Any UK people reading this should go to the government e-petitions site and sign the petition to have Turing put on the next update of the ten-pound banknote.
I wouldn't be surprised if it featured on the documentary. Assuming the 727 pilot is an experienced skydiver, it would still make sense for them to take a few practice jumps from the DC 9 to familiarise themselves with jumping out the back of a jet airliner.
I call bullshit on the word "ejected". Installing a seat would be a massive amount of hassle - cutting a hatch in the roof of the cockpit would be a major modification of the airframe. I'm no airplane geek but I bet the airframe would need FAA recertification after that kind of modification, plus a massive amount of testing to make sure it all worked correctly (you really don't want the situation where the seat fires but the hatch remains locked in place). I admit I'm pulling a number out of the air, but I'd be unsurprised if there was little change from ten million.
Forget the ejection seat. I bet the reason they used a 727 is that it's fitted with an Airstair, a combined hatch/stairway at the very rear of the aircraft. The Airstair makes the 727 one of the few airliners that it's possible to parachute from without the risk of being hit by the engines, wing or tailplane - a person known as "Mr Cooper" proved this was possible in 1971. The only modification needed to do it again is the removal of the Cooper vane, a small aerodynamic device fitted to 727s after the DB Cooper hikack, intended to stop the Airstair being opened in flight.
I have had the pleasure of seeing-hearing-feeling a Spitfire fly by at full speed at very low altitude. It's a sexual experience for anyone who appreciates aircraft.
I'm not sure exactly what kind of experience this reporter had with a low, fast Spitfire, but it doesn't seem to have been sexual, despite what he subsequently said.
Since this thread has already established that the boat is still a valuable asset that remains the property of the owners. Sinking it when it could be salvaged with little effort would presumably open the Canadian authorities up to an immediate lawsuit from the owners.
“Subsonic cruise missiles, aircraft, fast-moving boats, unmanned aerial vehicles” — Mike Deitchman, who oversees future weapons development for the Office of Naval Research, promises Danger Room that the Navy laser cannons just over the horizon will target them all.
I'm confused. Surely the one thing a laser canon can't do is target things from over the horizon.
One time a fantasy film-make used non-British English accents.
The accents were one of the reasons he wound fending off accusations of racism and anti-semitism. So I can imagine other film makers remembering this, and just preferring to avoid the risk of the same thing happening again.
Having seen a couple of aircraft wrecks that have been salvaged, all they'll be able to retrieve is a hunk of junk.
Having seen pictures of World War 2 aircraft, recovered form the sea after 70 years, that looked like the only restoration needed was to hose off the mud and straighten the propeller (see image), I'd say neither of us have any real idea what condition they'll be in.
Basically, it's all about what angle the S-I stage hit the water 40 years ago. Cold deep sea is comparatively kind to aircraft alloys, although post-recovery conservation is a massive problem.
The man simply likes playing with R/C earthmovers. And this is a way for him to keep on doing it during the five-month Canadian Winter, when everything is covered in snow. I doubt if he would care if it took 20 years to finish.
Sod guns, obviously the most useful application this technology would have, assuming it can have the range claimed for it, is spotting suicide vests as frisking is clearly impossible. I believe the only current option is to force the suspected bomber to undress at gunpoint, while standing well away from them.
I'll be interested to see if the Israelis start buying this technology. Though I assume it'll only take a another 7/7 in London before they put these into every tube station.
It's a good idea. It's much more sensible for London police officers to take their regular payments from tabloid journalists via PayPal. The alternative - frequently meeting up in a dodgy pub to hand over an envelope of used bank notes - is just an big inconvienence for everybody concerned.
so they close down one tabloid and move all the employees to another?
No, it's cleverer than that. The close a Sunday tabloid and move a small number of staff to the daily stablemate, just enough additional hands for it to operate effectively over seven days rather than six. The rest are fired, giving massive savings. The News Corp accountants are now punching the air, and the senior management making wry jokes about silver linings.
Hell, that may have been a long-term plan for a while. The scandal had just given them an excuse to bring the plans forward.
I've paid for tickets with cash. When I found out the travel agend added on a 2% charge* (£8 extra on the tickets) for using plastic, I figured it was worth while to pop out of the Travel Agent shop for 10 minutes, go to a branch of my bank and get an envelope full of £20 notes.
* Dunno about other places, but passing the card processing fee onto the customer is reasonably common in the UK.
Once again, a "foolproof" system proves to be only as useful as the fool who invented it.
There is a fool here, but not the inventor - from his or her PoV the system did exactly what it was supposed to do, it got sold. Though whether more will be sold after this story is another matter.
The security business isn't about providing solutions that work. It's about providing solutions that appear to work in promotional DVDs and glossy brochures, making it possible to persuade people in authority to write cheques.
Not exactly.... Apollo 1 was about 8 years beforeApollo-Soyuz. They kept flying with 100% oxygen until the Shuttle era.
