Nice idea, but it won't work. Ice formation on the tank has nothing to do with it. The trouble with hand-laid foam insulation(which is what this was) is that large air pockets can form during the forming process. These air pockets are at atmospheric pressure (14.7 psi). As the craft climbs higher into the atmosphere, the surrounding air pressure drops, causing that pocket to expand. Eventually the pocket can pop like a balloon, knocking off a chunk of foam. Were the tank painted, the paint would just come off along with the rest of the piece.
Closer to the ground, launch pad cameras caught a bird hitting the tip of the external tank a few seconds after blastoff. But it was a relatively low-speed collision and while it was no doubt a significant event for the bird, it caused no obvious damage to the shuttle.
Small town papers tend to have quality issues. I used to get bonus points from my Junior High English teacher for bringing in articles from the newspaper that had spelling/grammar errors in them. She gave up on the practice after about a month. The local paper made it waaay too easy.
That's a good question, and I'll be honest. I have no idea. To take a wild guess or two, I'd say 1. Weight. Pork lard does weigh something, and even a thin coating over the entire surface area of an ET puts you in the order of hundreds of pounds (Case study: Look at the first couple of flights. The tank is white. Later flights it's orange. They decided the white paint wasn't doing them any real benefit, but was costing them ~500 pounds in weight, so they left the orange insulation exposed.) 2. Coatings may have been tried, but the chemicals may have reacted poorly with the insulation.
Not a damn bit. These tanks are being filled with cryogenic propellants, one at about -290 F, the other even colder. Ice is going to form on the tanks. The whole idea of the insulation is to reduce, not eliminate, the amount of ice that forms. Basically, the tank is so cold it doesn't care if it's 0 F outside or 100 F outside. The ice will form and it won't melt.
Or worse, what if someone wants your work but doesn't want to pay you royalties? Imagine the horror of Mickey Mouse showing up at your door with a silenced 9 mm pistol...
Interesting result. One question: how similar were your routes for each test? More highway miles on the aggressive one could skew the result, I would think.
I have no scientific evidence to add, merely anectodal. My fiancee and I have a 04 Civic Hybrid. I'm greedy, so I try to keep the mpg's as high as possible to save on gas. This translates into me driving carefully and civilly. On the other hand, she drives much more aggressively than I do (must be from growing up in the Bay Area, CA) and the MPG's plummet when she drives it.
So, lessons from this ramble:
1. Drive nice. (I think) You'll save on gas and other people will like you.
2. Teasing your fiancee on/. is not a good way to get some tonight...
First time you watch "Serenity" (TV pilot), you expect Mal to have a tense confrontation with the Alliance agent holding River hostage.
First time you watch "The Train Job", you expect Mal to wind up with Niska's tattooed goon as a continual nemesis.
He kills them both in cold (OK, they were bad guys, lukewarm) blood. It is entirely possible that's how that bad guy dies, not that him dying will be the end of the story since I guarantee he isn't the only bad guy.
That said, you're probably right, at least with point 1. The lack of kneecaps can be an effective interrogation tool.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they usually carefully select their test audiences according to some expected demographic numbers or something? Since this was openly advertised, it smacks more of a promo/viral marketing campaign than a test screening. They'll probably make the people walking into the theater sign an NDA as a token CYA, but you know the first thing some lucky/evil/.er who went to see it is going to do is come on here and post as many spoilers as he can, getting the rest of us riled up and creating (hopefully) a 5 month long buzz that'll get a bunch of people in the theater come 9-30.
And many of those easily curable diseases arise from polluted drinking water. Saw a story on the news the other night about a new water filter that was being sent to third world countries that quickly and efficiently decontaminates a village's water supply. Can't find the original story, but I think it was this one they were talking about.
Wanna know the kicker? It was developed by NASA for long duration space flights.
The US has two major launch sites, Canaveral and Vandenburg. One of the major concerns is a problem on launch causing loss of the vehicle. They would rather not have flaming chunks of said vehicle then rain down on an unsuspecting population, which is why Canaveral is used for launches to the east and Vandenburg is only used for launches to polar orbits. There's nothing but open ocean for the distance it takes the vehicle to get to orbit.
I don't think the mylar would work. You'd be dealing with at least 8 attach points that connect the orbiter and boosters to the tank that will 1) cause all your hot air to leak out and 2) provide plenty of opportunities for it to get hung up on something while your Vegas magicians try to pull it away. Now you've got mylar tangling itself in various parts of the shuttle. What's that going to do? Will you have to do a spacewalk to get it untangled? Will it have melted onto the wings affecting the thermal protection properties?
Definitely marketing...this time a good bait and switch. We reel them in with what appears to be a passable space action movie (kill a couple of hours and $20 bucks) and we switch that with an outstanding space action movie (I just got fired from my job because I haven't left this theater in two weeks and I don't care). Remember the idea here is to win converts to the Firefly cause so we get a TV series and/or more movies.
