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NASA's Foam Test Offers Lesson in Kinetic Energy
Puneet submitted a followup story on the foam test that NASA conducted to get an idea of what sort of damage could be caused by foam falling off the shuttle fuel tank at launch. As it turns out: a lot.
... could be possible terorist weapons :)
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
Foam fell off my shelf the other week.
Should I be worried?
foam and southern florida to science. I tend to get flashbacks of spring break.
It is pretty obvious that these guys are geeks yes?
__
Cheap reseller hosting Action figures dragon
"That's when it came home to me what 1/2mv2 means"
This guy is a rocket scientist? I guess that's one stereotype debunked.
I didn't know foam could do that much dammage. I should be more careful before I go to Belegarth Practice this weekend.
Amazing these people. Don't we all remember the ol' mv^2 equation? You shoot almost anything with sufficient force it's going to cause damage. To make matters worse I guess the real problem is that the foam gets even harder due to the cold that it's insulating (go figure).
:-}
Next we'll have terrorists near the shuttle launch with slingshots...
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
First there's L. Ron Hubbard, now G. Scott Hubbard? Maybe the problem is that they were using Scientology for the first mid-mission damage assessment instead of science? It's all becoming clear now...
You must work for NASA!!!
1 GRAM at 20,000 MPH instead of 1 gram at 31280 Kilometers
1 KG at 20 MPH instead of 1 kilogram at 32.18 Kilometers
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
OK.
Yep, mine's fine.
You're right on the falling penny issue, at least according to this empirical report. Isn't it nice when someone actually tries the experiment rather than accepting the conventional wisdom?
:)
It's intuitively correct, but I should warn that the physics of sleeker objects like cellphones are quite different, judging from the one dropped on me while descending a staircase last Memorial Day. Fortunately for me it was a glancing blow -- the phone shattered after deflecting from my head. Apparently a cellphone in freefall is not accompanied by an apology, but I took satisfaction enough in the destruction of the phone.
ISS is unreliable, use apache
On Slashdot, the appropriate reference measurement is "how many Libraries of Congress."
I quote from the article:
"That's when it came home to me what 1/2mv2 means"
That is a very scary thing to read!!
These tests were conducted in Houston, They forgot the simple truth that everything is bigger in Texas. So, the great-biggest-on-Gods-green-earth-Texas-style foram used in test was probably much too large and tough compared to the wimpy-geriatric-I-am-here-because-I-retired Florida foam. Again, NASA engineers do not get the units right. Sigh. :)
my two cents
Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap