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Did Bat Hitch a Ride To Space On Discovery?
suraj.sun writes "A bat was seen clinging to the external fuel tank of the Space Shuttle Discovery before its launch on Sunday, apparently clung for dear life to the side of the tank as the spaceship lifted off.
The shuttle accelerates to an orbital velocity of 17,500 milers per hour, which is 25 times faster than the speed of sound, in just over eight minutes. That's zero to 100 mph in 10 seconds.
Did it make it into space? No one knows yet. But photos of Discovery as it cleared the launch tower showed a tiny speck on the side of the tank. When those photos were blown up, it became apparent that the speck was a bat."
Poor bat. Can we come up with a better name for him (or her) than 119V-0080? We're talking about the highest- and fastest-flying bat of all time, probably. A real name is definitely in order.
>When those photos were blown up
poor photo.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Bats on a Shuttle?
Spacebatman, now that would be news!
Where are the animal rights crowd? PETA should have a field-day with this.
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
Your answer: Val Kilmer sucks. Your wager: George Clooney sucks.
I don't how strong a bat is, but I doubt he was able to hang on that long. My guess is his claws gave out, he slid and clawed is way down the tank, and went out in a huge blaze of glory with the whole world watching and wondering.
Lucky fucker.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The external tank doesn't make it into space. It separates from the shuttle before that. Unless the bat managed to switch horses in the middle of the stream.
30 feet off the pad the engines gave out and the bat carried them into orbit.
Heroic fucker.
Are they sure it's not a mynock?
"So long and thanks for all the bugs."
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
And koalas aren't bears, cavys aren't pigs, cynomys aren't dogs, and that KFC you had last night wasn't chicken...
Blank until
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a teatray in the sky.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"...showed a tiny speck on the side of the tank. When those photos were blown up, it became apparent that the speck was a bat.
And that folks, is the difference between NASA-cam and your average gas-station-cam, which, on average, can't identify Bigfoot if it were robbing the place.
Yes, he has one of those devices which filters oxygen out of a vacuum on his utility belt.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The bat was on the far side of the external tank from the orbiter, about a third of the way up from the bottom. There wasn't really any way that it could strike the orbiter during launch, or that any foam that it might pull off would fall and strike the orbiter. The weight of the bat compared to the weight of the shuttle loaded with fuel is negligible, you'd need a pretty big envelope for your back-of-the-envelope calculations to have enough decimal places to show any effect from it. It was not an unsafe call to essentially ignore the bat. It didn't pose any risk.
As for the idea of contaminating something like Mars and having it end up overrun with earth bacteria, I guess it's impossible to prove that it couldn't happen, but I don't it's very likely. Mars is more like the earth than anywhere else in the solar system, but it's still very different. You might be able to find a few organisms here that could potentially survive on Mars, but it's doubtful that any would thrive, particularly to the point of overrunning the planet.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Good grief. We provide Spoiler Protection for children's shows? - "Hey did you see the latest Hannah Montana? Lili and Jackson..." "No!" "What?" "Don't you know it's rude to spoil a story?" "Oh sorry." ..... "Then you probably don't want to hear about iCarly's kiss with Sam last night?" "Grrr."
Back to the bat:
Probably the same thing happened to him that happened to the butterfly clinging to my car this morning. At around 60 the wind tore him off the windshield and he went "splat" on the car behind me. That bat did not go to space.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Fluid dynamics basically says that at very close distances to a surface, it doesn't matter how fast the fluid is flowing, the wind speed at the surface is very low, and approaches zero. So maybe he made it!
other things bats are not or cannot do...
Bats cannot swallow a whole hotdog
Bats cannot follow the finer details of Neon Genesis Evangelion
Bats aren't horses, sheep or baseball bats
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
How do you know that guidance system on the shuttle wasn't sabotaged in an obscure plot for world domination that was narrowly averted by this bat flying in at the last minute and guiding the shuttle into orbit only to return quickly to the offices of the Daily Bat and resume his secret identity has Gerald the Bat, mild mannered reporter.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
This bat is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he'd be pushing up the daisies! His metabolic processes are now history! He's off the twig! He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-BAT!!
Bats aren't horses, sheep or baseball bats
In the face of all the potential examples of what bats are not, your failure to pick 3 things is mind-boggling.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
At the end of their report on the bat they speculate whether the bat was still clinging to the shuttle when it docked witht the ISS. How they think it managed to jump from the external tank to the shuttle during lift-off is beyond me.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I smell a Disney Adventure movie. I hope they're in talked to his agent.
I would have named her "Misty".
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The scale of "very close" in air at sea level is MUCH smaller than you think it is. Stick your hand out your window going 65 and see if you can feel a spot where the wind isn't moving close to the window.
My Babylon
Uhm, it's a CNN reporter, they don't actually think, never have and probably never will.
We can't stop here! This is bat country!
Mars is more like the earth than anywhere else in the solar system
Not to nit-pick, but I would argue that the upper atmosphere of Venus is more Earth-like than the surface of Mars. At a certain altitude, Venus has a similar pressure and temperature to Earth, with the majority of the atmosphere being made up of CO2. Supposedly, a human could survive there with only a respirator and something to protect against acid rain, the same can hardly be said for Mars.
Boundary layer (at least at subsonic speeds) where laminar flow slows is barely a tenth of an inch thick. Brian would have been a fair bit thicker than that, so would have certainly been exposed to significant aerodynamic forces as the Shuttle accelerated.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed :wq!
Wow, you're treading on thin ice here. I mean there are some things that should never be made fun of. Do you realize how many people could take offense at this "joke"? People could be screaming "blasphemy" and worse! I'm personally not offended, but I think a lot of people wouldn't be so tolerant. I think you are running the risk of creating hatred and even violence with this kind of mockery.
I mean, implying that the Creator of the Universe doesn't use Emacs? That's harsh... where's your sense of decorum and respect for other people's religions?!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Bye and thanks for all the insects?
The Long Now Foundation
Could God create an editor that sucks so badly even He couldn't use it?
(joke purposefully phrased to be editor-agnostic)