There are RTGs on the Vikings, on the Moon from Apollo, on the major probes like Voyager, Pioneer, Cassini and Galileo
http://satobs.org/seesat/Jan-1996/0204.html
http://www.ne.doe.gov/space/spacepwr.html
As for fission reactors taking thumps, the 8 reactors on Enterprise did alright during the accident as did the 2 on Nimitz during another accident, as have numerous reactors on submarines and ships in various militaries which have had bumps, thumps and sinkings.
"Mars 3 was launched towards Mars from a Tyazheliy Sputnik (71-049C) Earth orbiting platform. A mid-course correction was made on 8 June. The descent module (71-049F) was released at 09:14 UT on 2 December 1971, 4 hours 35 minutes before reaching Mars. The descent module entered the martian atmosphere at roughly 5.7 km/s. Through aerodynamic braking, parachutes, and retro-rockets, the lander achieved a soft landing at 45 S, 158 W and began operations. However, after 20 sec the instruments stopped working for unknown reasons, perhaps as a result of the massive surface dust storms raging at the time of landing. Meanwhile, the orbiter had suffered from a partial loss of fuel and did not have enough to put itself into a planned 25 hour orbit. The engine instead performed a truncated burn to put the spacecraft into a long 12 day, 19 hour period orbit about Mars with an inclination thought to be similar to that of Mars 2 (48.9 degrees). The Mars 2 and 3 orbiters sent back a large volume of data covering the period from December 1971 to March 1972, although transmissions continued through August. It was announced that Mars 2 and 3 had completed their missions by 22 August 1972, after 362 orbits completed by Mars 2 and 20 orbits by Mars 3. The probes sent back a total of 60 pictures. The images and data revealed mountains as high as 22 km, atomic hydrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere, surface temperatures ranging from -110 C to +13 C, surface pressures of 5.5 to 6 mb, water vapor concentrations 5000 times less than in Earth's atmosphere, the base of the ionosphere starting at 80 to 110 km altitude, and grains from dust storms as high as 7 km in the atmosphere. The data enabled creation of surface relief maps, and gave information on the martian gravity and magnetic fields."
The Vikings were the first really successful landers on Mars, like the above poster stated.
It really helps with communication, we can pass links back and forth and if theres something private we need to talk about when company is over, all I have to say is - go look on your screen.
We've also worked out some Pennmush code that saves links we post and then exports them to a webpage so we can find old quicklinked bookmarks.
Crusade's full title is "Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War" by Rick Atkinson.
Carlisle Barracks is Pennsylvania is home to the United States Army War College and Army Heritage Education Center.
Now that I think about it, I was wrong attributing that war planning to the USAWC. It's the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where that sort of stuff goes on.
The US military has plans for all sorts of things, to be more exact the War Colleges work out detailed plans for all sorts of things.
I read in Crusade that the Army War College had a detailed set of plans for the US response to a summer invasion of Kuwait by Iraq with a long pause on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti-Saudi frontier. The plans were in 2 or 3 filing cabinets in a Federal warehouse down in Florida in case Central Command ever needed them.
Now this Nixon Administration plan was a little closer to being put into motion, but I think the coverage by the Media and Talking Heads isn't looking at the big picture.
The Soviet Bloc was on the rise, the Soviets and Americans came really close to throwing troops into the Middle East and going nuclear, then the Oil Embargo kicked in, since no one knew how far the Embargo would spread and since a military operation takes a while to organize, I think the Nixon Administration had to look at "alteratives" like an invasion.
"Killing 3-4 birds per day doesn't seem too bad. It's a shame that larger, rarer birds are getting killed, but... How many birds would die from the acid rain that a coal power plant would cause?"
Perhaps the comment was in jest, but in any case it's a cold and crass comment. If these raptors had been killed in an oil spill or because of a dam, I doubt/. would have made such comments.
These deaths of endangered and threatened species aren't less important because the energy is "cleaner" or "greener" it's still a death of an endangered bird.
