Slashdot Mirror
Shuttle Columbia Flight Recorder Recovered In Texas
ctar writes "ABC News reports that the space shuttle Columbia's flight recorder has been found in Hemphill Texas. ABC says: "The finding today came after NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said investigators may never find a single definitive cause for the destruction of Columbia""
Hopefully this will solve the problem resolutely.
I dont like it when people think about what I think (say). Rather I try to make them think like I think.
And since it is night time in the United States, I will just presume that this box wasn't found JUST NOW.
So take your day-old news and shove it. We've got a war to debate.
I have been pwned because my
Perhaps today is not in vain. *hopeful*
Informatus Technologicus
While this is interestng news, it's pretty untimely.
My guess is that the Slashdot editors are using this article to push the Iraq debate one topic lower, and hopefully reduce the traffic...
1 hour, 900 posts. Holy crap.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
It was a found a week or so ago and its identity confirmed today.
Here More information than the press blurb in the article
I hope you die painfully and alone.
The best idea I've heard for building a reliable space transport system:
- Publish the entire design or the proposed shuttle and all suport systems online, with wikiesque interface to collect comments and allow people to highlight sections, post RFCs, etc.
- Have a national lottery, where every month someone (no age limit) is sellected to go up on it. You are not allowed to refuse the honour.
- Part of the paid staff is in charge of moderating the on line discussion. If there is ever a fatality that could have been prevented by acting on information/insight gathered from the public review, the entire paid staff is fired. No warning, no exceptions, no excuses, just like what happened to the people who died.
-- MarkusQThe shuttle's recorder is pretty much redundant, since they send everything down in realtime anyway. It's unlikely that this will tell us anything new, IMHO.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
I always find it interesting how many more comments appear on articles that have nothing to do with science, but still have some kind of generic American appeal. Considering the current time on the East coast (just after midnight), it will be interesting to see how many posts it has a couple of days from now.
Note to self: Check out what data recovery firm is doing work for NASA on the flight recorder. Keep in mind for any future problems. Anyone that can resurrect a recording device that's been blasted from an exploding spacecraft into the top of the atmosphere, subjected to incredible, rock-melting heat, and then slammed into the ground at terminal velocity can probably handle anything.
May we never see th
The recorder, sources told ABCNEWS, starts 10 minutes before Columbia's descent and measures the ship's temperature, aerodynamic pressure and other data. The information would not have been transmitted to NASA mission control during the flight.
Emphasis mine...
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It
You debate the wrong issues. Linux is a poor architecture for a Kernel, and in the long run, BSD will be accepted. Moreover, the license is better.
email it to yourself but never pop it.
let your ISP worry about that shit.
I fail to see why this was moderated troll.
Who was I supposed to be trolling? Are you saying that there are a large number of people reading /. that 1) are involved in the design of the space shuttle and 2) want to keep the system the way it is, so that more people will die, and that I'm therefore trolling them?
And can you give me an example of the "predictable responses" this is supposed to illicit?
Even if you meant it in the less common sense ("a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial") can you explain what is wrong with the idea of opening up the shuttle design process? If an institution is failing to do its job and people are dying as a consequence, one of the best ways to fix the problem is to enable a large number of people to see (in detail) what is going on, motivate them to care, and motivate the system to listen. Bridge design (to name just one example) improved dramatically when these three conditions were met (large number of people study the designs, they care because they and people they care about use the bridges, and companies that build bad bridges don't prosper). You may disagree but that doesn't mean I'm a troll!
I suppose getting moderated "troll" for suggesting a way to fix problems before someone dies (instead of forming a commitee to investigate each tragedy as it happens) is better than getting moderated "offtopic" for responding to the article instead of to the blather of all the people who didn't read it, but it's just as anoying.
-- MarkusQ
I was skimming sci.space.shuttle last night. There had been a general "no flight recorders" statement about the shuttle by the more authoritative contributors to the group ever since this discussion on the launch began. Then this news came up.
It turns out that these flight recorders were done for Columbia and Challenger, and dropped from subsequent shuttles, since telemetry was deemed sufficiently reliable. Then everyone forgot about these OXE recorders, until one was found.
There was some mention about some other recorders that could yield useful information, but how that fits into the "no flight recorders" statement, I don't understand. I can see the point on the OXE recorder. There was some discussion that a data vs bandwidth choice has to be made on telemetry, and that more complete data can be found on recorders. I'd think there'd be a similar data vs tape space decision on a recorder, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I am going to pretend you are serious too.
America used to have a conscription program, where young adult males were forced to serve in the Armed Forces. It wasn't very popular.
Babies and 103 year old grannies take medicines. Would you advocate drafting random people, including babies and 103 year old grannies in to drug trials.
Leo Szilard , Atomic pioneer, gave up Physics after participating in the development of the Atomic Bomb in World War 2, He had a suggestion for how to react to the preseence of Nuclear weapons.
His suggestion was an alternative to drafting 1 million young men, and wasting a year of productivity, putting them in the Armed Forces, and spending a huge fraction of the Nation's revenue building expensive weapons for them. He was still going to draft them, but rather than wasting their time in the Armed Forces, he suggested the USA and the USSR merely exchange hostages.
Each country would be responsible for feeding, housing, and putting said hostages to work, within agreed upon limits.
If one of the countries attacked the other, the attacked country was authorized to kill some of all of their hostages.
One of the long term advantages of Szilard's plan was, if Soviet hostages were billeted in American homes, and vice versa, hostages returning after their hitch would have a much better understanding of the other Nation's people and culture. They would have friends over there, maybe would have fallen in love. All of which would make it a lot harder to imagine launching a nuclear exchange.
Why did I bring up Szilard? His conscription program is unconventional, like MarkusQ's. But I think it held a lot more merit.
Why did I bring up Szilard? His conscription program is unconventional, like MarkusQ's. But I think it held a lot more merit.
I would agree. He was, after all, a genius, as opposed to me, some random guy repeating (and quite likely misquoting) the best idea he's heard. It wasn't even my idea, just something I overheard in a bull session between some engineers (note the title of my original post).
So how can the idea be improved? Instead of a draft, have a lottery maybe? So you have to pay a buck for a chance to go up? No one goes against their will, but knowing that your friends and family might play would involve even thouse who don't play. That would still create a lot of interested parties, though perhaps biasing the sample towards the more optimistic. It took me less than thirty seconds to come up with that patch; doubtlessly there are even better alternatves. Any suggestions?
-- MarkusQ
The engineering required to remove said tape and play it back on a different set of heads is much less complicated, touchy, and error-prone than that of say, a hard disk.
Attempts at falsifying / otherwise fudging the data would be more easily apparent, IMHO.
Because it's linear, concussion might be apparent in the recording, but it won't cause it go completely haywire.
The tape medium itself is not too rigid, but put inside a toughened metal box (I don't know what they're made of) and you're right, we shouldn't be too surprised so many people still use tape. Even if a small part of it is damaged, it probably won't have destroyed the whole recording, unlike many other all-or-nothing storage media.