The US used pure oxygen because it meant the spacecraft presure could be less, while still delivering the same amount of O2 to the breather. Lower pressure meant a lighter spacecraft with thiner walls. Also, life support systems could be simpler - they just scrubed everything from the atmosphere that's wasn't oxygen.
Only, on the ground waiting for launch, such a spacecraft would be at atmospheric pressure (to avoid imploding). While 100% O2 at low pressure isn't much of a fire-risk, 100% O2 at atmospheric pressure is a fire-catastrophe waiting to happen, which it duly did with Apollo 1.
They solved the problem on Apollo by having a normal atmosphere on the ground. As the rocked ascended during launch, the concentration of oxygen slowly increaed, with the overall-pressure slowly reduced in step, so the partial pressure of oxygen remained constant. On the shuttle, they went to oxygen-nitrogen. A downside of this is the need to pre-breath oxygen for 24 hours before a spacewalk. Spacesuits operate at the lowest possible pressure and to go straight-outside in one would give you diver's bends. Bends were never a risk on Apollo as there was simply no nitrgen there to cause it.
The big problem is speed.
People have to be able to step from a static to a moving surface without falling over. So the speed difference must be low enough for the infirm and elderly to cope with.
To get up to 30mph, you're going to need a succession of moving surfaces to ramp up the person's speed in steps, then ramp it down at the far end. And once you're on the thing, there's no getting off until you get to where it's taking you.
So it might see very niche uses. Like connecting a sports stadium to a nearby mass-transit station. Or in large airports, in which they're actually already widely used.
I agree with those who say this is pointless, if all it does is allow the batteries to go in either way. It's a solution chasing a problem.
Now, what would be useful is if the battery orientation could be considered part of the user-interface. A good example would be a red, LED, rear bike light. These have flashing and constant modes, but only one switch so you must annoyingly cycle through the modes each time you turn on or off.
Suppose you have a bike light that is constant if the batteries go in one way, and flashes if they go in the other. It wold be quote useful as people generally use one or the other.
So are only men allowed to fly them? Or does the technology require the pilot insert a weiner into something to get it to work; thus making it impossibly to fly for those who are weinerless.
And better than Soyuz 18a which came down high up in the Altai Mountains. It landed on a snow covered slope and was sliding downhill to a 500 foot cliff-top when it was stopped by the parachute snagging on vegetation.
The crew had to wait 24 hours for rescue because nobody could get to them through the chest-deep snow and they had problems flying helicopters at that altitude.
Beagle 2 always was an underfunded project with zero margin for error. For background, see this 2005, 2-part article by respected space historian and author, Dwayne Day.
As for Colin Pillinger, note that the (initially secret) ESA report on the Beagle failure put much of the blame on project management failings and he's not been put in charge of any large project since.
Slashdot Mirror
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/31659
It might be this plane she jumped from, a DC 9 not a 727 - similar but a bit smaller.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eigjb/4035916870/
I wouldn't be surprised if it featured on the documentary. Assuming the 727 pilot is an experienced skydiver, it would still make sense for them to take a few practice jumps from the DC 9 to familiarise themselves with jumping out the back of a jet airliner.
I call bullshit on the word "ejected". Installing a seat would be a massive amount of hassle - cutting a hatch in the roof of the cockpit would be a major modification of the airframe. I'm no airplane geek but I bet the airframe would need FAA recertification after that kind of modification, plus a massive amount of testing to make sure it all worked correctly (you really don't want the situation where the seat fires but the hatch remains locked in place). I admit I'm pulling a number out of the air, but I'd be unsurprised if there was little change from ten million.
Forget the ejection seat. I bet the reason they used a 727 is that it's fitted with an Airstair, a combined hatch/stairway at the very rear of the aircraft. The Airstair makes the 727 one of the few airliners that it's possible to parachute from without the risk of being hit by the engines, wing or tailplane - a person known as "Mr Cooper" proved this was possible in 1971. The only modification needed to do it again is the removal of the Cooper vane, a small aerodynamic device fitted to 727s after the DB Cooper hikack, intended to stop the Airstair being opened in flight.
I have had the pleasure of seeing-hearing-feeling a Spitfire fly by at full speed at very low altitude. It's a sexual experience for anyone who appreciates aircraft.
I'm not sure exactly what kind of experience this reporter had with a low, fast Spitfire, but it doesn't seem to have been sexual, despite what he subsequently said.
Since this thread has already established that the boat is still a valuable asset that remains the property of the owners. Sinking it when it could be salvaged with little effort would presumably open the Canadian authorities up to an immediate lawsuit from the owners.
“Subsonic cruise missiles, aircraft, fast-moving boats, unmanned aerial vehicles” — Mike Deitchman, who oversees future weapons development for the Office of Naval Research, promises Danger Room that the Navy laser cannons just over the horizon will target them all.
I'm confused. Surely the one thing a laser canon can't do is target things from over the horizon.
One time a fantasy film-make used non-British English accents.
The accents were one of the reasons he wound fending off accusations of racism and anti-semitism. So I can imagine other film makers remembering this, and just preferring to avoid the risk of the same thing happening again.
Having seen a couple of aircraft wrecks that have been salvaged, all they'll be able to retrieve is a hunk of junk.
Having seen pictures of World War 2 aircraft, recovered form the sea after 70 years, that looked like the only restoration needed was to hose off the mud and straighten the propeller (see image), I'd say neither of us have any real idea what condition they'll be in.
Basically, it's all about what angle the S-I stage hit the water 40 years ago. Cold deep sea is comparatively kind to aircraft alloys, although post-recovery conservation is a massive problem.
This is absolutely not about digging a basement.
The man simply likes playing with R/C earthmovers. And this is a way for him to keep on doing it during the five-month Canadian Winter, when everything is covered in snow. I doubt if he would care if it took 20 years to finish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpressure_balloon
Sod guns, obviously the most useful application this technology would have, assuming it can have the range claimed for it, is spotting suicide vests as frisking is clearly impossible. I believe the only current option is to force the suspected bomber to undress at gunpoint, while standing well away from them.
I'll be interested to see if the Israelis start buying this technology. Though I assume it'll only take a another 7/7 in London before they put these into every tube station.
It's a good idea. It's much more sensible for London police officers to take their regular payments from tabloid journalists via PayPal. The alternative - frequently meeting up in a dodgy pub to hand over an envelope of used bank notes - is just an big inconvienence for everybody concerned.
so they close down one tabloid and move all the employees to another?
No, it's cleverer than that. The close a Sunday tabloid and move a small number of staff to the daily stablemate, just enough additional hands for it to operate effectively over seven days rather than six. The rest are fired, giving massive savings. The News Corp accountants are now punching the air, and the senior management making wry jokes about silver linings.
Hell, that may have been a long-term plan for a while. The scandal had just given them an excuse to bring the plans forward.
* Dunno about other places, but passing the card processing fee onto the customer is reasonably common in the UK.
Hardly news... Sotherby's first sold a bunch of Russan space hardware (including several space suits) in New York back in 1993,
[reference] http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F0061EF93A5A0C718DDDAB0994DB494D81
Two blood samples enter; one bloody sample leaves!
A. They cut out the plot and weigh the piece of paper. Then compare this with the weight of a piece of paper of known area.
There is a fool here, but not the inventor - from his or her PoV the system did exactly what it was supposed to do, it got sold. Though whether more will be sold after this story is another matter.
The security business isn't about providing solutions that work. It's about providing solutions that appear to work in promotional DVDs and glossy brochures, making it possible to persuade people in authority to write cheques.
The US used pure oxygen because it meant the spacecraft presure could be less, while still delivering the same amount of O2 to the breather. Lower pressure meant a lighter spacecraft with thiner walls. Also, life support systems could be simpler - they just scrubed everything from the atmosphere that's wasn't oxygen.
Only, on the ground waiting for launch, such a spacecraft would be at atmospheric pressure (to avoid imploding). While 100% O2 at low pressure isn't much of a fire-risk, 100% O2 at atmospheric pressure is a fire-catastrophe waiting to happen, which it duly did with Apollo 1.
They solved the problem on Apollo by having a normal atmosphere on the ground. As the rocked ascended during launch, the concentration of oxygen slowly increaed, with the overall-pressure slowly reduced in step, so the partial pressure of oxygen remained constant. On the shuttle, they went to oxygen-nitrogen. A downside of this is the need to pre-breath oxygen for 24 hours before a spacewalk. Spacesuits operate at the lowest possible pressure and to go straight-outside in one would give you diver's bends. Bends were never a risk on Apollo as there was simply no nitrgen there to cause it.
To get up to 30mph, you're going to need a succession of moving surfaces to ramp up the person's speed in steps, then ramp it down at the far end. And once you're on the thing, there's no getting off until you get to where it's taking you. So it might see very niche uses. Like connecting a sports stadium to a nearby mass-transit station. Or in large airports, in which they're actually already widely used.
I agree with those who say this is pointless, if all it does is allow the batteries to go in either way. It's a solution chasing a problem.
Now, what would be useful is if the battery orientation could be considered part of the user-interface. A good example would be a red, LED, rear bike light. These have flashing and constant modes, but only one switch so you must annoyingly cycle through the modes each time you turn on or off.
Suppose you have a bike light that is constant if the batteries go in one way, and flashes if they go in the other. It wold be quote useful as people generally use one or the other.
They'll be solved by a well-targeted AK-47.
So are only men allowed to fly them? Or does the technology require the pilot insert a weiner into something to get it to work; thus making it impossibly to fly for those who are weinerless.
- Catmeat (weinerless hang-glider pilot)
The crew had to wait 24 hours for rescue because nobody could get to them through the chest-deep snow and they had problems flying helicopters at that altitude.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/330/1
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/347/1
As for Colin Pillinger, note that the (initially secret) ESA report on the Beagle failure put much of the blame on project management failings and he's not been put in charge of any large project since.