The thing that depresses me, and that I would have found unbelievable in the 1970's is that some people say that all those scientists are biased, while those politicians, you know, are not biased. As if politicians had an unbiased reputation and always told the truth!
The main reason why NASA is so eager to use the Sold Rocket Boosters (SRB) of the shuttle is that the military uses a lot of solid rocket engines in their missiles. The manufacturers of the solid rocket engines would lose a lot of business when the shuttles are retired, reducing their economies of scale for the rest of their products. The SRBs cause a lot of stress on the shuttle because they accelerate at full power, vibrate a lot, and cause heavy air resistance at low altitudes. On the first flight of the shuttle, the SRBs thrust over-stressed the shuttle's tail and the hydraulic system of some control surfaces. The pilots have said that had they known what had happened they would not have had confidence in the shuttle to safely return and would have ejected at low level. Columbia could easily have been destroyed on the first flight!
I read of a situation in the early days of the Lockheed Tri-star where it took multiple attempts for a particular flight to depart. Planes were much less reliable then, and the Tri-star also had some teething problems. After takeoffs suffering a blown engine, landing gear failing to retract and a host of other problems, the passengers refused to board the last replacement plane until the aircraft engineer flew with them to their destination.
Hear, hear, that's my pet gripe about modern keyboards. The PC keyboards that I had been using until about 9 years ago had a large inverted "L" shape for the enter key. Now, when I touch-type I often miss the enter key. Also makes it hard for people who don't have much typing experience to find a very similar-looking key on the keyboard.
The Atlas V is unpopular with NASA because it has a Russian rocket engine - the RD-180. It could, in theory be manufactured in the USA if Russia was to withhold sales for political reasons. The engineering and blueprints have already been worked on to do this, but it would be more expensive. It is more efficient then the Delta IV becaused it uses kerosene for the Russian first stage rather than the hydrogen that the Delta IV uses for all of its stages (better for upper stages only). There is also the issue of a non-US rocket engine being used for a flagship US rocket.
I've thought of a simple way for people to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit for temperatures between 0-100 Celsius: just treat the Celsius temperature as a percentage between the Fahrenheit water freezing and water boiling points. Probably also works for above 100 Celsius but I have not worked it out yet.
Google "Dream Chaser" and SpaceDev to see a mini-shuttle being slowly developed by the company that supplied the hybrid rocket engines for Rutan's and Branson's SpaceShipOne. The US Airforce is going to launch the X-37B, a miniature unmanned shuttle, in early 2010, on top of an Atlas V rocket. It might take a few years yet, but I think that there might be at least a few mini-shuttles in the future.
Some fundamentalist Christians would like to create a large cross shape on the moon using something like a lunar bulldozer or grader. Not only would the whole world see the symbol of Christianity, but it would demoralize Muslims to have their religious symbol defaced by infidels.
Challenger flew the 13th shuttle mission some time before it blew up and Columbia was destroyed on the 113th shuttle mission. The flight number of Columbia was not STS-113 but STS-107 since missions can get shuffled around. Maybe there is something to this number 13 business, but both the shuttles' crews could have survived if not for overbearing managers. I remember reading about a WW II aircraft carrier that was badly damaged and very slowly limped home, it had 13 as a serial number.! All the US space disasters all happened in the same week of the year as well.
You will probably find that more Boeing planes will crash, simply because there are a lot more older Boeings flying than the Johnny-come-lately Airbus company. What would be more interesting would be to see how many new-model planes from each manufacturer crash.
Many jet planes have white off-center dots or spirals painted on the spinner of their engines. In flight, these give the impression of flickering "eyes" thereby scaring away distant birds. I remember reading years ago that this trick has helped reduce the bird-strike rate.
There was a case some years ago where the pilots of an Airbus had to do an emergency turn at a high bank angle. The pilots were horrified to see their screens go blank and the flight computers reboot at this critical stage. Everything was OK within a minute or so and things went back to normal. It turned out that the programmers had assumed that such a high bank angle would never occur and so the computers must have had faulty data and needed a restart.
This reminds me of a millionaire New Zealand businessman who was used to his Spitfire rolling to one side on takeoff due to the inertia of the big propeller. He automatically took the same action to correct the roll on his newest Spitfire, only he forgot that its engine rotated in the opposite direction. In short, the Spitfire rolled over and crashed; the businessman barely survived with major brain injuries.
Our main TV is a 26" Philips KTV660 dating from late 1979, the TV repair man says that it is very overdesigned. I also have an HP-41C programmable calcutor with several kilobytes of RAM which I bought in 1981, and a Casio FX-3200 slim-line calculator from 1980. The calculators all work, but I very rarely use them.
By contrast, my cousin in Italy bought a new Turbodiesel VW Golf when he started working in the early 1980's. He drove it all around Europe, kept it for for about 15 years and the only thing he had to replace was the radiator and battery. It was well-known that the VW Golfs built in the USA were of much lower reliability than the German-built ones.
My big hassle with Linux is winmodems. How the hell is Joe Sixpack ever going to connect on dial-up using Linux unless they have an external hardware modem. My 8 year-old Windows ME computer is fine since it has a hardware ISA modem, but this is not the case with modern computers. PCI hardware modems are basically unavailable in New Zealand. Unless you really know about Linux and compiling things it is impossible to use a winmodem.
This is exactly why Microsoft Windows is the dominant OS and the Intel X86 the dominant chip series. They are not the best, but they are "good enough" and cheap enough that people will use them.
The Christchurch City Council in New Zealand has been generating methane gas from its sewerage for many years and using it in its vehicles and generators. In fact, the sewage works generates a substantial portion of the power required to run itself. In addition, there is a large council swimming pool complex (Queen Elizabeth) that is heated by the gas given off from an old rubbish dump.
A little bit off-topic but I remember reading a few times about a battlefield simulation program that was modified for the Australia military. The programmers were told to use kangaroos in the scenery so elected to modify the object-oriented coding for foot-soldiers. All seemed to be well until the aircraft in the simulation buzzed the kangaroos which then scattered and regrouped to fire Stinger missiles at the amazed pilots. The programmers had forgotten to remove some of the settings and code for the soldiers to fight back at aerial attacks.
I don't know why people love clicking keyboards, I am sure that I would find it annoying and one of the things I would try to turn off right away. It seems to me that their quality has gone down a lot lately. I have had two Microsoft Comfort Curve keyboards develop intermittant faults after only a few months, while in over 20 years of computer ownership I had no problems. No problems so far with my new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic keyboard but that's the last time I buy a low-end keyboard. Oh, and I hated it when keyboards stopped using the large "L" shaped enter key, I often end up missing it when touch-typing.
Living in New Zealand I notice that we always seem to be at a different part of the electoral cycle to Australia. When Australia had a conservative government we had a more left-wing one. Now that Australia has a Labor government we have elected a conservative one. This will doubtless be useful for the Labour opposition who will be able to say "but, everyone else (Australia, the USA and Britain) are not doing THAT"
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The thing that depresses me, and that I would have found unbelievable in the 1970's is that some people say that all those scientists are biased, while those politicians, you know, are not biased. As if politicians had an unbiased reputation and always told the truth!
The main reason why NASA is so eager to use the Sold Rocket Boosters (SRB) of the shuttle is that the military uses a lot of solid rocket engines in their missiles. The manufacturers of the solid rocket engines would lose a lot of business when the shuttles are retired, reducing their economies of scale for the rest of their products. The SRBs cause a lot of stress on the shuttle because they accelerate at full power, vibrate a lot, and cause heavy air resistance at low altitudes. On the first flight of the shuttle, the SRBs thrust over-stressed the shuttle's tail and the hydraulic system of some control surfaces. The pilots have said that had they known what had happened they would not have had confidence in the shuttle to safely return and would have ejected at low level. Columbia could easily have been destroyed on the first flight!
I read of a situation in the early days of the Lockheed Tri-star where it took multiple attempts for a particular flight to depart. Planes were much less reliable then, and the Tri-star also had some teething problems. After takeoffs suffering a blown engine, landing gear failing to retract and a host of other problems, the passengers refused to board the last replacement plane until the aircraft engineer flew with them to their destination.
Hear, hear, that's my pet gripe about modern keyboards. The PC keyboards that I had been using until about 9 years ago had a large inverted "L" shape for the enter key. Now, when I touch-type I often miss the enter key. Also makes it hard for people who don't have much typing experience to find a very similar-looking key on the keyboard.
The Atlas V is unpopular with NASA because it has a Russian rocket engine - the RD-180. It could, in theory be manufactured in the USA if Russia was to withhold sales for political reasons. The engineering and blueprints have already been worked on to do this, but it would be more expensive. It is more efficient then the Delta IV becaused it uses kerosene for the Russian first stage rather than the hydrogen that the Delta IV uses for all of its stages (better for upper stages only). There is also the issue of a non-US rocket engine being used for a flagship US rocket.
I had to laugh when I saw DNA described as being a binary code in a well-known magazine. It is actually base 4 (Quarternary?) I believe.
I've thought of a simple way for people to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit for temperatures between 0-100 Celsius: just treat the Celsius temperature as a percentage between the Fahrenheit water freezing and water boiling points. Probably also works for above 100 Celsius but I have not worked it out yet.
Google "Dream Chaser" and SpaceDev to see a mini-shuttle being slowly developed by the company that supplied the hybrid rocket engines for Rutan's and Branson's SpaceShipOne. The US Airforce is going to launch the X-37B, a miniature unmanned shuttle, in early 2010, on top of an Atlas V rocket. It might take a few years yet, but I think that there might be at least a few mini-shuttles in the future.
Some fundamentalist Christians would like to create a large cross shape on the moon using something like a lunar bulldozer or grader. Not only would the whole world see the symbol of Christianity, but it would demoralize Muslims to have their religious symbol defaced by infidels.
Challenger flew the 13th shuttle mission some time before it blew up and Columbia was destroyed on the 113th shuttle mission. The flight number of Columbia was not STS-113 but STS-107 since missions can get shuffled around. Maybe there is something to this number 13 business, but both the shuttles' crews could have survived if not for overbearing managers. I remember reading about a WW II aircraft carrier that was badly damaged and very slowly limped home, it had 13 as a serial number.! All the US space disasters all happened in the same week of the year as well.
You will probably find that more Boeing planes will crash, simply because there are a lot more older Boeings flying than the Johnny-come-lately Airbus company. What would be more interesting would be to see how many new-model planes from each manufacturer crash.
Many jet planes have white off-center dots or spirals painted on the spinner of their engines. In flight, these give the impression of flickering "eyes" thereby scaring away distant birds. I remember reading years ago that this trick has helped reduce the bird-strike rate.
There was a case some years ago where the pilots of an Airbus had to do an emergency turn at a high bank angle. The pilots were horrified to see their screens go blank and the flight computers reboot at this critical stage. Everything was OK within a minute or so and things went back to normal. It turned out that the programmers had assumed that such a high bank angle would never occur and so the computers must have had faulty data and needed a restart.
This reminds me of a millionaire New Zealand businessman who was used to his Spitfire rolling to one side on takeoff due to the inertia of the big propeller. He automatically took the same action to correct the roll on his newest Spitfire, only he forgot that its engine rotated in the opposite direction. In short, the Spitfire rolled over and crashed; the businessman barely survived with major brain injuries.
Our main TV is a 26" Philips KTV660 dating from late 1979, the TV repair man says that it is very overdesigned. I also have an HP-41C programmable calcutor with several kilobytes of RAM which I bought in 1981, and a Casio FX-3200 slim-line calculator from 1980. The calculators all work, but I very rarely use them.
He has a blog on his website at www.aardvark.co.nz
He still seems to be around since he is still blogging on his website www.aardvark.co.nz
By contrast, my cousin in Italy bought a new Turbodiesel VW Golf when he started working in the early 1980's. He drove it all around Europe, kept it for for about 15 years and the only thing he had to replace was the radiator and battery. It was well-known that the VW Golfs built in the USA were of much lower reliability than the German-built ones.
My big hassle with Linux is winmodems. How the hell is Joe Sixpack ever going to connect on dial-up using Linux unless they have an external hardware modem. My 8 year-old Windows ME computer is fine since it has a hardware ISA modem, but this is not the case with modern computers. PCI hardware modems are basically unavailable in New Zealand. Unless you really know about Linux and compiling things it is impossible to use a winmodem.
This is exactly why Microsoft Windows is the dominant OS and the Intel X86 the dominant chip series. They are not the best, but they are "good enough" and cheap enough that people will use them.
The Christchurch City Council in New Zealand has been generating methane gas from its sewerage for many years and using it in its vehicles and generators. In fact, the sewage works generates a substantial portion of the power required to run itself. In addition, there is a large council swimming pool complex (Queen Elizabeth) that is heated by the gas given off from an old rubbish dump.
A little bit off-topic but I remember reading a few times about a battlefield simulation program that was modified for the Australia military. The programmers were told to use kangaroos in the scenery so elected to modify the object-oriented coding for foot-soldiers. All seemed to be well until the aircraft in the simulation buzzed the kangaroos which then scattered and regrouped to fire Stinger missiles at the amazed pilots. The programmers had forgotten to remove some of the settings and code for the soldiers to fight back at aerial attacks.
I don't know why people love clicking keyboards, I am sure that I would find it annoying and one of the things I would try to turn off right away. It seems to me that their quality has gone down a lot lately. I have had two Microsoft Comfort Curve keyboards develop intermittant faults after only a few months, while in over 20 years of computer ownership I had no problems. No problems so far with my new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic keyboard but that's the last time I buy a low-end keyboard. Oh, and I hated it when keyboards stopped using the large "L" shaped enter key, I often end up missing it when touch-typing.
Living in New Zealand I notice that we always seem to be at a different part of the electoral cycle to Australia. When Australia had a conservative government we had a more left-wing one. Now that Australia has a Labor government we have elected a conservative one. This will doubtless be useful for the Labour opposition who will be able to say "but, everyone else (Australia, the USA and Britain) are not doing THAT"
Good luck trying that! New Zealand is about 3 hours flying time from Australia.