The difference is that clean energy like nuclear will be lawsuited into oblivion and modern coal and gas-fire generation will be harped at all day long, but something considered "cleaner" and "greener" will considered a boon no matter how many eagle bodies pile up.
I read somewhere that the total costs of Kyoto over 100 years to the economies of the world would be more than the cost of dealing with the damages from the worst case flooding estimates from Global Warming over the same 100 years.
If all you heard were the "usual" stuff you hear on Clearchannel you didn't look very hard on the XM dial.
It's been my experiance that the Country and Rock stations (10-13) and (40-48) as well as the rap-hip-hop stations play a much wider variety of music than I've heard on the radio in the last 20 years.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb covers only the pre-war nuclear physics development and the production of the American bomb.
Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes covers the Soviet atomic bomb development, Soviet spying and the development of the various boosted atomic bombs which ultimatly lead to the Hydrogen Bomb or the Fission-Fusion bomb.
Actually, it was thought up originally as network of roads to provide jobs during the Depression, but lessons learned in 1919, 1940-41 with moving large groups of units across the country as well as the use of the Autobahn during the ETO phase of WW2 lead Ike to press for it after the War and during his administration.
"From the outset of construction of the Interstate System, the DOD has monitored its progress closely, ensuring direct military input to all phases of construction. The National Defense Highway System was responsible for building many of the first freeways. Its purpose was supposedly to allow for mass evacuation of cities in the event of a nuclear attack. The Interstate system was designed so that one mile in every five must be straight, usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies."
"If you wanted a network of roads for primarily for military use, it would be far more cost effective to build roads that are mostly single lane with no shoulders. With traffic under central military command, there's no need even for bidirectional travel on the roads. In fact, it would be even more cost effective to just use railroads. How big of an expressway do you really need to supply an ICBM base?"
So then when something breaks down the road is blocked. Railroads are bad because they are very easy to interdict with conventional airpower.
Germany didn't get the Autobahn finished, that's why it was mostly unused, but the Allies sure liked it when they got to use it.
http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth08_auto bt.htm "By 1941, only another 800 km (500 mi) had been added to the autobahn total since 1938. The Third Reich was not able to finance both the war and its planned 6000 km autobahn system. Ironically, the war prevented the completion of the autobahn that was supposed to help support it. Even with the use of Russian prisoner of war labor, Germany's resources were strained to the limit. With 3860 km completed (much of it war-damaged, incomplete, or unusable), all autobahn construction was halted on 3 Dec. 1941."
I'm not interested in the Big Dig overruns, but I'm going to comment on the purpose of the Federal Interstate Highway System.
"Yeah, federal taxes paid for part of the new highway system. They also paid for untold miles of lightly traveled interstate in Utah & Montana too."
The Federal Interstate System and the federal monies to lesser highways were started for the National Defense primarily, with economic reasons secondary.
"When President Eisenhower went to Kansas to announce the interstate highway system, he announced it as "the National Defense Highway System."'
Here is the page about the current Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET) https://www.tea.army.mil/DODProg/HND/S ystems.htm
Now the Empty Quarter of the US might seem boring to you and almost pointless to place 4 lane highways there, but the Great Plains were and are the home to much of the USAF strategic nuclear deterent. The Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming all have had nuclear bomber and ICBM bases, thats one reason they have updated highways systems.
If I want to wear a cross to public school, or if I wear slacks all the time because I think shorts are immodest, that's for the wearer to decide, not the government.
My wearing an Apple shirt doesn't "force" that on you, nor does wearing black "force" that on people who like bright colors.
The French decision seemed a little out there, along the lines of Albania's outlawing of religion across the entire nation during the Cold War.
