The article on CNN was obvioulsy written before the event, then tweaked slightly (but not enough) before release. They mention at the top of the article that it took two hours to locate the capsule since it missed the landing zone. But further down it says:
Within minutes of landing, Russian officials took the crew to a portable medical tent, where the men will spend about two hours adapting to gravity in reclining chairs.
Not too bad, all things considered. Certainly a lot better than ABC News which posed this article about Columbia's successful landing in February. Prewriting articles is a good way to save time. But if one prepublishes (like ABC did) or doesn't reread it in its entirety (like CNN did) you end up losing credibility.
> Remember how quickly and how harshly politicians jump on Thiokol after Challenger? They wanted to move all shuttle work to a different company. Now that some of the big boys might be at fault with Columbia nobody is up in arms. Why do you think that is?
Challenger was a disaster waiting to happen. There were engineers at Thiokol who knew the shuttle was probably going to blow up (though they thought it would happen before it cleared the tower). There was clear blame in Challenger's case: management wouldn't listen.
Contrast with Columbia. It's been two months and we've finally figured out the sequence of what happened, but to date we still haven't figured out why it happened. We don't know yet whom to blame: the manufacturers of the external tank, the manufacturers of the heat shield, the original designers of the shuttle, the people who drew up mission contingency rules, the managers who signed off on some key decisions. Only once we know why Columbia was lost can we start thinking about blame.
I commend the media and the politicians for not scape-goating someone for this. Instead they've let the investigators methodically get to the bottom of things. It is an unexpected level of maturity I respect.
The best thing about this milling machine is that it built itself. The first version was controled by electronics on a breadboard. The second version uses much more sophisticated electronics on a PCB that had been milled by the first version of the machine. That is unbelievably elegant.
Re:Like what?
on
Google Hacks
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I don't know if it is in the book, but here's a feature not in Google's documentation:
> In fact given a docked shuttle that can't safely get back home I could see engineers devisiong a way to use it as a part of ISS since it is there.
That's a very interesting point. However there could be problems. What if (I'm just pulling this out of thin air) a shuttle in prolonged orbit starts to degrade. Something like repeated heating/cooling cycles cause tiles to get loose and fall off. That would become a terrible danger to the station. You don't want bits of tile floating around those solar panels.
There was a really great idea a while back about using the Shuttle's external tank as a space station. Unfortunately one of the problems was that the foam insulation would outgas for years. A shuttle abandoned at ISS might have some similar gotcha.
The question I've been thinking about is how you'd get rid of a lame shuttle that's docked at ISS. Ideally you'd try to land it at Edward's (in the event that it was damaged, unrepairable in orbit, but had a chance of making it back). But I don't know if the shuttles can be autopiloted during the last part of the approach. If not, then they'd probably want to ditch it into the Pacific. Which would be quite a challenge since if the shuttle breaks up it will fly *very* differently than if it basically survives. I'd guess they'd want to try reentry tail-first with the cargo bay doors open just to be sure of how it would behave.
> Their job is not hauling stuff into orbit, but doing real, hard science.
Absolutely correct. Which is why NASA isn't doing most of the mundane transportantion for ISS. That's what the Russian Progress and the European ATV are for. Shuttle is primarilly being used for the construction phase. These are not delivery runs. These are complex missions; exactly what NASA was designed for.
They did, several years ago. But they had a small supply of old tanks (with the old foam) in their inventory. Columbia's flight used the second last of these old tanks.
In fairness, the issue of falling foam was known, but it wasn't considered to be a danger, just an annoying bug. Heck, even a month *after* the accident, the best minds on the planet still can't figure out how the foam drop could have done enough damage to threaten the orbiter.
> One example: the ISS (which is an utter joke compared to Skylab or Mir) was placed into a rapidly-decaying orbit not because that was a good idea (it isn't) but because the shuttle could get there.
No, the space station was placed in that orbit as a compromise so that both the American (Shuttle) and the Russian (Soyuz) vehicles could get to it. Baikonur and Cape Canaveral are at quite different lattitudes. ISS is half way in between.
> Let's do it over. And do it right.
I'll be honest. I agree with most of your criticisms. But your remedy would be disasterous. If we axe the shuttles and drop ISS into the Pacific, you are starting from square one. The US population isn't interested in constructing anything grand anymore. If we had nothing in orbit, things would stay that way.
If you stop, you'll never get started again. The only politically viable option is to move along one step at a time. Let's make sure that we make each little step count.
>
*ALL* future shuttle flights should be equipped with a Canadarm, ISS docking ring, EVA packs, and enough fuel to get to the ISS.
That's a moot point. If you check NASA's launch schedule, you'll find that the missions for the forseeable future after Columbia's were dedicated to ISS:
There was only one non-ISS flight still on the books, the final Hubble repair mission (STS-122).
A shuttle at ISS doesn't need Canadarm, ISS has got Canadarm2 which is bigger and better. A shuttle at ISS doesn't need EVA packs, ISS has got both Russian and US EVA packs and two separate airlock systems. A shuttle at ISS doesn't need a rescue system, the astronauts can camp out there (albeit uncomfortably) for as long as it takes to bring them down with Soyuz or other shuttles (or OSP in the future).
Basically, NASA was extremely unfortunate by having this failure happen on the last flight it could have happened on.
> Chalk one up for slow, lame(?) and expensive. Cassini is firmly among the old-school "big budget" NASA projects. The probe cost over 3 billion dollars.
Cassini is the last of the "billion dollar probes". Others in the series included Terra, Galileo, Magellan and Mars Observer. These probles are a legacy of the 80s. It was the astronomical cost of these probes that made NASA launch the "faster/better/cheaper" programs.
Cassini predates F/B/C and is the end of an era. We won't see the likes of Cassini again in our life times.
It's difficult to say which is better, a lot of F/B/C probes (think plastic disposable watches), or a single billion $ probe (think Rolex: takes a licking and keeps on ticking). I think there's room for both types.
> I wonder how the human brain and psyche deals with seeing a different face in the mirror after years of strengthening a connection between the natural face and the "I".
Been there. Twice.
All I did was cut and comb my hair a different way, a style which my friend happened to have. When I looked in the mirror my brain did an automatic pattern match and confidently returned my friend's name instead of my name. A very disturbing experience.
Recently I've grown a beard. It's been three months, and I still don't recognize myself in the mirror. At least the match comes up as 'unknown' as opposed to someone I know.
So to answer your question: if your new face belonged to someone you knew, it will be far weirder than if it is a random face that you hadn't seen before. In the end, of course, the human brain will adapt.
> if more people in britan just reported it. Americans tend to not report things of this nature out of shame.
I suspect the difference is that the UK government is much more protective of its citizens than American governments. In general, North American governments disallow things that are proven to be dangerous, whereas European government allows things proven to be safe.
The effect is that over here there is a much greater level of trust amongst consumers. So when a scam artist arrives, more people fall for it.
> Furthermore, plutonium is not the deadliest substance known. While a dangerous alpha-emitter if ingested, and an undeniably toxic heavy-metal, there are far more lethal substances. That honour AFAIK goes to VX nerve gas.
No need to compare plutonium with nerve gas. A better comparison would be caffeine. Yup, caffeine is more deadly than plutonium.
Ralph Nader made the claim that plutonium was the most toxic substance known. As the page linked to above says, "Dr. Bernard Cohen, went so far as to volunteer to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would caffeine in an attempt to demonstrate the folly of the severe toxicity claims. Mr. Nader refused the challenge."
> After all, that's the kind of thing a terrorist would dream of...
Why? What's threatening about a large bag of non-combustible Helium moving at a top speed of 90mph? More info...
Re:Am I the only that thought this sounde wierd?
on
Building the A380
·
· Score: 4, Informative
> I also find it bizarre that they would construct special rest stops along the French highway so that the convoy could rest overnight on their 3-day journey.
The stops aren't designed to give the convoys R&R. They are designed to allow the convoys a place to get out of the way during the day time so that normal traffic isn't blocked. How would you like to be stuck behind a wide-load convoy of plane parts crawling down the middle of the highway at 15kph?
That's why they only travel at night, and why they get off the highway at dawn. A bit like vampires.
From the article: > At the peak of production, when Airbus is building four A380s a month, the main roads into Toulouse from the north-west will be clogged 12 nights a month with this slow-moving procession.
I'd bet that Airbus would kill to be able to use a CargoLifter airship. This is exactly what they are designed for. Can quietly transport 160 metric tons of any size and shape, for drop off at any location.
The article (if you've read it) vividly describes the pain involved in moving plane parts around on the ground. Once they are assembled, there's no problem at all, because the plane flies away.
This raises the interesting question of what happens when a large plane is damaged at a smaller airport. Somewhere like Gatwick. As far as I can see, they've only got two options: a) repair the plane with the limited facilities available or b) chop it up and remove it as scrap metal.
Does anyone have stories to tell about planes that landed too hard, and had to be scrapped because repairs couldn't be carried out on the spot?
> One feature that google could add would be something like/.'s 'slahboxes', a form where I could stick 10 or so links to be displayed on my google page.
If you use Mozilla, you can do exactly this using the sidebar. It's even better than having it on Google, since these boxes are accessible whether you are on your home page or not. And unlike IE's links, they aren't in your face unless you need them.
And there are also sidebars with live content (like the one advertised in my signature). Opera's started to build this functionality, but it doesn't seem to be as flexible yet.
> How many people really want a personalized email domain that maps directly to your real name, cannot be changed and therefore says "HEY, SPAMMERS, I'M OVER HERE AND I DON'T GET ENOUGH CRAP IN MY EMAIL!!!!!"
This is insightful?
Ok, lesson 101 in.name:
You get the domain firstname.lastname.name. This is a perfectly normal domain name. You can do anything you like with it. Including anything you want with email. So you can create as many email addresses as you want. I freely fill out forms with spam@neil.fraser.name, knowing that my mail filters will promptly delete the garbage. I have other email addresses for other purposes.
Yes, the.name TLD does offer me the option of having neil@fraser.name, but I chose not to invoke that option. I'd rather have the flexibility.
> They don't offer traditional DNS services, where someone types in a name and the resolver returns the IP address of your name server, they are offering only email and web redirecting services. Nothing else.
I'm sorry, but Slashdot really needs a '-1 Wrong' mod point.
The.name TLD will sell you any third-level domain that you want. Just like *.co.uk or *.ny.us does. The DNS lookups are perfectly normal. The email is perfectly normal. What more can I say... what you stated is completely untrue.
And yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I'm a sysadmin, and owner of my own.name website. Go ping it.
> Seriously, does anybody here actually have a.name TLD for their website? More specifically, do you have a.name without the corresponding.net,.com, or.org?
You bet. My personal website is one. I got tired of moving my website from one employer's domain to the next. So I invested in a.name so that I'd have a permanent address.
What were my choices? I'm not a corporation (.com), or a network (.net) or a non-profit org (.org). I'm not sure if in the long run I want to stay in the UK (.me.uk) or return to Canada (.ca). So.name was perfect for me. It's just me.
Now the million dollar question is what will happen to my 'permenant'.name if the TLD goes.bomb? Will it be grandfathered? I bought it explicitly for stability.
> If they can't fit any more bodies on the bus, and nobody wants to get off, why would they stop? So that the bus driver can waste valuable time opening the door and closing it, with nothing accomplished?
Humans are like breakfast cereal: "Contents may settle during shipping." Even if the bus is full at one stop, you can always sqeeze another body on by the time it reaches the next stop.
Slashdot Mirror
Challenger was a disaster waiting to happen. There were engineers at Thiokol who knew the shuttle was probably going to blow up (though they thought it would happen before it cleared the tower). There was clear blame in Challenger's case: management wouldn't listen.
Contrast with Columbia. It's been two months and we've finally figured out the sequence of what happened, but to date we still haven't figured out why it happened. We don't know yet whom to blame: the manufacturers of the external tank, the manufacturers of the heat shield, the original designers of the shuttle, the people who drew up mission contingency rules, the managers who signed off on some key decisions. Only once we know why Columbia was lost can we start thinking about blame.
I commend the media and the politicians for not scape-goating someone for this. Instead they've let the investigators methodically get to the bottom of things. It is an unexpected level of maturity I respect.
The best thing about this milling machine is that it built itself. The first version was controled by electronics on a breadboard. The second version uses much more sophisticated electronics on a PCB that had been milled by the first version of the machine. That is unbelievably elegant.
"how to * a cat"
Wild cards in Google. Who knew?
That's a very interesting point. However there could be problems. What if (I'm just pulling this out of thin air) a shuttle in prolonged orbit starts to degrade. Something like repeated heating/cooling cycles cause tiles to get loose and fall off. That would become a terrible danger to the station. You don't want bits of tile floating around those solar panels.
There was a really great idea a while back about using the Shuttle's external tank as a space station. Unfortunately one of the problems was that the foam insulation would outgas for years. A shuttle abandoned at ISS might have some similar gotcha.
The question I've been thinking about is how you'd get rid of a lame shuttle that's docked at ISS. Ideally you'd try to land it at Edward's (in the event that it was damaged, unrepairable in orbit, but had a chance of making it back). But I don't know if the shuttles can be autopiloted during the last part of the approach. If not, then they'd probably want to ditch it into the Pacific. Which would be quite a challenge since if the shuttle breaks up it will fly *very* differently than if it basically survives. I'd guess they'd want to try reentry tail-first with the cargo bay doors open just to be sure of how it would behave.
Absolutely correct. Which is why NASA isn't doing most of the mundane transportantion for ISS. That's what the Russian Progress and the European ATV are for. Shuttle is primarilly being used for the construction phase. These are not delivery runs. These are complex missions; exactly what NASA was designed for.
They did, several years ago. But they had a small supply of old tanks (with the old foam) in their inventory. Columbia's flight used the second last of these old tanks.
In fairness, the issue of falling foam was known, but it wasn't considered to be a danger, just an annoying bug. Heck, even a month *after* the accident, the best minds on the planet still can't figure out how the foam drop could have done enough damage to threaten the orbiter.
No, the space station was placed in that orbit as a compromise so that both the American (Shuttle) and the Russian (Soyuz) vehicles could get to it. Baikonur and Cape Canaveral are at quite different lattitudes. ISS is half way in between.
> Let's do it over. And do it right.
I'll be honest. I agree with most of your criticisms. But your remedy would be disasterous. If we axe the shuttles and drop ISS into the Pacific, you are starting from square one. The US population isn't interested in constructing anything grand anymore. If we had nothing in orbit, things would stay that way.
If you stop, you'll never get started again. The only politically viable option is to move along one step at a time. Let's make sure that we make each little step count.
That's a moot point. If you check NASA's launch schedule, you'll find that the missions for the forseeable future after Columbia's were dedicated to ISS:
- March 1: STS-114 Atlantis to the ISS.
- May 23: STS-115 Endeavour to the ISS.
- July 24: STS-116 Atlantis to the ISS.
- Oct. 2: STS-117 Endeavour to the ISS.
- Nov. 13: STS-118 Columbia to the ISS.
- [see the rest]
There was only one non-ISS flight still on the books, the final Hubble repair mission (STS-122).A shuttle at ISS doesn't need Canadarm, ISS has got Canadarm2 which is bigger and better. A shuttle at ISS doesn't need EVA packs, ISS has got both Russian and US EVA packs and two separate airlock systems. A shuttle at ISS doesn't need a rescue system, the astronauts can camp out there (albeit uncomfortably) for as long as it takes to bring them down with Soyuz or other shuttles (or OSP in the future).
Basically, NASA was extremely unfortunate by having this failure happen on the last flight it could have happened on.
Cassini is the last of the "billion dollar probes". Others in the series included Terra, Galileo, Magellan and Mars Observer. These probles are a legacy of the 80s. It was the astronomical cost of these probes that made NASA launch the "faster/better/cheaper" programs.
Cassini predates F/B/C and is the end of an era. We won't see the likes of Cassini again in our life times.
It's difficult to say which is better, a lot of F/B/C probes (think plastic disposable watches), or a single billion $ probe (think Rolex: takes a licking and keeps on ticking). I think there's room for both types.
Been there. Twice.
All I did was cut and comb my hair a different way, a style which my friend happened to have. When I looked in the mirror my brain did an automatic pattern match and confidently returned my friend's name instead of my name. A very disturbing experience.
Recently I've grown a beard. It's been three months, and I still don't recognize myself in the mirror. At least the match comes up as 'unknown' as opposed to someone I know.
So to answer your question: if your new face belonged to someone you knew, it will be far weirder than if it is a random face that you hadn't seen before. In the end, of course, the human brain will adapt.
Huh? Since when do web servers have to be on port 80? Same with FTP.
> Cassini is on course to arrive at Saturn in July 2004, when it will deploy a smaller spacecraft called Huygens to study that planet.
No! Huygens will not be studying "that planet". It will land on Titan, a moon.
I suspect the difference is that the UK government is much more protective of its citizens than American governments. In general, North American governments disallow things that are proven to be dangerous, whereas European government allows things proven to be safe.
The effect is that over here there is a much greater level of trust amongst consumers. So when a scam artist arrives, more people fall for it.
No need to compare plutonium with nerve gas. A better comparison would be caffeine. Yup, caffeine is more deadly than plutonium.
Ralph Nader made the claim that plutonium was the most toxic substance known. As the page linked to above says, "Dr. Bernard Cohen, went so far as to volunteer to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would caffeine in an attempt to demonstrate the folly of the severe toxicity claims. Mr. Nader refused the challenge."
Why? What's threatening about a large bag of non-combustible Helium moving at a top speed of 90mph? More info...
The stops aren't designed to give the convoys R&R. They are designed to allow the convoys a place to get out of the way during the day time so that normal traffic isn't blocked. How would you like to be stuck behind a wide-load convoy of plane parts crawling down the middle of the highway at 15kph?
That's why they only travel at night, and why they get off the highway at dawn. A bit like vampires.
> At the peak of production, when Airbus is building four A380s a month, the main roads into Toulouse from the north-west will be clogged 12 nights a month with this slow-moving procession.
I'd bet that Airbus would kill to be able to use a CargoLifter airship. This is exactly what they are designed for. Can quietly transport 160 metric tons of any size and shape, for drop off at any location.
Oh dear. Looks like they are going bankrupt.
This raises the interesting question of what happens when a large plane is damaged at a smaller airport. Somewhere like Gatwick. As far as I can see, they've only got two options: a) repair the plane with the limited facilities available or b) chop it up and remove it as scrap metal.
Does anyone have stories to tell about planes that landed too hard, and had to be scrapped because repairs couldn't be carried out on the spot?
If you use Mozilla, you can do exactly this using the sidebar. It's even better than having it on Google, since these boxes are accessible whether you are on your home page or not. And unlike IE's links, they aren't in your face unless you need them.
And there are also sidebars with live content (like the one advertised in my signature). Opera's started to build this functionality, but it doesn't seem to be as flexible yet.
Spiffy stuff.
This is insightful?
Ok, lesson 101 in .name:
You get the domain firstname.lastname.name. This is a perfectly normal domain name. You can do anything you like with it. Including anything you want with email. So you can create as many email addresses as you want. I freely fill out forms with spam@neil.fraser.name, knowing that my mail filters will promptly delete the garbage. I have other email addresses for other purposes.
Yes, the .name TLD does offer me the option of having neil@fraser.name, but I chose not to invoke that option. I'd rather have the flexibility.
I'm sorry, but Slashdot really needs a '-1 Wrong' mod point.
The .name TLD will sell you any third-level domain that you want. Just like *.co.uk or *.ny.us does. The DNS lookups are perfectly normal. The email is perfectly normal. What more can I say ... what you stated is completely untrue.
And yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I'm a sysadmin, and owner of my own .name website. Go ping it.
You bet. My personal website is one. I got tired of moving my website from one employer's domain to the next. So I invested in a .name so that I'd have a permanent address.
What were my choices? I'm not a corporation (.com), or a network (.net) or a non-profit org (.org). I'm not sure if in the long run I want to stay in the UK (.me.uk) or return to Canada (.ca). So .name was perfect for me. It's just me.
Now the million dollar question is what will happen to my 'permenant' .name if the TLD goes .bomb? Will it be grandfathered? I bought it explicitly for stability.
Humans are like breakfast cereal: "Contents may settle during shipping." Even if the bus is full at one stop, you can always sqeeze another body on by the time it reaches the next stop.
The Russian Progress ships routinely perform reboosts. Shuttles aren't required for this.
However you're right, without the shuttle, ISS is in grave danger. You're down to a point where a single failure could doom the station.