We have become so risk averse it is paralyzing us.
Unless, of course, you are talking about the Bush II Desert Classic, AKA the War in Iraq. We seem, as a nation, to be rather good at ignoring loss of life when it comes to fighting to maintain our national crack habit for oil.
Amen and hallelujah. Shuttle derivatives have been on the drawing board for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, Congress has lacked the intestinal fortitude to make the changes.
Perhaps we should move the seat of government to a LaGrange point and see how long it takes for Congress to cough up the dough for a reasonably safe, reliable and cost-effective launch system.
Then there is the argument for private launch insudtry, but that's an argument for another thread.;-)
It wasn't a missing heat tile that made it fail on re-entry, it was the goatse hole in the wing that allowed the plasma from re-entry to enter the hull
Actually, tracing things back, it wasn't the hole, or even the insulating foam from the bipod ramp. Each was just another roadsign along the journey which started with management ignoring systemic problems and engineer input, based on "go fever." The foam, the hole in the RCC, Challenger's SRB burn-through... Each could be traced to someone in management who said, in one way or another, "this bird flies."
The foam problem had been known for a long time. And, for just as long, it had been poo-poo'd by management. They KNEW that the foam debris was exceeding acceptable safety limits. But they forgot the one big immutable law of launch statistics, which is that the longer you don't suffer failure due to a known and unaddressed problem, the greater your chances of catastrophic failure with each subsequent flight DUE TO THAT PROBLEM.
Each manager just passed the problem along to the next, and each subsequent manager assumed that, since there had been no problem to-date, there would BE no problem on their watch.
I dare them to be so cavalier if we were to force each launch manager ride the fire into orbit, along their astronaut fodder.
I read Comm Check, too, about two years ago or whenever it came out. However, I recall that the major problem was not the vehicle, but the culture. NASA officials involved in the Columbia flight were in denial right to the bitter end. They could have peeped the orbiter before re-entry, but didn't because "what could we do, anyhow" or words to that effect.
Not to say there's no problem with foam falling off, but the larger issue was the wholesale disregard of specialist opinions by NASA management.
That said, does anyone know anything about foam debris pre-orange tanks? They stopped painting the tanks to save weight, AFAIK, but did the paint have any positive effect on foam integrity?
Oh, and as far as admitting NASA was wrong about the shuttle... THere have been numerous plans to replace the shuttle, but each costs money, and the collective think tank known as Congress would rather keep driving the car it has now then invest in a new one. SO what if the thing is held together with duct tape, or whatnot. This gang would rather drive it into the ground first than replace it with a shuttle derivative.
The recent replacement plans covered in the New York Times show a great first step. Let's hope they continue an that course.
I grow weary of the numerous slashdotters and beyond who piss and moan about the shuttle: It's too old, It's too expensive, It's too much hardware, It's not enough hardware, My TI calculator has more processing power. Blah blah blah.
If you people--and you know who you are--really want the shuttle replaced, elect someone with a clue. If they don't care, demand to know why not. Encourage others to support candidates who enjoy more than a passing acquaintance with our history as a space power. Make well-reasoned suggestions as to a replacement, or a realistic new vision. Don't simply call for a major paradigm shift and expect politicians to wave the magic wand and get it right. That's how we got the shuttle--leaving the vision to politicians who then assign the task to scientists and tell them to do it on a shoestring budget, because they'd rather spend more on pork back home.
But PLEASE stop pissing and moaning that we should "replace the shuttle already," or "park it for good," and whatnot. The time spent engaging in such wasted keyboard exercises could be better spent composing letters to your representative and senators, printing them, and sending an actual hard copy to each. Hard copies still demand far more attention than electrons on a screen, you know.
The shuttle has served long and well. It is a wonderful work of man, hobbled in design and execution by the fanciful notion that one can get a dollar's worth of good from a dime's worth of spending. Stop pissing and moaning, and step up to the plate with substance. Otherwise, enjoy recess, kiddies.
Back in the day, when I worked in a public library--we're talking a network of a couple dozen machines, most continually being used to browse the web, etc.--I simply recycled an old PC with two NICs and used it as a Linux-based firewall. Something simple, as I recall, using ipchains or some such beast. One incoming NIC, one outgoing NIC, and Linux performing the pass-off in-between.
It worked fine for the two years until I quit the shithole. For all I know, it could still be working now, but I doubt it, seeing as my replacement convinced the trustees to throw several thousand dollars down the Win2k rathole.