Out here in Portland OR, EB, CompUSA and Bestbuy are all the same price when games come out and the price sticks around for a while. Halo for PC is still 45-50 bucks everywhere but Target/Walmart/Costco for example.
http://www.latimes.com/news/specials/harrier/la- ha rrier-day1.story
"Over the last three decades, it has amassed the highest rate of major accidents of any Air Force, Navy, Army or Marine plane now in service. Forty-five Marines have died in 143 noncombat accidents since the corps bought the so-called jump jet from the British in 1971. More than a third of the fleet has been lost to accidents."
"If the Harrier had been decisive many times in battle, we would all still regret horribly the tragedies of the pilots who have been killed, but at least you'd be able to say that the Harrier made a difference," said Philip E. Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester from 1994 to 2001.
"What makes this situation so difficult is that we just don't have that kind of battlefield record to support the accidental deaths."
In the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the hot thrust-producing nozzles in the heart of the fuselage -- the devices that allow the Harrier to rise and balance in the air -- made the plane a magnet for heat-seeking missiles. Its loss rate was more than double that of the war's other leading U.S. combat jets. Five Harriers were shot down and two pilots died.
"It's the most vulnerable plane that's in service now," said Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney, who evaluates tactical aircraft for the Pentagon. "You can't hit that thing without hitting something important."
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/article.c fm ?Id=303
"The AV-8B Harrier--a single-engine attack jet that can take off vertically and hover--has a mishap rate of 12 per 100,000 flight hours, among the highest in the U.S. military aviation community. But only one-third of Harrier mishaps are caused by human error, Dirren said. "Two-thirds [of the mishaps] are related to the aircraft failures."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/a ir craft/av-8-variants.htm "In 1982, after eleven years of AV-8A operational flying, including 55 peacetime aircraft losses, the Commandant of the time (Gen Robert Barrow) asked the Harrier community to address the serious problem of flight safety. The impetus for his concern was "a high mishap rate within the AV-8A community... anticipated continuing turbulence... and a pressing requirement to reduce the mishap rate in order to provide the assets needed for successful transition to the AV-8B." At the time, the community had a cumulative Class A rate of 39 per 100,000 flight hours."
"By 1998, USMC Harrier operations (including Naval Air Systems Command) had resulted in 17 fatalities, one permanent disability and 68 AV-8B aircraft lost. With a cumulative Class A mishap rate of 12.1 per 100,000 flight hours, the AV-8B has consistently outpaced all USMC aircraft types in this statistic."
The FAS website estimates 815 Harriers built in all models all the way from the Kestrel and P.1127 test planes http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avav83.html
You do realize that there are 3 models of the JSF that will be produced right? While alot of the aircraft will be similar, the F-35 isn't one plane for 3 roles.
The USAF version is different than the USN version which is different from the V/STOL version.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/a ir craft/x-35-tech.htm "The exhaust from the engine flows through the 3 Bearing Swivel Nozzle (3BSN). The 3BSN nozzle, developed by Rolls-Royce, was patterned along the lines of the exhaust system on the Yakovlev Yak-141 STOVL prototype that flew at the 1992 Farnborough air show."
Slashdot Mirror
Current Nuclear Powered space probes don't have reactors on them.
a ge /vl2_21c056.html
Although there is a plan for a nuclear reactor to go up later in the decade.
The American and Soviet sats and probes that have been nuclear powered use RTGs.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_p
There are RTGs on the Vikings, on the Moon from Apollo, on the major probes like Voyager, Pioneer, Cassini and Galileo
http://satobs.org/seesat/Jan-1996/0204.html
http://www.ne.doe.gov/space/spacepwr.html
As for fission reactors taking thumps, the 8 reactors on Enterprise did alright during the accident as did the 2 on Nimitz during another accident, as have numerous reactors on submarines and ships in various militaries which have had bumps, thumps and sinkings.
They are landing far apart and there are teams assigned to both missions.
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/
"We (US - NASA) have been there twice before sucessfully."
Before you school people on how they need to check the history, you need to remember that the US landed a rover before.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mesur.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/chronology_ma rs.html
Mars 3 - 28 May 1971 - Mars Orbiter/ Lander
"Mars 3 was launched towards Mars from a Tyazheliy Sputnik (71-049C) Earth orbiting platform. A mid-course correction was made on 8 June. The descent module (71-049F) was released at 09:14 UT on 2 December 1971, 4 hours 35 minutes before reaching Mars. The descent module entered the martian atmosphere at roughly 5.7 km/s. Through aerodynamic braking, parachutes, and retro-rockets, the lander achieved a soft landing at 45 S, 158 W and began operations. However, after 20 sec the instruments stopped working for unknown reasons, perhaps as a result of the massive surface dust storms raging at the time of landing. Meanwhile, the orbiter had suffered from a partial loss of fuel and did not have enough to put itself into a planned 25 hour orbit. The engine instead performed a truncated burn to put the spacecraft into a long 12 day, 19 hour period orbit about Mars with an inclination thought to be similar to that of Mars 2 (48.9 degrees). The Mars 2 and 3 orbiters sent back a large volume of data covering the period from December 1971 to March 1972, although transmissions continued through August. It was announced that Mars 2 and 3 had completed their missions by 22 August 1972, after 362 orbits completed by Mars 2 and 20 orbits by Mars 3. The probes sent back a total of 60 pictures. The images and data revealed mountains as high as 22 km, atomic hydrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere, surface temperatures ranging from -110 C to +13 C, surface pressures of 5.5 to 6 mb, water vapor concentrations 5000 times less than in Earth's atmosphere, the base of the ionosphere starting at 80 to 110 km altitude, and grains from dust storms as high as 7 km in the atmosphere. The data enabled creation of surface relief maps, and gave information on the martian gravity and magnetic fields."
The Vikings were the first really successful landers on Mars, like the above poster stated.
We don't IM, but use a PennMUSH shell.
It really helps with communication, we can pass links back and forth and if theres something private we need to talk about when company is over, all I have to say is - go look on your screen.
We've also worked out some Pennmush code that saves links we post and then exports them to a webpage so we can find old quicklinked bookmarks.
Crusade's full title is "Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War" by Rick Atkinson.
Carlisle Barracks is Pennsylvania is home to the United States Army War College and Army Heritage Education Center.
Now that I think about it, I was wrong attributing that war planning to the USAWC. It's the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where that sort of stuff goes on.
The US military has plans for all sorts of things, to be more exact the War Colleges work out detailed plans for all sorts of things.
I read in Crusade that the Army War College had a detailed set of plans for the US response to a summer invasion of Kuwait by Iraq with a long pause on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti-Saudi frontier. The plans were in 2 or 3 filing cabinets in a Federal warehouse down in Florida in case Central Command ever needed them.
Now this Nixon Administration plan was a little closer to being put into motion, but I think the coverage by the Media and Talking Heads isn't looking at the big picture.
The Soviet Bloc was on the rise, the Soviets and Americans came really close to throwing troops into the Middle East and going nuclear, then the Oil Embargo kicked in, since no one knew how far the Embargo would spread and since a military operation takes a while to organize, I think the Nixon Administration had to look at "alteratives" like an invasion.
I had some Click of Death disks, but not a drive that really sucked.
In the fall of '97 we got a 10 disks and from the pack 6 failed. I sent nasty emails to Iomega, nasty letters and got nothing back.
Then in the spring of '98 I got a new 10 pack of disks from Iomega in the mail, and only 3 failed, so then I had 11 that worked.
I found the Michael commentary interesting.
/. would have made such comments.
"Killing 3-4 birds per day doesn't seem too bad. It's a shame that larger, rarer birds are getting killed, but... How many birds would die from the acid rain that a coal power plant would cause?"
Perhaps the comment was in jest, but in any case it's a cold and crass comment. If these raptors had been killed in an oil spill or because of a dam, I doubt
These deaths of endangered and threatened species aren't less important because the energy is "cleaner" or "greener" it's still a death of an endangered bird.
