You'd have a point if people only worried about trivial things like hair loss. But they don't. They also worry about heart disease, the education of our children, the environment, the starving, the poor, the homeless, and all that other stuff you probably think is more important. That's the great thing about diversity: everyone does their own thing, and eventually everything gets some measure of attention. Including those things you think are important, but I don't.
So prior example shouldn't be considered? While I concur that management erred in considering the threat from foam debris (and it's composition) to be negligible, five years of evidence that the system worked reliably argued that STS-107 was fine. Right or wrong, the evidence was on their side. Based on the media focus, it seems obvious that this is something that should have been investigated more clearly, but how many times had something similar happened on prior missions with no significant damage to the vehicle?
Yep, they were lucky those times, but there was no factual evidence to the contrary, and unfortunately, it took this tragedy to provide a single, compelling data point to the contrary. Had falling foam cause more significant, but non-catestrophic damage prior to STS-107, the warnings probably would have been given more attention, but until now, the only cost was expensive tile repair.
If I sit down in a chair fifteen times without it collapsing under me, it is hardly a "dangerous fallacy" to think it will continue to support me fifteen more times. It is reasonable to assume it will eventually break and fail, but no reasonable person will stop and examine their chairs every time prior to sitting in them. The shuttle is a remarkably complex machine, with extraordinary attention paid already to vehicle safety. There's going to be a lot of hand-wringing over this incident and a lot of finger-pointing until things settle, but in the final analysis, no system is perfect. It is humanly impossible to catch all accidents before they occur. Sometimes, unfortunately, it takes a catastrophic failure to highlight a problem before it is corrected.
And guess what? This won't be the last failure in space exploration/exploitation.
Let's see, prior to STS-86 and while CFC-11 was still used as propellant, sprayed-foam insulation loss was minimal, sporadic, and concentrated around a few problem areas and was characterized by small debris. After that, the loss became common, resulting in significant damage to STS-87 and other flights and was characterized by much bigger chunks shedding off random areas of the external tank.
So, yes, it most certainly is the new formula that caused the problems.
Nope, wrong again. NASA has not used CFC-11 as a propellant for their foam since switching in 1997. They have new application methods to reduce flaking, but obviously they are lacking. Mind you, I'm not quick to point the finger at environmentalists on this one. The EPA, for example, had exempted NASA from requiring a switch. NASA, for reasons I'm not sure about, decided to switch anyway.
Because prior to this accident, the concensus opinion at NASA was that the foamed insulation was low-mass and crumbled easily enough that it didn't pose a threat to the vehicle. In fact, the mixture of foam being used had been in place for five years. In STS-87, the first time it was applied to Orbiter Columbia, foam debris caused 308 hits on the orbiter, some resulting in deep gashes. After changes in the method of application, the foam was rendered more secure, but chunks continued to break off in future flights.
Still, none of those flights exhibited the kind of damage that would lead to the Columbia tragedy until now. It seems perfectly obvious to "monday-morning quarterbacks" that the foam was a problem, but five years of experience suggested otherwise.
Not only did they make the switch, NASA chose to do so in spite of a special-use exemption granted by the EPA. After returning from a December, 1997 flight, Columbia had taken 308 hits from falling foam debris, with clear indication of the potential damage (some of the scratches in the delicate tiles on the underbelly were over 3 centimeters deep). Nevertheless, NASA continued to use the more dangerous, "environmentally safer" HCFC-141b instead of the reliable CFC-11 propellant.
Nope, try this on for size: you're on the road, trying to find the regional rail terminal that will get you to work as soon as possible after a morning doctor's appointment (I just did this last Friday). With this server device, I'd have to find a place to pull over and "dock" to get access to the copied transit schedules I have in my server -- wasting precious minutes and possibly causing me to miss a train.
But with these pages in a PDA, I can compare the schedules of all the local lines and select the closest station that will get me into the office sooner, saving me money, gas, and time. And I can do this while sitting at a red light or before I leave the doctor's parking lot.
Sorry, this pocket server needs I/O to replace the PDA.
No, Mr. G4dget, the problem is with folks who assume that it is logically possible to prove something is safe. That can no more be done than proving a negative, and is essentially the same thing.
Can you prove water is safe? Air? Slashdot? No, you have one of two choices, really: Ban them and try to get through life without them simply because some alarmist luddite somewhere has decided to scare the pants off of you and you've bought into their agenda. Or go the other direction and wait until something is proven dangerous before you shut it down.
