astrodigital.org/mars/timeline1.html
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ/themes/display.cf m?Item=polarice
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://plan etary.chem.tufts.edu/MarsPolarCap.jpg&imgrefurl=ht tp://planetary.chem.tufts.edu/chronos.html&h=225&w =290&sz=10&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=TYj58QRSbsjd4M :&tbnh=89&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar %2Bice%2Bhistory%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%2 6safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www. cosmiclight.com/imagegalleries/images/space/mars-p olarcap.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cosmiclight.com/i magegalleries/mars.htm&h=359&w=600&sz=16&hl=en&sta rt=9&um=1&tbnid=gBBAUkXCr9kpWM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=135&p rev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar%2Bice%2Bhistory%26s vnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
NASA's and the Hubble Space Telescope images spanning from October 1996 until March 1997, show the viritable felting of Mar's polar ice cap, in just 6 months... Such an event would have been utterly devastating on our planet, making the Tsunami seem like a needle in a haystack in comparison.

For different flavors of the story, see here, here, and here.

The link for those that are asking about the boosters: http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html

(I didn't know and had to look it up, myself).

Layne

They were people who were often not likely to know about a bracket-matching option in an editor or about code indenting, for example. But they were still legitimate users.

WTF? So just because some users couldn't figure out how to turn on parenthesis or bracket matching in their products, you ended up with the mess that is XML?

There you have it people, straight for the horse's mouth: our civilization is actually based on random poorly thought-out decisions made by a few almost-ignorant fellows.

If we take into account how lame most of the software products are, (for example: how many holes there are in C-based apps, how lame XML is, how horrible WIN32 is, how bad socket APIs are, how complex J2EE is etc), then we ought to be ashamed of ourselves as humanity...and of course with such badly designed software, the sky is not the limit...

While not binary compatible, the 8086 was a 16-bit improvement of the 8-bit 8080, which was compatible with the 8008, which AFAIK wasn't too far from the 4-bit 4040 and the 4004... and that's why the space shuttle's boosters are sized according to a horse's rear end and a 64-bit quad core CPU architecture that is influenced by the first 4-bit microcontroller.

http://www.astrodigital.org/mars/mission_past.html They need to update their site. The 2003 rover missions to Mars are no longer "future"; they belong in the "successful" category.

Therefore, the article summary really isn't the affront to history that you make it out to be.

It is. The Russions were there first. Doesn't matter how many seconds later their craft died. See here for a nice overview of missions to Mars. Took me a while to find it since NASA doesn't talk about anyone else but themselves... Not exactly rewriting history but fishy nonetheless.

Let's not forget this. Most every vehicle's width still relies on the width of a horse's ass.

One of the space products has been Microspheres several magnitudes more precise than those made on earth. Other of the NASA Microgravity projects can lead directly to ultrapure chip development for use in, for example, pinhead size medical and scientific gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers.

Because the microgravity should allow for high chip yield and high quality, the remaining issue is cost of production.

Allowing for $10,000 per Kg (source) for a mature launch/return system like the Saturn 5, Delta, or Titan series, a 100 Kg furnace containing 10 Kg of product would cost $1,000,000 to orbit. If the output is 0.01 gram chips at 95% yield, that gives you 950,000 chips. If you can sell them for a bit over $1.05 per chip, you're in the money. At only $5000/Kg, you are way ahead!

The medical market alone for $5-10 one-shot broad spectrum biochemical testers would easily absorb the 10 million-plus that could be produced with monthly launches.

1. Insert sample into tester
2. Plug tester into USB/Firewire port
3. Read results from software support package
4. (Profit!)

Zero-G is a commonly accepted term.

That's because Zero-G is NOT Zero Gravity. Why is that so hard to understand?

http://www.aoe.vt.edu/~cdhall/Space/archives/00074 1.html
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy994 67.htm
http://www.astrodigital.org/space/zgr.html

Sigh, skydiving is ***NOTHING*** like freefall

If you say so. Honestly, you do get complete free fall up until terminal velocity is reached. Not necessarily as long as this ride, but it definitely happens. Same thing with amusement park drop towers. Terminal velocity usually isn't reached by the time they begin the braking procedure.

The first site talks about launching a nuclear powered factory to mars to produce methane-based rocket fuel.

Methane is a LOUSY rocket fuel.

Does it say it can't be used as a rocket fuel? No, it's not ideal, but it's much easier to produce on Mars, and it has been used as a rocket propellant before. Have you ever heard the saying, the best is the enemy of the good? Sometimes you can use a merely good enough solution rather than wait for a technically superior one. Or do you think we should wait to develop anti-gravity first?

Well no. The NTP engine was NOT developed to near-flight status. It was never physically constructed, let alone tested. The operation of this device violates most nuclear test ban treaties, and operating one withing the Van Allen belt would eventually contaminate the Earth's surface with nuclear material.

The only nuclear propulsion system which of necessity would contaminate its surroundings is Orion. But NTP (eg Nerva) uses a nuclear reactor to expel any propellant you like (best with hydrogen though). The propellant in the basic design does get somewhat contaminated, but this can be eliminated using modfied designs. (BTW, that "almost humerous" site you mention is NASA's. Of course, you're smarter than they are ...) And FYI they did build and fire test rigs on the ground which showed that engineering-wise the principle is sound, but did not get a chance to test it in space before the program was cancelled.

Even with this wonderous (but never actually built) form of propulsion, you merely cut down the amount of fuel. It still takes 6 months to get there because any faster or slower and you are increasing the distance to be traversed. Indeed the one study still has the same travel times I was talking about EVEN WITH THE NUCLEAR ENGINE.

Um, and so? Is there some law of physics which says a trip has to be made within a certain number of days? Why are you so hung up on the length of the trip? (Yes, I've read your original post about putting the astronauts to sleep and whatnot. I'm not sure why you think these issues are showstoppers when nobody in the field seems to.) And why do you think cutting down on the amount of fuel is a trivial concern? The more fuel you carry, the more fuel you have to carry to push THAT around. The point is to make the spacecraft smaller, lighter and CHEAPER. That's why we haven't gone to Mars, because every proposed mission from von Braun onwards has come with a $500 billion price tag attached to build some massive spacecraft, not because its "damn near impossible". Zubrin's plan can get it done much cheaper.

BTW, your "because any faster or slower and you are increasing the distance to be traversed" is silly. The standard 260 day travel time is the Hohmann minimum energy transfer orbit. If you burn more energy and go faster, you can indeed get there a lot quicker (you'll just have to burn even more to match orbits when you get there).

I don't get people like you. We can't do something right now, therefore it's impossible or not worth the attempt. With an ounce of imagination and historical awareness, you'd see how ridiculous this is.