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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."
first post from me, matt
^ First post, I just realised.
;-)
Also, inertia instead of "inertion" obviously.
Mod parent up funny, mod this post down offtopic, karma unharmed.
With their carcasses split in two and the blood boiling on the hot Texas highway, the stench of these evolutionary wrong turns rotting is enough to make a man wish his face were torn off so that he wouldn't have to smell the dead critter.
Good luck on not crashing and burning, Armadillo Aerospace!
I have been pwned because my
It's a shame to see such a proud shoe worn by someone who never runs.
I shead a tear for NewBalance.
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?
Nighttime construction on State Route 51 will close the freeway's northbound lanes between Highland Street and Colter Street starting tonight.
The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) says northbound SR 51 will be closed between Highland Street and Colter Street tonight (July 8) and Wednesday night (July 9) from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. each night while crews make drainage improvements.
Drivers should use 16th Street as an alternate while the freeway is closed.
The following traffic restrictions on SR 51 also will occur tonight (July 8), Wednesday night (July 9) and Thursday night (July 10) from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. each night:
~ Northbound SR 51 will be narrowed to one lane between Thomas Road and Highland Street.
~ Southbound SR 51 will be narrowed to two lanes between Shea Boulevard and Northern Avenue.
~ Southbound SR 51 will be narrowed to one lane between Bethany Home Road and Thomas Road.
The westbound I-10 ramps to northbound SR 51 and eastbound Loop 202 will be closed Wednesday night (July 9) and Thursday night (July 10) from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m.
The construction work is part of the $75 million SR 51 project to add HOV lanes in each direction between I-10 and Shea Boulevard, higher sound walls, rubberized asphalt pavement and operational improvements to the freeway.
SR 51 construction information is available at www.SR51.com or by calling the project hotline at 602-248-3098.
Ames Construction, Inc., of Burnsville, Minnesota, and Edward Kraemer and Sons, Inc., of Phoenix are scheduled to complete construction next spring (2004).
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