Now before you start wandering off into of hyperbole and screwball scenarios of people walking around munching plutonium or something similar, remember that it is relatively easy to prove that something is dangerous if it really is. On the other hand, if you've got a need to fulfill an agenda that likes to cloak itself in safety for the sake of a better argument, then you have a tougher time of it.
I guess that's why so many environmental extremists (as an example, but there are others)these days love the precautionary principle. It helps to do away with annoying little details like proof and logic.
Any energy captured from a vibration recovery system will unavoidably be less than the energy required to make the mechanism vibrate. Now capture of energy from externally generated vibrations would be useful...recharge your phone by placing it on top of a tower with a noisy fan.
It's called the Precautionary Principle, and as a philosophy it requires anyone advocating a new technology to prove that it isn't dangerous. Nevermind about the logical difficulties involved in proving a negative...logic is never the forte of luddites.
Ouch! I hadn't considered that argument...good one! Although, I guess it could be argued that the over all change is minimal and shouldn't effect things like traditional stories, language, and alphabet. But you're right, some of the behavior will be changed as the folks being studied try to put on their best (in their opinions, by their culture's standards) behavior for their guests.
Well, far be it from me to argue with Jean Luc Picard! And I have absolutely no disagreement with the concept of bettering oneself through education. But what exactly would you have the rest of us do about this? To be honest, I see in you the exact mentality that should be approaching the problem...you're concerned and you're actively out there preserving the Cree. But do you expect each of the rest of us to do the same thing? Should we abandon all other endeavors until everything in danger is preserved? Of course not. And I'm sure that's not your position either. Do you feel that we need to abandon the trend toward globalization because it so threatens the borderline cultures? I hope not, because the rest of us are all moving in our own way towards something we hope is better than what we have today. A lot of us are pulling in different directions, but the summed vector of that movement is towards increasing homogeneity
You know, I can't help but wonder who or what was there before the Cree...
And who would you force to correct this situation, my sarcastic AC? The tribal members who have decided to move to the big city? Would you force them to go back to their bearskin huts? How about forcing someone like me to take up a job going out to interview surviving members to record as much of their unique culture as possible just because some hyperbolic alarmist has decided that something valuable might be lost if our planet forgets how they used to sew banana leaves around caterpillars prior to roasting them.
The point I'm making is that this change is natural. It's happening not at gunpoint (usually), but because the people involved see a better life for themselves elsewhere. Sure, some anthropologists and liberal arts majors are going to get worked up over the change, but it's been happening for millennia, and it will continue to go on for as long as people create new ideas. New ideas replace old ones. Why is that such a bad thing?
An entirely different issue, and if someone wants to study a dead language, I think they should do the best with it that they can. I just don't see the need to get worked up because languages and cultures are dying out. People don't live the same now as they did a thousand years ago, and etc. for every thousand years before that. So if you want to study those things before they are forgotten, then no one should stand in your way. But if your collegue jumps up and down and points to some scratches in an tree bark and demands that I be concerned, I will simply shrug and shamble on...because for me to be concerned would be a waste. I have other things that I want to be concerned about. Same with that other guy.
[chuckles]I guess you think you've pushed a button, but in fact I agree with your example. If cheaper labor can be found somewhere else, then let employers go elsewhere and folks around here will learn to tighten their belts and adjust to change. Eventually, the Indian programmers will become just as fat and greedy as their American counterparts and the need for employers to go there will diminish. In the meantime, not every job will dry up here, and I am smart enough to adapt.
I'd prefer it that way than having some bureaucrat at central planning deciding whats good for us all!
And how much anthropological information are we losing because languages change anyway? How many people know or understand the roots of a phrase like "the devil's in the details" now, let alone 1000 years from now? And that's in a language that is active and growing and studied by tens of thousands of people every day. Sure, it's a scientific loss when a tribe shrugs its shoulders and wanders out of the brush and into suburbia, but it's a scientific loss every time I scratch an itch and a few mutated DNA strands get stranded in the foresaken purgatory beneath my fingernails. And what would have folks do about this? Forbid tribal members from seeking what they see as a better life elsewhere? Force some of us to learn a tongue that fewer speak than Innuit? I'm sorry, but there are bigger things for most of us to be concerned about, but if it concerns you, then pick a dying culture and dedicate your life to its preservation, because that's the only fair and rational solution that I can see.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get so upset over it! He's moved on and now they've got the guy jumping through hoops these days.
Um, in some places in Alaska and Canada, frozen rivers and lakes are part of the road in winter.
You'd have a point if people only worried about trivial things like hair loss. But they don't. They also worry about heart disease, the education of our children, the environment, the starving, the poor, the homeless, and all that other stuff you probably think is more important. That's the great thing about diversity: everyone does their own thing, and eventually everything gets some measure of attention. Including those things you think are important, but I don't.