It was a damned easy solution, and, since I had all the parts laying about anyhow, it was essentially free. I had never set up or used a firewall until then, and it surprised me how well it worked. It also gained me mucho points with the tech-mystified library administration.
The space shuttle has been the biggest obstacle to our conquest of space for the last 25 years, and that's just sad.
Actually, the biggest obstacle has been not the shuttle, but the myopia of our leaders and the people who elect them. There is a pervasive belief that we can't spend another dime on space travel, exploration, and development.
If this nation REALLY wanted to move beyond the shuttle, there is money for it, many times over. But a great many entrenched interests will have to give up their pork supply (corporatate welfare), and/or their addiction to power.
Nah. Just lift a milling machine, and smelt your own raw materials up there.
Or, in otherwise slash-dotty language:
1. Invent the milling machine (to machine your parts and tools). 2. Rocket, slingshot, or otherwise maneuver it out of Earth's gravity well, to a particular spot in space--not to shoot THROUGH that three-dimensional point, but to leisurely stroll up to it and the asteroid that is HOPEFULLY orbiting there--as calculated on a beowulf cluster of Mac Minis, back home. ( this step sets up your tool shop in space) 3.... 4. Smelt your own raw materials up there. (a.k.a, "profit!")
IMNA rocket scientist or engineer, but I don't believe we have demonstrable, practical CAPACITY to collect the resources, let alone mill/machine tools and parts parts thereof, beyond the confines of the Terra Firma below-ah yoo feet-ah, Paisan. Has there been a space mission which has demonstratedany of the our capacities for collection, refining, or smelting of extraterrestrial resources, with or without a useful end product in mind? Lighting a match in orbit to see how it burns (something we've actually done, after 40 or 50 years of space traveling baby steps) seems to me at least a whole order of magnitude simpler and more primitive than the as-yet theoretical process of digging up and collecting low-gravity, deep-space rocks in the first place.
This is the space colonization equivalent of the "..." generally found in section number three of the Slashdot Profit Diagram. We can launch, orbit, and land things. We haven't proven we can stay there and actually get anything done--or, "profit"--other than staging expensive photo ops that fuel engineering acid trips back here on Earth.
Oh, how I wish it weren't true, but so far we've only really slung ourselves to orbit. Our ability or commitment to do so remain to be proven.
I am glad to see an educational institution make this move. Personally, I tried to do the same when I was the PC Geek at my hometown library, but the intransigence of the administrative staff and their deep-seated fear of change (unless it involved adding another librarian or increasing librarian salaries) was the major hurdle I could never clear.
After I left, their new tech guy trumpeted the new technology plan, which discarded "cost-based" moves (i.e.: open source) in favor of "patron-centered" moves (i.e.: upgrade everything to XP and buy an expensive new server for lot$a dollar$.
Some people should NEVER be allowed access to the public purse.
So why will it takes 15 years to get back there? Because none of our current technology is appropriate for the task...
While I agree with the rest of your post, I don't agree that current US technology is inappropriate to the task. Current infrastructure, yes, but not technology.
If anything, I think technology might be leveraged to make better use of current infrastructure until something better comes along. I am surprised NASA doesn't just hang it up and buy into the Klipr concept of the Russians--mentioned elsewhere here--after all, the Klipr is already in production and bound for eventual and actual launch.
If anything, current infrastructure is the hurdle to be overcome, not current technology. I think we have a hell of a lot to say for our technology, still. We're just bound to insufficient infrastructure (and, I'd argue, insufficient will on the part of policy-makers here in the US).
I think we are more likely to see a Soyuz launch from Kennedy than we are a 'new' Saturn V. I have many reasons for saying this, but basic economics pretty much underscores them all.
Now, I am no rocket scientist, physicist, engineer or whatnot. I am just a very curious person with a penchant for sites like astronautix.com (BTW, I recommend a visit there to all and sundry). But that is beside the point...
First, the Soyuz line is still in production. But I can dream, too, so let's assume the Saturn concept is an option...
Could we launch a Saturn? Well...
Second, American space launch infrastructure has been down-graded from the Saturn days. What wasn't downgraded (or cross-graded, or otherwise euphemistically condensed and compacted) was left to rot-in-place. It was more cost effective to let it rot and rust--after all, we had the shuttle, and everything rebuilt to its associated scales.
Therefore, any sort of similar shift to "ramp-up" to Saturn V levels would carry multiplier costs, what with the need to chop out the walls again at the Vehicle Assembly Building, upgrade or newly-design and construct Saturn-rated launch platforms and support structures, yada yada yada. This paints a very unfortunate situation. Bleak, I must confess, as I am a Saturn baby, born in 1968. Ah, the days of the TRUE boosters--I get sentimental for Skylab, sometimes...
Finally, current capability trumps the theoretical capability of as-yet unrealized systems, ANY DAY OF THE WEEK, if you are a bean-counter (and there are a few out there, I understand.... Bean-counters, I mean). Soyuz beats US Brand 'X' launcher with what I feel is an INHERENT advantage to them: they are (in my opinion) overbuilt in order to compensate for launching, historically, from facilities further from the equator. It isn't a big shocker, then, to read that Russian rockets will soon actually be launching from South American bases, where this translates into larger load capabilities, or higher orbits, being closer to the equator.
So, it would seem easier and more cost-effective, in my fantasy/opinion, to recycle current American facilities for Soyuz launch business: in the end, Soyuz is a well-proven product with a good number more launches on its resume, and an arguable launch advantage, to anything in current production inside or outside of Shuttle-Land, USA.
So, sorry. As much as I'd like to see more Saturns launch, I think it is more likely I'll get a chance to see a Soyuz launch without ever leaving the USA....Of course, I still argue that Micro$oft will soon dump everything and pull a Steve Jobs (again), by gutting Windows in favor of some *nix. And I also voted for Kerry. So take it all with a grain of salt, I guess.;)
I worked in libraries for five years, specifically dealing with computers, and you would not believe how fast keyboards get covered in filth. At the job where I was the sole geek/admin on the premises, I would regularly take individual kb's and remove each key, dousing them all in Formula 409, and letting the gunk dissolve into a paper towel below it all, before I wiped each key dry and sparkly-clean.
Of course, for what I was being paid (tho it fell short of comparable positions in the area), I SHOULD have just purchased new keyboards every few months; it would have been far more cost-effective. But, somehow, it was preferable to have me clean keys for hours than have me do the zillion other things required of a geek in a public library.
...but how long do you think it will be, before this opens up the door to massive conversation-recording? All it needs is an ambitious hacker, right? You have the phone, and you have an integrated audio storage device. Oy, the possibilities...
I find making money with open-source to be a pretty straight-forward process. My only trouble has been with the TWAIN drivers I needed to scan the individual bills before I printed more.
First, your response is patently offensive. It is a sweeping generalization obviously made in haste and based on non-scientific sampling, as far as I can observe.
Case in point: My friend, Kelly, married, mid-30s with two kids, and who a kayak rep who hauls pricey kayaks all over the US (with a huge van and trailer) and is a nationally-ranked kayaking instructor, owns an iPod. Try telling him he is a wannabe geek, tweenie girl, or crisis-laden man, and he'll just push your sorry ass into a snowbank and let his daughter (a very cute 3 year old) laugh at you. And I wouldn't hold it against him (or her).
Case two: I own an iPod. I am graduate student in arts administration, a former self-taught sys/net admin, have a penis, and have yet to reach middle age and embrace that crisis. I wouldn't so much laugh at you in the snow, but shake my head at your obvious ignorance.
Second... No... No seconds, here. Just ditto what I just said.
Why couldn't this moon have been formed by the collision of two similarly-sized bodies? Not a spectacular Industrial Lights and Magic collision, but suppose they were in the same (or similar) orbits that eventually converged? I imagine it as more of a crush than and crash.
This might account for material not flying out. Additionally, it might account for the equatorial ridge, where mantle materials piled up on each other during the crushing gravitational embrace. As gravity pulled the new object closer to circular, bits crushed up around the equator. However, that gravity, while having created a new, larger, circular body, but might not have been strong enough to erase a feature as relatively small as this ridge.
I am not a student of science, however, so don't think I have anything to support this notion with other than wild fantasy and lack of interesting shows on basic cable.
I am frustrated because I cannot get the wireless networking running under YDL4 on my PowerBook. I would think all distros would have wireless covered by now, for any and all platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
We have become so risk averse it is paralyzing us.
Unless, of course, you are talking about the Bush II Desert Classic, AKA the War in Iraq. We seem, as a nation, to be rather good at ignoring loss of life when it comes to fighting to maintain our national crack habit for oil.
Amen and hallelujah. Shuttle derivatives have been on the drawing board for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, Congress has lacked the intestinal fortitude to make the changes.
;-)
Perhaps we should move the seat of government to a LaGrange point and see how long it takes for Congress to cough up the dough for a reasonably safe, reliable and cost-effective launch system.