The difference is that clean energy like nuclear will be lawsuited into oblivion and modern coal and gas-fire generation will be harped at all day long, but something considered "cleaner" and "greener" will considered a boon no matter how many eagle bodies pile up.
I read somewhere that the total costs of Kyoto over 100 years to the economies of the world would be more than the cost of dealing with the damages from the worst case flooding estimates from Global Warming over the same 100 years.
"You know what the weather is going to be? Look for some extreme shit."
There is no strong proof that those sorts of things are infact going to happen more and more because of climate change.
If all you heard were the "usual" stuff you hear on Clearchannel you didn't look very hard on the XM dial.
It's been my experiance that the Country and Rock stations (10-13) and (40-48) as well as the rap-hip-hop stations play a much wider variety of music than I've heard on the radio in the last 20 years.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb covers only the pre-war nuclear physics development and the production of the American bomb.
Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes covers the Soviet atomic bomb development, Soviet spying and the development of the various boosted atomic bombs which ultimatly lead to the Hydrogen Bomb or the Fission-Fusion bomb.
Actually, it was thought up originally as network of roads to provide jobs during the Depression, but lessons learned in 1919, 1940-41 with moving large groups of units across the country as well as the use of the Autobahn during the ETO phase of WW2 lead Ike to press for it after the War and during his administration.
o bt .htm
"From the outset of construction of the Interstate System, the DOD has monitored its progress closely, ensuring direct military input to all phases of construction. The National Defense Highway System was responsible for building many of the first freeways. Its purpose was supposedly to allow for mass evacuation of cities in the event of a nuclear attack. The Interstate system was designed so that one mile in every five must be straight, usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies."
"If you wanted a network of roads for primarily for military use, it would be far more cost effective to build roads that are mostly single lane with no shoulders. With traffic under central military command, there's no need even for bidirectional travel on the roads. In fact, it would be even more cost effective to just use railroads. How big of an expressway do you really need to supply an ICBM base?"
So then when something breaks down the road is blocked. Railroads are bad because they are very easy to interdict with conventional airpower.
Germany didn't get the Autobahn finished, that's why it was mostly unused, but the Allies sure liked it when they got to use it.
http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth08_aut
"By 1941, only another 800 km (500 mi) had been added to the autobahn total since 1938. The Third Reich was not able to finance both the war and its planned 6000 km autobahn system. Ironically, the war prevented the completion of the autobahn that was supposed to help support it. Even with the use of Russian prisoner of war labor, Germany's resources were strained to the limit. With 3860 km completed (much of it war-damaged, incomplete, or unusable), all autobahn construction was halted on 3 Dec. 1941."
I'm not interested in the Big Dig overruns, but I'm going to comment on the purpose of the Federal Interstate Highway System.
/ nd hs.htm
S ystems.htm
"Yeah, federal taxes paid for part of the new highway system. They also paid for untold miles of lightly traveled interstate in Utah & Montana too."
The Federal Interstate System and the federal monies to lesser highways were started for the National Defense primarily, with economic reasons secondary.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hep10/nhs/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility
"When President Eisenhower went to Kansas to announce the interstate highway system, he announced it as "the National Defense Highway System."'
Here is the page about the current Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET)
https://www.tea.army.mil/DODProg/HND/
Now the Empty Quarter of the US might seem boring to you and almost pointless to place 4 lane highways there, but the Great Plains were and are the home to much of the USAF strategic nuclear deterent. The Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming all have had nuclear bomber and ICBM bases, thats one reason they have updated highways systems.
Then it's become a freedom of speech issue.
If I want to wear a cross to public school, or if I wear slacks all the time because I think shorts are immodest, that's for the wearer to decide, not the government.
My wearing an Apple shirt doesn't "force" that on you, nor does wearing black "force" that on people who like bright colors.
The French decision seemed a little out there, along the lines of Albania's outlawing of religion across the entire nation during the Cold War.
I've read the reviews, it still looks pointless.
I see it being eschewed because it looks about as pointless as State of Emergency.