Uh...Jack? Maybe you should take a look at the information under "Contracting Officer":
So prior example shouldn't be considered? While I concur that management erred in considering the threat from foam debris (and it's composition) to be negligible, five years of evidence that the system worked reliably argued that STS-107 was fine. Right or wrong, the evidence was on their side. Based on the media focus, it seems obvious that this is something that should have been investigated more clearly, but how many times had something similar happened on prior missions with no significant damage to the vehicle?
Yep, they were lucky those times, but there was no factual evidence to the contrary, and unfortunately, it took this tragedy to provide a single, compelling data point to the contrary. Had falling foam cause more significant, but non-catestrophic damage prior to STS-107, the warnings probably would have been given more attention, but until now, the only cost was expensive tile repair.
If I sit down in a chair fifteen times without it collapsing under me, it is hardly a "dangerous fallacy" to think it will continue to support me fifteen more times. It is reasonable to assume it will eventually break and fail, but no reasonable person will stop and examine their chairs every time prior to sitting in them. The shuttle is a remarkably complex machine, with extraordinary attention paid already to vehicle safety. There's going to be a lot of hand-wringing over this incident and a lot of finger-pointing until things settle, but in the final analysis, no system is perfect. It is humanly impossible to catch all accidents before they occur. Sometimes, unfortunately, it takes a catastrophic failure to highlight a problem before it is corrected.
And guess what? This won't be the last failure in space exploration/exploitation.
Let's see, prior to STS-86 and while CFC-11 was still used as propellant, sprayed-foam insulation loss was minimal, sporadic, and concentrated around a few problem areas and was characterized by small debris. After that, the loss became common, resulting in significant damage to STS-87 and other flights and was characterized by much bigger chunks shedding off random areas of the external tank.
So, yes, it most certainly is the new formula that caused the problems.
Nope, wrong again. NASA has not used CFC-11 as a propellant for their foam since switching in 1997. They have new application methods to reduce flaking, but obviously they are lacking. Mind you, I'm not quick to point the finger at environmentalists on this one. The EPA, for example, had exempted NASA from requiring a switch. NASA, for reasons I'm not sure about, decided to switch anyway.
Gwernol is wrong. Unless you'd care to debate NASA's own reports on this?
Nice try. Actually, they began using HCFC-141b with STS-86. Here's some relevant info on Columbia's damage after STS-87 in 1997.
Note the source.
Because prior to this accident, the concensus opinion at NASA was that the foamed insulation was low-mass and crumbled easily enough that it didn't pose a threat to the vehicle. In fact, the mixture of foam being used had been in place for five years. In STS-87, the first time it was applied to Orbiter Columbia, foam debris caused 308 hits on the orbiter, some resulting in deep gashes. After changes in the method of application, the foam was rendered more secure, but chunks continued to break off in future flights.
Still, none of those flights exhibited the kind of damage that would lead to the Columbia tragedy until now. It seems perfectly obvious to "monday-morning quarterbacks" that the foam was a problem, but five years of experience suggested otherwise.
Not only did they make the switch, NASA chose to do so in spite of a special-use exemption granted by the EPA. After returning from a December, 1997 flight, Columbia had taken 308 hits from falling foam debris, with clear indication of the potential damage (some of the scratches in the delicate tiles on the underbelly were over 3 centimeters deep). Nevertheless, NASA continued to use the more dangerous, "environmentally safer" HCFC-141b instead of the reliable CFC-11 propellant.
Thanks for bringing this up!
Nope, try this on for size: you're on the road, trying to find the regional rail terminal that will get you to work as soon as possible after a morning doctor's appointment (I just did this last Friday). With this server device, I'd have to find a place to pull over and "dock" to get access to the copied transit schedules I have in my server -- wasting precious minutes and possibly causing me to miss a train.
But with these pages in a PDA, I can compare the schedules of all the local lines and select the closest station that will get me into the office sooner, saving me money, gas, and time. And I can do this while sitting at a red light or before I leave the doctor's parking lot.
Sorry, this pocket server needs I/O to replace the PDA.
Psst...microwaves AREN'T ionizing radiation!
No, Mr. G4dget, the problem is with folks who assume that it is logically possible to prove something is safe. That can no more be done than proving a negative, and is essentially the same thing.
Can you prove water is safe? Air? Slashdot? No, you have one of two choices, really: Ban them and try to get through life without them simply because some alarmist luddite somewhere has decided to scare the pants off of you and you've bought into their agenda. Or go the other direction and wait until something is proven dangerous before you shut it down.
