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Apollo 13 Engineers to be Honored
sconeu writes "Yahoo! News is carrying a story that the engineers who helped save the crew of Apollo 13 will be honored by GlobalSpec.
The article mentions the jury rigged air scrubbers, and gives duct tape its due." Here is our coverage of the 35th anniversary.
An inanimate carbon rod
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
Duct tape is like The Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it's used to bind the universe together.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
No criticism to the Apollo 13 engineers. What they did was amazing. But what's this story got to do with them?
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Now we just have to figure out how to use duct tape to convert from english to metric units.
...why the air scrubbers were different shapes in the first place? Was it because of an engineering reason (room/volume to fit into) or because two different teams were working on the designs of the two modules? Seems daft that on essentially the same spacecraft, there are two devices that do the same job with different designs. It's always bothered me...
That aside, it is good to see these guys being recognised.
I knew they didn't get a fair trial...
Bravo to them and the Apollo 13 crew. Well done!
Too lazy to create a sig...
Duct Tape == Sticky backed plastic
Val Singleton - you shaped my childhood!
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
No engineering project is complete unless it's held together by copious amounts of duct tape. No exceptions.
Jury-rigged or Jerry-rigged are both valid with slightly different meanings http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/mifjrrybltjryrggd.shtm l
Congratulations to the Apollo 13 engineers.
They should do something like this every year. They have the Grammies, Emmys, etc., why not the Nerdies? They could use Slashdot sections as the categories.
Because a quick search of bartelby.com would let you know that "jerry-rig" and "jury-rig" are valid terms, with "jerry-rig" implying shoddier work. Make sure you're right before you flame next time.
Are you insane? The little bastards are destructive enough without Blue Peter equipping them with duct tape tanks and other military goodies.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
"One thing a Southern boy will never say is, 'I don't think duct tape will fix it.'"
That's so cool, but obviously means I'll never want to visit the South without my own personal surgeon.
For that kind of industrial strength goodness you need gaffer tape.
I've seen doors hinged on that stuff alone, it leaves duct tape for dead.
Congratulations!
"plastic bags, cardboard and duct tape"
I shall go nowhere without them.
You have been warned.
No. It's "jury rigged" and "jerry built".
"Jury rigged" implies a kludge that allows you to survive (say, if your ship got dismasted, or something). "Jerry built" applies mostly to extremely poorly built houses (the kind that has mortar made of flour paste).
What a long, strange trip it's been.
This was on cnn.com for a while http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/04/19/apollo13. engineers.ap/index.html
That aside - they did do a damn nice job bringing Apollo 13 back to earth.
Get Paid to search
sure they did a brilliant job duct-tapeing the pieces, but a really brilliant engineer would have a.o. forced all subcontractors to use the same type of scrubber....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Jury rig is something a mafia don on trial gets away with.
Jerry rig comes to us from World War II. The Germans were known amongst the allies, ever quick and able with a good racial nickname, as "Jerry". Toward the end of the war, with German industrial productivity crushed and little supplies available, the Germans had to improvise with scraps of whatever they could scrounge. Somehow, mostly by sheer guts, they managed to keep on fighting with their jerry-rigged junk.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Mod +1 Redundant?
Free Firefox news reader.
As for which was uttered on Apollo 13, I think the latter phrase is the one that accompanied the eponymous movie about the troubled flight (IMDB confirms this) and so has become more well known amongst a certain generation than the original.
As someone who used to teach English, hats off to Swigert, who in his moment of crisis used the more appropriate present perfect tense (have + past participle) to suggest an incident that happened in the (recent) past but is still (extremely) relevant now.
Sorry.... I really should get out more.
McF
Duct Tape for an Engineer is like the Dark Side for a Jedi Knight!
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
...by putting the engineering plans and documentation on the Internet! Then we can build some and make a Beowulf cluster... oh wait.
DaGoodBoy
My God! It's full of Voids!
who put the 12 volt oxygen tank heater in a 72 volt circuit? I'd like to know what happened to that guy ;)
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Guess it was a while ago but I can't remember how they did it. That's Tom Hanks for you.
As a result here's my executive summary:
- oxygen tank exploded
- 2 of 3 fuel cells lost
"Houston, we've had a problem."