Out here in Portland OR, EB, CompUSA and Bestbuy are all the same price when games come out and the price sticks around for a while. Halo for PC is still 45-50 bucks everywhere but Target/Walmart/Costco for example.
When I read that line I paused and thought to my self "That's a stretch..."
So what is the greatest technological achievement of humankind?
Apollo Program?
Manhattan Project?
The great dams of the world?
Global logistics?
Semiconductor fabrication?
Actually, you can't shoot most of them down with a pistol. Even the Jetrangers you see flying around for the evening news.
Now the military ones are much more robust, hardened to 12.7 or 14.5mm hits and resistant to 20-23mm shells.
Ther USMC has a need for a fighter because the USMC has an organic fighter/bomber requirement in addition to the V/STOL.
The USMC has it's own C-130 transports and operates fighters off aircraft carriers and from land bases.
The Harrier has a high rate of failure.
- ha rrier-day1.story
c fm ?Id=303
a ir craft/av-8-variants.htm
http://www.latimes.com/news/specials/harrier/la
"Over the last three decades, it has amassed the highest rate of major accidents of any Air Force, Navy, Army or Marine plane now in service. Forty-five Marines have died in 143 noncombat accidents since the corps bought the so-called jump jet from the British in 1971. More than a third of the fleet has been lost to accidents."
"If the Harrier had been decisive many times in battle, we would all still regret horribly the tragedies of the pilots who have been killed, but at least you'd be able to say that the Harrier made a difference," said Philip E. Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester from 1994 to 2001.
"What makes this situation so difficult is that we just don't have that kind of battlefield record to support the accidental deaths."
In the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the hot thrust-producing nozzles in the heart of the fuselage -- the devices that allow the Harrier to rise and balance in the air -- made the plane a magnet for heat-seeking missiles. Its loss rate was more than double that of the war's other leading U.S. combat jets. Five Harriers were shot down and two pilots died.
"It's the most vulnerable plane that's in service now," said Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney, who evaluates tactical aircraft for the Pentagon. "You can't hit that thing without hitting something important."
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/article.
"The AV-8B Harrier--a single-engine attack jet that can take off vertically and hover--has a mishap rate of 12 per 100,000 flight hours, among the highest in the U.S. military aviation community. But only one-third of Harrier mishaps are caused by human error, Dirren said. "Two-thirds [of the mishaps] are related to the aircraft failures."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/
"In 1982, after eleven years of AV-8A operational flying, including 55 peacetime aircraft losses, the Commandant of the time (Gen Robert Barrow) asked the Harrier community to address the serious problem of flight safety. The impetus for his concern was "a high mishap rate within the AV-8A community... anticipated continuing turbulence... and a pressing requirement to reduce the mishap rate in order to provide the assets needed for successful transition to the AV-8B." At the time, the community had a cumulative Class A rate of 39 per 100,000 flight hours."
"By 1998, USMC Harrier operations (including Naval Air Systems Command) had resulted in 17 fatalities, one permanent disability and 68 AV-8B aircraft lost. With a cumulative Class A mishap rate of 12.1 per 100,000 flight hours, the AV-8B has consistently outpaced all USMC aircraft types in this statistic."
The FAS website estimates 815 Harriers built in all models all the way from the Kestrel and P.1127 test planes
http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avav83.html
You do realize that there are 3 models of the JSF that will be produced right? While alot of the aircraft will be similar, the F-35 isn't one plane for 3 roles.
a ir craft/x-35-tech.htm
The USAF version is different than the USN version which is different from the V/STOL version.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/
"The exhaust from the engine flows through the 3 Bearing Swivel Nozzle (3BSN). The 3BSN nozzle, developed by Rolls-Royce, was patterned along the lines of the exhaust system on the Yakovlev Yak-141 STOVL prototype that flew at the 1992 Farnborough air show."
Anything Robert Cringly says is going to happen, won't and anything he says will fail, won't.
He's my bellweather.