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Um, no.

Some parts have sprayed on ablatives, but the underside had tiles and the leading edge of the damaged wing was composed of a carbon composite.

Google has plenty of references.

What you're talking about is simply the support struts for the External tank, not the orbiter underside.

SB

There was a recent slashdot post about Microsoft's patent on the autogenerated TODO list in an IDE. They filed in 2000. Well, as usual, it's pretty easy to find prior art for something like this, if you just search google on the grand-daddy of IDEs.

I was so confident, I went with "feeling lucky". Sure 'nuff, the very first hit, automated TODO lists in 1999, From Tulane University.

Sorry for the late response, it's been a long weekend...

Yes, I saw those quotes. But those are statements by third parties, not support per se. There are better links, like this one for support purposes (and see below )

That said, I have some problems with Melosh (and Kring/Durda)'s models. For one thing (as can be clearly seen in the gif on the link I provided) they postulated wildfires from impact debris in an area that at the time included very little land; and we have no way of verifying the computer model that they used for impact debris distribution from geological data.

Hence, my reaction to it; and sorry, I didn't mean to berate the messenger. :)

In any case, I've read about Melosh's work before, and I find the mathematical models he used somewhat suspect - but I'll withhold further judgement on that until I can obtain a copy of his paper (which a friend of mine is mailing me this week, got interested enough to request it rather than reading the thirdparty-etc abstracts.) Like I said, the math is tortuous; and a lot of the effects of those impact energies are not as well understood as we'd like.

I am not saying that it won't All I am saying is that debris will fall at the antipode in a grearter concentration than other distant locales. Are you saying that none of it will reach the anitpode? Are you also saying that none will reach orbit?

Um, no to either question. As to whether debris in an earth impact would have a concentration at the antipode is still pretty much conjecture backed by a couple of computer models. Personally, I disagree with it; at least I don't think (not having seen his paper yet I can't make a stronger case than that) that he's modeled all the factors correctly, such as impact obliquity, high-altitude wind factors, gravitational variations effecting debris suborbit trajectory, suborbital atmospheric variations, etc, blah blah blah :).

Of *course* some of it will reach the antipode. Whether there is a relevant concentration there is what I debate; it's not proven to my satisfaction, not yet, anyway. Orbital mechanics postulates that a portion of the debris may land there, but I think I've already dealt with that.

As to whether it will reach orbit, it's pretty easy to show that a fair amount (10% or so according to the models) will not only reach orbit but be ejected from the Earth-Moon system entirely (and that 10% figure of course depends a great deal on the impact obliquity and whether or not it impacts deep water or land, and also on the impact energies - a 10-20 km body is borderline in that respect, additionally, impact velocity is a lot more important; KE=mv^2, and we don't have *any* even semisolid figures as to either.)

I guess what got me about your post was that you linked to a couple of sites that merely mentioned the antipodal debris effect, and not to one that was from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
The reason I talked about the shockwave effect a lot is because extremely good evidence for it has been found on other planets (and possibly even here, the Permian event and the Deccan trap eruptions are a good example), and I feel that shockwave concentration in the K-T event probably accounts for a lot more geophysical effects than debris concentration - and yes, I'm aware that some circumstantial evidence has been found for debris concentration effects on the moon (fascinating reading in itself, scroll about halfway down), but impact debris distribution on the earth is going to be entirely different than it will be on a smaller body with no atmosphere.

It was also late, and I was tired, and probably not thinking clearly :)

Anyway, having googled it a bit, I'd sugges

Sigh.

How soon kids forget.

It's "Nanu Nanu".

SB

Since about 100 million tons of regolith must be heated to about 1400 deg. F to get one ton of helium 3,,,4000 tons of hydrogen, 10,000 tons of nitrogen, 20,000 tons of carbon and 54,000 tons of sulfur will also be obtained.

The regolith contains 4 thousand times as much hydrogen as helium3

Get your own facts straight.

Oh, and nitrogen, even. Useful in greenhouses and as atmosphere mix :)

SB

Google is your friend

Being rather busy at the moment...

SB

/me removes tinfoil hat and puts it on the workbench for further study. There *must* be some connection, right?

SB

These guys don't need no stinking 32K. They work with only 4K.

Interesting, and I can't remember myself.

One of the animations on these sites might help. I'm looking thru them now.

As slow as plate tectonics changes are, it's not likely there was a lot of difference in continental positions between the two. IIRC the Indian ocean is somewhat younger than the KT boundary, but as I said, I'm not totally sure.

In any case, the images of Keller's crater location *do* have the classic look of an impact crater; inner and outer rings, etc. My real questions about her claim are about the Chicxulub dating (easy enough to confirm, is the iridium impact layer newer or older than Chicxulub), her dating of her new crater find (always problematic until more confirmation from cores).

Fascinating, nonetheless. Of course it's entirely possible that whichever one was first started the extinction, and the second impact was the coup de grace (especially given the error bar in dating geological formations that old - I *think* it's around a 100K years, but correct me if I'm wrong, please, I don't remember exactly)

Disclaimer: IAAAG (I Am A Amateur Geologist)
SB