Slashdot Mirror
Armadillo Aero One Step Closer To Space
RobertB-DC writes "The folks at Armadillo Aerospace have taken another step toward the X-Prize, dropping their re-entry vehicle from 2000 feet with no major problems noted. As usual, the Armadillo crew documented the event with text, pictures and video, and the story is also covered by Space.com (though without as many cool technical details). It's a bumpy ride, though -- instruments recorded some 10 G's on touchdown."
I'm not flamebaiting here, I'm generally curious:
/.'d with this website that they keep hi-res pics and videos on?
/.-hit might cause.
With John C's cash, don't you think he could afford some bandwidth?
I mean, seriously, how many times has he been
He doesn't have to have a monster monthly bill to suffice, but at the very least you would imagine he could utilize a hoster who could provide the type of bandwidth a
I love the work, the ideas, the sheer gall of the project, but damn, why is it everytime something interesting is added I have to wait days to see any of it?
Whatever. I'll just watch the videos and ooh and ahh. Everything he types makes me feel like a retard.
:-).
You think that's an accident?
I am not for dumbing anything down, but there is a certain class of well-educated well-spoken articulate people who go out of thier way to subjugate and dominate others via their written and spoken words. Sometimes it's subtle, sometime's its glaring.
The worst offenders here are science people, followed closely by technical people. Mix those together, and you get Carmack. He is a brilliant guy, and I lot of what I've seen him write directed to the general public seems to be overly complex.
The quote you provide is a good example. He could have said: "Our scaled down 2'-diameter model is almost ready to be tested. We changed the throttling to use servo valves instead of the solenoid valves we used up to now. Drogue cannon stabilization after burnout is ready to be tested, as well as the altitude-aware canopy (parachute) release system. We should be able to fly the model transonic -- that is at speeds approaching or slightly above the speed of sound. We would have flown it by now but we have problems with the propellant."
Instead, he used unnecessary jargon, made complex technical decisions seem trivial (ie, "of course"), and used long complex sentences alternated against short sparse sentences. All of it adds up to someone who is way to comfortable writing with the goal of creating a specific result regardless of content. People often do this in business proposals, contracts, and editorials. The idea is to create a feeling of the writer being correct, smart, or "on top of things" without examining the content of the message.
It's okay to write technical for a technical crowd. And it's okay to write with unnecessary "flourish" if you are trying to impress yourself or pass a college-level writing class. In the real world, it's best to write for real humans. Write what you mean, write it like it would be spoken, and write it for easy comprehension. Just my two cents on something that has always bugged me about Carmack.
That said, Carmack is to programming as Jesus is to Christians