- Ed Smylie, engineer at home watching TV disaster rushes into the centre
- O2 buildup fixable with lithium hydroxide canisters to help CO2 buildup...
but some of the backup square canisters were not compatible with the round openings in the lunar module
"If you saw the movie (`Apollo 13'), it wasn't like that," Smylie said, adding there wasn't any hollering and screaming. "Everything is pretty calm, cool and collected in our business."
- used duck-tape to convert the backup square canisters to fit the round lunar module fittings
- this allowed the astronauts to breath just that little bit longer
A blog I run for the wealth
In times like these, where we, the public, have lost faith in our news institutions after RatherGate and Fox News, I'm thankfull that we can still trust respected and sensible journalism sites like http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/www.ufos-aliens.co.uk for our news and information.
These guys deserved special recognition decades ago. What they did for those guys up there was nothing short of remarkable, especially in a highly dangerous environment such as space, and most remarkably with the fledgling technology they had available.
Kudos to the often-uncelebrated ground crew and their determination to get Lovell and crew back safely.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
Ed Harris, and Tom Hanks, and ...
It's Kevin Bacon, goddamnit. The poor bastard never gets any respect. Come on now, try to remember his name.
Oh, and don't mention that other guy. He sucks.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
A saint in India saved these guys. Without Him, there would have been no return. Ask them, they will tell you that at their worst moment, they suddenly saw things clearer, and were able to work without illusion... ask them
We all dance, we all sing.
-The Streets
so have I.. I live in that kinda house.. quite funny really..
I like muppets.
Ahem, what about the Central Floridian Middle-School Teacher who took out his astronomy class to chart stars, and found out that if NASA had "fired the thrusters" at the time they had planned to - because they had charted the moon's alignment improperly - would've completely missed the mood and sent these guys spinning out into the middle of no where?
I mean, I figured when the movie came out that no one was going to mention that little "goof up" that NASA had - you know, it's not all good having your measurements and projections corrected by some teacher and his students from a junior high school while they're out stargazing with whatever telescopes their money could buy them - but I would love to see this at least mentioned somewhere.
They each got a certificate and I think even perhaps a hand-shake.
Ah, the little forgotten unsung heros of history.
P.S. Yes, I do rant about this everytime anything with Apollo 13 comes up in conversation.
...the Apollo engineers had been watching too much MacGyver.
Duct Tape can be used for all sorts of neat things... duck tape, otoh, should only be used on Ducks. Well, I guess I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
The reason this is such a wonderful geek film is that there is no bad guy. No evil to overcome. It's not even man versus nature. It's man versus The Problem, and man, brandishing a slide rule and some duct tape, triumphs.
This is not my sandwich.
They should honor the guy who did those. He did not work at NASA when Apollo 13 happened. He had worked for them about five years previous as some kind of student intern or something. He figured out stuff like that and put it in the file. When they had a sudden need, they pulled the plan out, and it was good to go.
When I first read this article on /. I was about to make a post "uhm hasn't this already been posted on /. before?" Then I realized I had read it on CNN one or two days ago...
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
No, Mod +1 Interesting.
I've seen this situation in the regular office world as well. It's amazing the amount of stuff that gets junked simply because one part has broken, and it's quicker to go across the street to buy a new item at the computer store, or to open a web-browser and make an online purchase, than it is too open the machine up and replace the broken component.
The most obvious example - my cousin had a portable CD-player that had crackly audio (the headphone socket had worn away). So she decided to throw out both the headphones and the player...
Or the computer with a broken video card - the maintenance company send a technician to replace the entire computer: desktop, keyboard, mouse and monitor.
My personal gripe is with headphones - usually it's the wire that goes first, while the speakers are working perfectly. Unfortunately, because it's a once piece component, I have to throw everything out. However, if the headphones had a socket for the wire (and the wire then became a patch cable), then I could just replace the wire.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Duct Tape -- never leave home without it.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
When in doubt, check wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rigged
On sailing ships, the jury rig is a replacement mast and yards improvised in case of loss of the original mast. The term "jury" is believed (Skeat) to have its source in a Latin and Old French root meaning "aid" or "succour".