Then there is the argument for private launch insudtry, but that's an argument for another thread.
It wasn't a missing heat tile that made it fail on re-entry, it was the goatse hole in the wing that allowed the plasma from re-entry to enter the hull
Actually, tracing things back, it wasn't the hole, or even the insulating foam from the bipod ramp. Each was just another roadsign along the journey which started with management ignoring systemic problems and engineer input, based on "go fever." The foam, the hole in the RCC, Challenger's SRB burn-through... Each could be traced to someone in management who said, in one way or another, "this bird flies."
The foam problem had been known for a long time. And, for just as long, it had been poo-poo'd by management. They KNEW that the foam debris was exceeding acceptable safety limits. But they forgot the one big immutable law of launch statistics, which is that the longer you don't suffer failure due to a known and unaddressed problem, the greater your chances of catastrophic failure with each subsequent flight DUE TO THAT PROBLEM.
Each manager just passed the problem along to the next, and each subsequent manager assumed that, since there had been no problem to-date, there would BE no problem on their watch.
I dare them to be so cavalier if we were to force each launch manager ride the fire into orbit, along their astronaut fodder.
I read Comm Check, too, about two years ago or whenever it came out. However, I recall that the major problem was not the vehicle, but the culture. NASA officials involved in the Columbia flight were in denial right to the bitter end. They could have peeped the orbiter before re-entry, but didn't because "what could we do, anyhow" or words to that effect.
Not to say there's no problem with foam falling off, but the larger issue was the wholesale disregard of specialist opinions by NASA management.
That said, does anyone know anything about foam debris pre-orange tanks? They stopped painting the tanks to save weight, AFAIK, but did the paint have any positive effect on foam integrity?
Oh, and as far as admitting NASA was wrong about the shuttle... THere have been numerous plans to replace the shuttle, but each costs money, and the collective think tank known as Congress would rather keep driving the car it has now then invest in a new one. SO what if the thing is held together with duct tape, or whatnot. This gang would rather drive it into the ground first than replace it with a shuttle derivative.
The recent replacement plans covered in the New York Times show a great first step. Let's hope they continue an that course.
I grow weary of the numerous slashdotters and beyond who piss and moan about the shuttle: It's too old, It's too expensive, It's too much hardware, It's not enough hardware, My TI calculator has more processing power. Blah blah blah.
If you people--and you know who you are--really want the shuttle replaced, elect someone with a clue. If they don't care, demand to know why not. Encourage others to support candidates who enjoy more than a passing acquaintance with our history as a space power. Make well-reasoned suggestions as to a replacement, or a realistic new vision. Don't simply call for a major paradigm shift and expect politicians to wave the magic wand and get it right. That's how we got the shuttle--leaving the vision to politicians who then assign the task to scientists and tell them to do it on a shoestring budget, because they'd rather spend more on pork back home.
But PLEASE stop pissing and moaning that we should "replace the shuttle already," or "park it for good," and whatnot. The time spent engaging in such wasted keyboard exercises could be better spent composing letters to your representative and senators, printing them, and sending an actual hard copy to each. Hard copies still demand far more attention than electrons on a screen, you know.
The shuttle has served long and well. It is a wonderful work of man, hobbled in design and execution by the fanciful notion that one can get a dollar's worth of good from a dime's worth of spending. Stop pissing and moaning, and step up to the plate with substance. Otherwise, enjoy recess, kiddies.
Back in the day, when I worked in a public library--we're talking a network of a couple dozen machines, most continually being used to browse the web, etc.--I simply recycled an old PC with two NICs and used it as a Linux-based firewall. Something simple, as I recall, using ipchains or some such beast. One incoming NIC, one outgoing NIC, and Linux performing the pass-off in-between.
It worked fine for the two years until I quit the shithole. For all I know, it could still be working now, but I doubt it, seeing as my replacement convinced the trustees to throw several thousand dollars down the Win2k rathole.
It was a damned easy solution, and, since I had all the parts laying about anyhow, it was essentially free. I had never set up or used a firewall until then, and it surprised me how well it worked. It also gained me mucho points with the tech-mystified library administration.
The space shuttle has been the biggest obstacle to our conquest of space for the last 25 years, and that's just sad.
Actually, the biggest obstacle has been not the shuttle, but the myopia of our leaders and the people who elect them. There is a pervasive belief that we can't spend another dime on space travel, exploration, and development.
If this nation REALLY wanted to move beyond the shuttle, there is money for it, many times over. But a great many entrenched interests will have to give up their pork supply (corporatate welfare), and/or their addiction to power.
So don't hold your breath...
Nah. Just lift a milling machine, and smelt your own raw materials up there.
...
Or, in otherwise slash-dotty language:
1. Invent the milling machine (to machine your parts and tools).
2. Rocket, slingshot, or otherwise maneuver it out of Earth's gravity well, to a particular spot in space--not to shoot THROUGH that three-dimensional point, but to leisurely stroll up to it and the asteroid that is HOPEFULLY orbiting there--as calculated on a beowulf cluster of Mac Minis, back home. ( this step sets up your tool shop in space)
3.
4. Smelt your own raw materials up there. (a.k.a, "profit!")
IMNA rocket scientist or engineer, but I don't believe we have demonstrable, practical CAPACITY to collect the resources, let alone mill/machine tools and parts parts thereof, beyond the confines of the Terra Firma below-ah yoo feet-ah, Paisan. Has there been a space mission which has demonstratedany of the our capacities for collection, refining, or smelting of extraterrestrial resources, with or without a useful end product in mind? Lighting a match in orbit to see how it burns (something we've actually done, after 40 or 50 years of space traveling baby steps) seems to me at least a whole order of magnitude simpler and more primitive than the as-yet theoretical process of digging up and collecting low-gravity, deep-space rocks in the first place.
This is the space colonization equivalent of the "..." generally found in section number three of the Slashdot Profit Diagram. We can launch, orbit, and land things. We haven't proven we can stay there and actually get anything done--or, "profit"--other than staging expensive photo ops that fuel engineering acid trips back here on Earth.
Oh, how I wish it weren't true, but so far we've only really slung ourselves to orbit. Our ability or commitment to do so remain to be proven.
I am glad to see an educational institution make this move. Personally, I tried to do the same when I was the PC Geek at my hometown library, but the intransigence of the administrative staff and their deep-seated fear of change (unless it involved adding another librarian or increasing librarian salaries) was the major hurdle I could never clear.
After I left, their new tech guy trumpeted the new technology plan, which discarded "cost-based" moves (i.e.: open source) in favor of "patron-centered" moves (i.e.: upgrade everything to XP and buy an expensive new server for lot$a dollar$.
Some people should NEVER be allowed access to the public purse.
So why will it takes 15 years to get back there? Because none of our current technology is appropriate for the task...
While I agree with the rest of your post, I don't agree that current US technology is inappropriate to the task. Current infrastructure, yes, but not technology.
If anything, I think technology might be leveraged to make better use of current infrastructure until something better comes along. I am surprised NASA doesn't just hang it up and buy into the Klipr concept of the Russians--mentioned elsewhere here--after all, the Klipr is already in production and bound for eventual and actual launch.
If anything, current infrastructure is the hurdle to be overcome, not current technology. I think we have a hell of a lot to say for our technology, still. We're just bound to insufficient infrastructure (and, I'd argue, insufficient will on the part of policy-makers here in the US).
I think we are more likely to see a Soyuz launch from Kennedy than we are a 'new' Saturn V. I have many reasons for saying this, but basic economics pretty much underscores them all.
...Of course, I still argue that Micro$oft will soon dump everything and pull a Steve Jobs (again), by gutting Windows in favor of some *nix. And I also voted for Kerry. So take it all with a grain of salt, I guess. ;)
Now, I am no rocket scientist, physicist, engineer or whatnot. I am just a very curious person with a penchant for sites like astronautix.com (BTW, I recommend a visit there to all and sundry). But that is beside the point...
First, the Soyuz line is still in production. But I can dream, too, so let's assume the Saturn concept is an option...
Could we launch a Saturn? Well...
Second, American space launch infrastructure has been down-graded from the Saturn days. What wasn't downgraded (or cross-graded, or otherwise euphemistically condensed and compacted) was left to rot-in-place. It was more cost effective to let it rot and rust--after all, we had the shuttle, and everything rebuilt to its associated scales.
Therefore, any sort of similar shift to "ramp-up" to Saturn V levels would carry multiplier costs, what with the need to chop out the walls again at the Vehicle Assembly Building, upgrade or newly-design and construct Saturn-rated launch platforms and support structures, yada yada yada. This paints a very unfortunate situation. Bleak, I must confess, as I am a Saturn baby, born in 1968. Ah, the days of the TRUE boosters--I get sentimental for Skylab, sometimes...
Finally, current capability trumps the theoretical capability of as-yet unrealized systems, ANY DAY OF THE WEEK, if you are a bean-counter (and there are a few out there, I understand.... Bean-counters, I mean). Soyuz beats US Brand 'X' launcher with what I feel is an INHERENT advantage to them: they are (in my opinion) overbuilt in order to compensate for launching, historically, from facilities further from the equator. It isn't a big shocker, then, to read that Russian rockets will soon actually be launching from South American bases, where this translates into larger load capabilities, or higher orbits, being closer to the equator.
So, it would seem easier and more cost-effective, in my fantasy/opinion, to recycle current American facilities for Soyuz launch business: in the end, Soyuz is a well-proven product with a good number more launches on its resume, and an arguable launch advantage, to anything in current production inside or outside of Shuttle-Land, USA.
So, sorry. As much as I'd like to see more Saturns launch, I think it is more likely I'll get a chance to see a Soyuz launch without ever leaving the USA.
I worked in libraries for five years, specifically dealing with computers, and you would not believe how fast keyboards get covered in filth. At the job where I was the sole geek/admin on the premises, I would regularly take individual kb's and remove each key, dousing them all in Formula 409, and letting the gunk dissolve into a paper towel below it all, before I wiped each key dry and sparkly-clean.
Of course, for what I was being paid (tho it fell short of comparable positions in the area), I SHOULD have just purchased new keyboards every few months; it would have been far more cost-effective. But, somehow, it was preferable to have me clean keys for hours than have me do the zillion other things required of a geek in a public library.
Argh.
...why I couldn't access hack-a-day this morning... Sheesh!
This reminded me of an Onion article, for which I believe the headline was,
Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs; Humanity says, 'Oh, Shit!'
Soon they'll be thanking us for all the fish, too...
...but how long do you think it will be, before this opens up the door to massive conversation-recording? All it needs is an ambitious hacker, right? You have the phone, and you have an integrated audio storage device. Oy, the possibilities...
I find making money with open-source to be a pretty straight-forward process. My only trouble has been with the TWAIN drivers I needed to scan the individual bills before I printed more.
First, your response is patently offensive. It is a sweeping generalization obviously made in haste and based on non-scientific sampling, as far as I can observe.
Case in point: My friend, Kelly, married, mid-30s with two kids, and who a kayak rep who hauls pricey kayaks all over the US (with a huge van and trailer) and is a nationally-ranked kayaking instructor, owns an iPod. Try telling him he is a wannabe geek, tweenie girl, or crisis-laden man, and he'll just push your sorry ass into a snowbank and let his daughter (a very cute 3 year old) laugh at you. And I wouldn't hold it against him (or her).
Case two: I own an iPod. I am graduate student in arts administration, a former self-taught sys/net admin, have a penis, and have yet to reach middle age and embrace that crisis. I wouldn't so much laugh at you in the snow, but shake my head at your obvious ignorance.
Second... No... No seconds, here. Just ditto what I just said.
Oy.
AT&T didn't die. It was knocked unconscious and cut into pieces.
It was broken up by the government, and thank goodness for that.
Those laptops all look awful when viewed on my PowerBook.
Ahem... The 380 is designed to seat about 550 passengers.
That's what I thought when I read it.
Why couldn't this moon have been formed by the collision of two similarly-sized bodies? Not a spectacular Industrial Lights and Magic collision, but suppose they were in the same (or similar) orbits that eventually converged? I imagine it as more of a crush than and crash.
This might account for material not flying out. Additionally, it might account for the equatorial ridge, where mantle materials piled up on each other during the crushing gravitational embrace. As gravity pulled the new object closer to circular, bits crushed up around the equator. However, that gravity, while having created a new, larger, circular body, but might not have been strong enough to erase a feature as relatively small as this ridge.
I am not a student of science, however, so don't think I have anything to support this notion with other than wild fantasy and lack of interesting shows on basic cable.
I am frustrated because I cannot get the wireless networking running under YDL4 on my PowerBook. I would think all distros would have wireless covered by now, for any and all platforms.
[shrug?]
Re:Any problems? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 03:34 AM November 14th, 2004 (#10811816)
Any ally of the US is an automatic 51st state. It's getting old, asshole.
------
Anyone who has to cry 'asshole' from behind the cover of Anonymous Coward is both: an Anonymous Coward and an Asshole.
I'll bet you're a damned Freeper, too.
Pfft!
"While the US may not fear missiles being launched at us, we do have allies, chiefly Israel, that do..."
Ah, yes. Israel: the fifty-first State.