Two caveats: 1. Joss, please don't make a liar out of me. 2. Please guys, as much as you want to, don't start camping out 3 months in advance wearing blue gloves or boots or your lovingly detailed replica of Vera. We don't want to scare people off.
They're proposing to cut/reduce the funding for JIMO/Prometheus for the next FY. The entire budget's vaporware until Congress passes it, usually a couple months after it's supposed to be done in October.
That said, every NASA visitor's center I've been in still has X-33/Venture Star still prominently displayed. Go figure.
I didn't pick up on the bit about the shirt until I read about it somewhere...either in a comment here or over at fireflyfans.net. Makes sense though. Supposedly Blue Sun and the Alliance government are pretty tight. As far as the cans, that will require some closer examination. I know I could make out the UPC and the "Nutrition Facts" box on a couple of em the first time around. More reasons to watch...
That's pretty much what I was thinking. He either commanded the Alliance forces at Serenity Valley or was involved in action immediately after. Maybe he ran a prison camp. That might make an interesting connection to Mal and Zoe. We know they were ordered to "lay down arms." What we don't know is if they were captured and treated as prisoners of war or as "enemy combatants." If Book's a war criminal who found God, well, that could be an interesting day when Mal and Zoe find out.
Good eyes, BTW. I did not pick up on him looking at the book. Here's one for you to look for. In "Trash" when Kaylee's reprogramming the garbage drone, the screen looks like it's displaying a Windows 9x install with a wizard open. Coincidence? Cost savings? Or is Joss a Linux/Mac geek? I can see their slogan in 500 years. "Windows...It Just Works...As A Garbage Disposal."
Firefly didn't pull the same audiences as buffy for 4 major reasons, none of them having to do with the skill of Joss Whedon: 1. the Friday night timeslot it was put in virtually guarantees a lack of audience to begin with. Granted there are some examples of shows that survived such slots (like X-Files), but coupled with: 2. the intense lack of promotion that Fox gave the show, 3. the fact that they began airing and promptly preempting it for the MLB playoffs, and 4. the fact they decided to show it out of order, FOX pretty much made sure it was DOA. The first I'd ever heard of the show anywhere was here on/. I watched the first episode and liked it, though, try as I might I couldn't always catch it because it was a crapshoot as to whether it was on (I missed "Jaynestown" the first time around that way.)
For what I think he has in mind for the story of Firefly, he won't be able to tell it properly in a movie or even a handful of movies. IIRC, he's said himself that he hopes the movie will cause some (non-FOX) exec to realize, "Hey, this will make a good TV show."
Just make sure it's only a grain...studies show too much sodium'll kill ya.:)
I'm going to assume that this is the same study that this All Things Considered story was talking about. If so, ABC seriously screwed up it's interpretation of the study. As I recall, the study showed that OLDER people who fell into the moderately overweight category actually lived longer. The researcher NPR talked to said that this made sense because having a little extra reserve fuel stored as fat could make a difference in allowing the body to sustain itself while fighting off a disease at that age. If this is the case, then the government's one-size-fit's-all method of determining what is a "healthy" weight has to be reconsidered. It can be done...the USDA just did it with the food pyramid. It's now 1 of 12 (I think) possible pyramids depending on certain factors in your life.
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Nice idea, but it won't work. Ice formation on the tank has nothing to do with it. The trouble with hand-laid foam insulation(which is what this was) is that large air pockets can form during the forming process. These air pockets are at atmospheric pressure (14.7 psi). As the craft climbs higher into the atmosphere, the surrounding air pressure drops, causing that pocket to expand. Eventually the pocket can pop like a balloon, knocking off a chunk of foam. Were the tank painted, the paint would just come off along with the rest of the piece.
Closer to the ground, launch pad cameras caught a bird hitting the tip of the external tank a few seconds after blastoff. But it was a relatively low-speed collision and while it was no doubt a significant event for the bird, it caused no obvious damage to the shuttle.
Go here.
Small town papers tend to have quality issues. I used to get bonus points from my Junior High English teacher for bringing in articles from the newspaper that had spelling/grammar errors in them. She gave up on the practice after about a month. The local paper made it waaay too easy.
That's a good question, and I'll be honest. I have no idea. To take a wild guess or two, I'd say 1. Weight. Pork lard does weigh something, and even a thin coating over the entire surface area of an ET puts you in the order of hundreds of pounds (Case study: Look at the first couple of flights. The tank is white. Later flights it's orange. They decided the white paint wasn't doing them any real benefit, but was costing them ~500 pounds in weight, so they left the orange insulation exposed.) 2. Coatings may have been tried, but the chemicals may have reacted poorly with the insulation.
Not a damn bit. These tanks are being filled with cryogenic propellants, one at about -290 F, the other even colder. Ice is going to form on the tanks. The whole idea of the insulation is to reduce, not eliminate, the amount of ice that forms. Basically, the tank is so cold it doesn't care if it's 0 F outside or 100 F outside. The ice will form and it won't melt.
Or worse, what if someone wants your work but doesn't want to pay you royalties? Imagine the horror of Mickey Mouse showing up at your door with a silenced 9 mm pistol...
So who taught the Romulans how to do the Picard Maneuver?
I have no scientific evidence to add, merely anectodal. My fiancee and I have a 04 Civic Hybrid. I'm greedy, so I try to keep the mpg's as high as possible to save on gas. This translates into me driving carefully and civilly. On the other hand, she drives much more aggressively than I do (must be from growing up in the Bay Area, CA) and the MPG's plummet when she drives it.
So, lessons from this ramble:
1. Drive nice. (I think) You'll save on gas and other people will like you.
2. Teasing your fiancee on /. is not a good way to get some tonight...
Or so I'm told... :)
First time you watch "The Train Job", you expect Mal to wind up with Niska's tattooed goon as a continual nemesis.
He kills them both in cold (OK, they were bad guys, lukewarm) blood. It is entirely possible that's how that bad guy dies, not that him dying will be the end of the story since I guarantee he isn't the only bad guy.
That said, you're probably right, at least with point 1. The lack of kneecaps can be an effective interrogation tool.
I wasn't gonna say anything potentially incriminating 2 weeks before my wedding though.... :)
Mal: Wants to nail Inara. Too much pride to admit it.
Wash: Ecstatic he gets to nail Zoe.
Kaylee: Wants to nail Simon. Annoyed he won't admit he wants her too.
Inara: Wants to nail Mal. Too "professional" to admit it.
Jayne: Wants to nail anything with boobs.
Zoe: Nails Wash regularly. May have nailed Mal in the past. Backstory hazy.
Simon: Wants to nail Kaylee. Too shy to admit it.
Book: Doesn't appear interested in nailing anybody.
River: Off in her own little world, so who knows?
Bad Guy: I want to work this out like civilized men. I'm not threatening you. I'm unarmed.
Mal: Good. *BLAM*
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they usually carefully select their test audiences according to some expected demographic numbers or something? Since this was openly advertised, it smacks more of a promo/viral marketing campaign than a test screening. They'll probably make the people walking into the theater sign an NDA as a token CYA, but you know the first thing some lucky/evil /.er who went to see it is going to do is come on here and post as many spoilers as he can, getting the rest of us riled up and creating (hopefully) a 5 month long buzz that'll get a bunch of people in the theater come 9-30.
There is. They're installing a small heater on the part of the line in question.
Wanna know the kicker? It was developed by NASA for long duration space flights.
I don't think the mylar would work. You'd be dealing with at least 8 attach points that connect the orbiter and boosters to the tank that will 1) cause all your hot air to leak out and 2) provide plenty of opportunities for it to get hung up on something while your Vegas magicians try to pull it away. Now you've got mylar tangling itself in various parts of the shuttle. What's that going to do? Will you have to do a spacewalk to get it untangled? Will it have melted onto the wings affecting the thermal protection properties?
Two caveats: 1. Joss, please don't make a liar out of me. 2. Please guys, as much as you want to, don't start camping out 3 months in advance wearing blue gloves or boots or your lovingly detailed replica of Vera. We don't want to scare people off.
That said, every NASA visitor's center I've been in still has X-33/Venture Star still prominently displayed. Go figure.
I didn't pick up on the bit about the shirt until I read about it somewhere...either in a comment here or over at fireflyfans.net. Makes sense though. Supposedly Blue Sun and the Alliance government are pretty tight. As far as the cans, that will require some closer examination. I know I could make out the UPC and the "Nutrition Facts" box on a couple of em the first time around. More reasons to watch...
How do you know?
Just curious...
Good eyes, BTW. I did not pick up on him looking at the book. Here's one for you to look for. In "Trash" when Kaylee's reprogramming the garbage drone, the screen looks like it's displaying a Windows 9x install with a wizard open. Coincidence? Cost savings? Or is Joss a Linux/Mac geek? I can see their slogan in 500 years. "Windows...It Just Works...As A Garbage Disposal."
For what I think he has in mind for the story of Firefly, he won't be able to tell it properly in a movie or even a handful of movies. IIRC, he's said himself that he hopes the movie will cause some (non-FOX) exec to realize, "Hey, this will make a good TV show."
I'm going to assume that this is the same study that this All Things Considered story was talking about. If so, ABC seriously screwed up it's interpretation of the study. As I recall, the study showed that OLDER people who fell into the moderately overweight category actually lived longer. The researcher NPR talked to said that this made sense because having a little extra reserve fuel stored as fat could make a difference in allowing the body to sustain itself while fighting off a disease at that age. If this is the case, then the government's one-size-fit's-all method of determining what is a "healthy" weight has to be reconsidered. It can be done...the USDA just did it with the food pyramid. It's now 1 of 12 (I think) possible pyramids depending on certain factors in your life.