Now before you start wandering off into of hyperbole and screwball scenarios of people walking around munching plutonium or something similar, remember that it is relatively easy to prove that something is dangerous if it really is. On the other hand, if you've got a need to fulfill an agenda that likes to cloak itself in safety for the sake of a better argument, then you have a tougher time of it.
I guess that's why so many environmental extremists (as an example, but there are others)these days love the precautionary principle. It helps to do away with annoying little details like proof and logic.
Any energy captured from a vibration recovery system will unavoidably be less than the energy required to make the mechanism vibrate. Now capture of energy from externally generated vibrations would be useful...recharge your phone by placing it on top of a tower with a noisy fan.
It's called the Precautionary Principle, and as a philosophy it requires anyone advocating a new technology to prove that it isn't dangerous. Nevermind about the logical difficulties involved in proving a negative...logic is never the forte of luddites.
What's the matter, Michael, wasn't getting booed off the stage at the Oscars enough for you?
You don't suppose that someone might consider cloning other samples, do you?
Ouch! I hadn't considered that argument...good one! Although, I guess it could be argued that the over all change is minimal and shouldn't effect things like traditional stories, language, and alphabet. But you're right, some of the behavior will be changed as the folks being studied try to put on their best (in their opinions, by their culture's standards) behavior for their guests.
Well, far be it from me to argue with Jean Luc Picard! And I have absolutely no disagreement with the concept of bettering oneself through education. But what exactly would you have the rest of us do about this? To be honest, I see in you the exact mentality that should be approaching the problem...you're concerned and you're actively out there preserving the Cree. But do you expect each of the rest of us to do the same thing? Should we abandon all other endeavors until everything in danger is preserved? Of course not. And I'm sure that's not your position either. Do you feel that we need to abandon the trend toward globalization because it so threatens the borderline cultures? I hope not, because the rest of us are all moving in our own way towards something we hope is better than what we have today. A lot of us are pulling in different directions, but the summed vector of that movement is towards increasing homogeneity
You know, I can't help but wonder who or what was there before the Cree...
Agreed! I think it was Franklin who said, after being asked what use there was for electricity, "What use is a newborne baby?"
Basic research is good.
And who would you force to correct this situation, my sarcastic AC? The tribal members who have decided to move to the big city? Would you force them to go back to their bearskin huts? How about forcing someone like me to take up a job going out to interview surviving members to record as much of their unique culture as possible just because some hyperbolic alarmist has decided that something valuable might be lost if our planet forgets how they used to sew banana leaves around caterpillars prior to roasting them.
The point I'm making is that this change is natural. It's happening not at gunpoint (usually), but because the people involved see a better life for themselves elsewhere. Sure, some anthropologists and liberal arts majors are going to get worked up over the change, but it's been happening for millennia, and it will continue to go on for as long as people create new ideas. New ideas replace old ones. Why is that such a bad thing?
An entirely different issue, and if someone wants to study a dead language, I think they should do the best with it that they can. I just don't see the need to get worked up because languages and cultures are dying out. People don't live the same now as they did a thousand years ago, and etc. for every thousand years before that. So if you want to study those things before they are forgotten, then no one should stand in your way. But if your collegue jumps up and down and points to some scratches in an tree bark and demands that I be concerned, I will simply shrug and shamble on...because for me to be concerned would be a waste. I have other things that I want to be concerned about. Same with that other guy.
[chuckles]I guess you think you've pushed a button, but in fact I agree with your example. If cheaper labor can be found somewhere else, then let employers go elsewhere and folks around here will learn to tighten their belts and adjust to change. Eventually, the Indian programmers will become just as fat and greedy as their American counterparts and the need for employers to go there will diminish. In the meantime, not every job will dry up here, and I am smart enough to adapt.
I'd prefer it that way than having some bureaucrat at central planning deciding whats good for us all!
And how much anthropological information are we losing because languages change anyway? How many people know or understand the roots of a phrase like "the devil's in the details" now, let alone 1000 years from now? And that's in a language that is active and growing and studied by tens of thousands of people every day. Sure, it's a scientific loss when a tribe shrugs its shoulders and wanders out of the brush and into suburbia, but it's a scientific loss every time I scratch an itch and a few mutated DNA strands get stranded in the foresaken purgatory beneath my fingernails. And what would have folks do about this? Forbid tribal members from seeking what they see as a better life elsewhere? Force some of us to learn a tongue that fewer speak than Innuit? I'm sorry, but there are bigger things for most of us to be concerned about, but if it concerns you, then pick a dying culture and dedicate your life to its preservation, because that's the only fair and rational solution that I can see.