Although ships were observed to perform reasonably well under jury rig, the rig was quite a bit weaker than the original, and the ship's first priority was normally to steer for the nearest friendly port and acquire replacement masts. The term "jury-rigged" has since passed into general usage, denoting some improvised substitute was employed temporarily or in an emergency.
I submitted it two days ago. 8:27 Tuesday 19 April 2005, according to my slashdot page.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
But I still have no idea what that sentence is supposed to mean...
And another question I have, wich might be out of line, I'm not sure, was it not the same engineers who build a spacecraft that exploded in the first place? I mean, terific job of saving the day, but explosions generaly don't happen by itself, do they..
I'm wondering why Jerry built means poorly built?
Surely they aren't referring to German concrete structures in WWII? Yea they looked ugly as hell but just you try to get rid of 5 foot thick rebar concrete in a dome shape.
Some of the studio and dj sennheiser are like that, a tiny 1/8 inch stereo connector into the headphones, and you can replace the cord relatively cheaply (compared to buying new headphones). I have a pair of HD200, which are probably close to the cheapest pair that have this feature (got then on special for 75 australian), but they are pretty good sounding still and slimline for fully enclosing headphones. Also accidently yanking the cord only ends up with it coming out of the headphones, instead of breaking the wire connection in the headphones themselves.
the original term was "jour rig" IIRC. "jour" is french for "day" so hence "rigged for the day" is the raw translation. language shifted, and "jury rig" became the new spelling of it
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
If it is not supposed to move and does, then use duct tape.
Read this and be enlightened.
Comment of the year
I,
Think I'm correct on this one, and the reference sited in answers.com is wrong, somebody please feel free to slam me back down to earth...
But jerry-rig originated in WWII when British soldiers started noticing how the Germans were using any means possible to keep their equipment in working order.
The British referred to the Germans as Jerries and thus when the Germans rigged something up to work the term jerry-rigged was born.
I believe in some circles it is considered somewhat racist.
Have a nice day...
---- Go ahead, mod me down, I'll just post it again and you lose your mod points.
Check this one out: jury-rig stems from the nautical sense of jury meaning makeshift originally used for jury-mast.
Apparently the term originates in the 17th century, which rather predates the jerries in the second world war (and even in the first world war).
A second reference mentions this here (you have to scroll down a bit)
You might be correct in saying that jerryrigging originated in the world war, but jury-rigging is the original (and more inoffensive) term - hence answers.com is correct.
It's nice to see good engineering work finally get the recognition it deserves. I seriously think that one of the main reasons people are turned off from engineering/science is that they see it as non-rewarding. Most business professionals get a lot more recognition for their work, even though it's less challenging. Everyone is aspiring to be that "celebrity CEO" type rathen than focusing on doing their best in a job that's less visible.
That said, I wonder if it would even be possible to pull off something like this in the US anymore. With such low interest in math and science, and a low level of education, how would we find people qualified enough to think through things like this?
Does anyone on slashdot know how to spell? It's not jury rigged it's jerry-rigged; a nautical term. A rigged jury is usually illegal and has no bearing at all on this article.
Go ahead mod me down you imperial unit using dyslexic twits.
The Answers.com site also refers to Jerry build, meaning poorly or shoddily built.
It's probably all a tangled mess involving the English use of 'jerry' to refer to germans and and fixing jurries in currupt trials and multiple versions of the 'english' language in use.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Duct tape was actually used for it's intended purpose in saving the Apollo 13 astronauts.
The tape was used to actually seal an air duct that put air through the CO2 scrubber.
Perhaps because the word "jerry" also used to mean a guzunder, aka a chamber-pot?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Quite possibly, 'journeyman' originally meant a worker hired on a day-by-day basis.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They don't have any vested interest seeing as how they manufature Duck(R) brand duct tape... seems there was some historical usage of duck tape (back to WWII) but it seems the proper usage now is duct tape.
a worker who travels and/or is hired to work on a day-to-day basis.
this is why i love this language, however often i may mangle it.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I'm not trying to be a troll here, but aren't we a little late with that? Or is it just a celebration thing and they are recelebrating their good deeds?
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher