And yes I did catch some form of the flu. To be honest, there were a lot of keyboards, mice, and game controllers swapping hands constantly so anyone that didn't see this coming was a bit of an idiot.
Good times though. Had a lot of fun even if I am still hacking up a lung.
Agree completely.. I've been a fan for over a year and have no intention of leaving the game anytime soon. It's one of those love or hate games in terms of interface and complexity. If you love it, you love it.
On January 28, 1986 I was a 12yo boy in Florida staring out of my math class day dreaming as a I watched that oh so familiar arc of light streak into the sky. I was a boy who had been building spacecraft with Legos since I was 4. I was never a normal boy. I always did things like build airlocks into my spacecraft. It just seemed obvious. From the time I was 4 my mother has been terrified that I would get my feet off the ground.
On February 1, 2003 I had given up my first career as a software developer and had returned to school at the University of Central Florida to study Aerospace Engineering. I was early in my second semester and I was sitting in the Engineering atrium between Engineering Buildings 1 and 2. I was studying Calculus (calc 2 specifically) and I looked up at the flat screen monitors hanging from the walkway. I was sitting there staring at the screens watching the multiple pieces of debris streaking across the Texas sky. I sat and paused but I didn't cry. Challenger had hardened that in me. I thought for a moment and went back to my text book.
On May 6, 2006 I graduated UCF with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Two weeks later I had moved to Seattle and began working at Boeing on the 787 as a Systems Engineer. I spent my senior year mastering orbital mechanics and satellite design.
Am I there yet? No. But my own history has taught me two things: the road is long and others will be lost. Morbid? possibly.. But I never gave up a dream and I never will. Someday my career will take me there, to insure that I will do what I need to do.
For some people it is natural to dream and then move on. For others, that dream never quite dies.
This was essentially the point of Boeing's Connexion service but since Boeing canned Connexion it's essentially a non-issue. Connexion was the in-flight internet among other things. Whether or not an equivalent comes around in the future is completely up to the company and it's definitely not a priority among the 787 people in BCA.
For my senior design at UCF we designed and built systems for a pair of satellites. I was the team lead for the ADCS team (attitude determination and control system) which had 3 other seniors in it along with me. We ended up deciding which sensors to use and creating all of the control algorithms for the satellite. We finished the class by creating a satellite simulator which allowed the users to see how the satellite behaves when the sensors are moved using a laptop computer. Other teams on the project built the frame, a sample thruster, the power control system for the solar cells, and a stereoscopic camera system. The whole project was for the Nanosat-4 competition hosted by the US Air Force.
3) Is global warming necessarily bad? If the earth getting warmer, that means more areas, such as Canada could have longer growing seasons which would produce more food for the world. Ok sure some coastly areas might get flooded. Is that bad? Is it possible that the fish would have more environment to live in and therefore better thrive? And is a 4" rise in the ocean really even noticable? A warmer environment would mean a growth in plant life, in general. Isn't that a good thing since plants are known to remove CO2 from the air?
The problem with this is the population. If sea level increases significantly, many low-lying areas will be flooded which correspond to a large percentage of the population. The resulting global evacuations and panic would cause major disruption to the global economy due to the tremendous straight on local governments and the loss of some of the most vital commercial properties on the globe. If this starts to happen: Best case, governments are intelligent and evacuate orderly and relocate their citizens.. Worst case, Mass panic, large areas of India, China, the US, and Europe are flooded and global economy completely collapses due to the strain.
Now, granted 4" isn't much but the evidence suggested major loss of antarctic, arctic, or greenland ice sheet will raise sea level by several feet. Large areas of the SE US are only a few feet above sea level (especially Florida and southern Louisiana) and millions in the US alone could end up refugees if this happens.
Can we risk the possible consequences in exchange for a few extra tasty tomatoes?
I find this discussion to be a good summary of what's wrong with most of the CS program graduates who later go on to refer to themselves as "software engineers". Most of them have no clue how to take requirements and develop a final product using proper engineering principles. Yet, virtually every university incorporates some sort of senior design project as part of their engineering curriculum. It might even be required for ABET certification but I don't know.
If you want to develop a software solution, you need to determine the best tools, best language, and best hardware to satisfy the requirements which you determine the customer needs. All of this is quite a bit more in depth than CS programs usually incorporate.
I spent nearly 10 years as a software developer before returning to school to complete an engineering degree. I realized very quickly that there were a huge number of concepts and tools that I could've incorporated in software design that I had no clue existed.
As a Floridian (I moved to Seattle a couple of months ago) we had a huge debate after the series of hurricanes in 2004 that roared through the state and left a quarter of the population without power. My apartment complex was in one of the few areas of Orlando to never loose power during those storms. We had buried lines in that area and we were very close to a major substation.
The problem lies in the patchwork nature. Even in a state susceptible to hurricanes, unless all of the lines are buried, you'll still have outages in a situation like that. The difference is simple, the number of outages and who is affected. Flying debris causes the most damage in the gulf coast states from storms like that. In New England, I'm sure ice or something is the largest annual problem.
That said, the way the power companies restore power makes sense to everyone except a Floridian without power and therefore lacking Air conditioning. Rebuild and Repair ops begin at the trunk and work toward the branches. each step away from the trunk affects a little less people. So you fix the most in on shot at the trunk and the least at the twiggy little neighborhood branches and individual transformers (where you might fix two families with a single repair versus 100 families on a feeder line repair).
It's always the families on those little single transformer outages that complain the most because 1) they're last on priority (and rightfully so) and 2) they don't care because it's 90 degrees and 70%+ humidity and they're miserable.
In some states, such as Florida, it makes sense to move as much underground as possible because you just have to keep rebuilding the system which is itself expensive and kills profits. In other states, it doesn't make as much sense. Washington state for example has half it's population clustered around Puget Sound. Potential events that could cause those types of events are extremely rare compared to hurricanes along the gulf. Things like Mount Rainier going off or a major earthquake are possible contenders but how often do those happen?
It's all perspective. Most corporations won't invest in something that affects profits with marginal gain at best. Incidentally, in a lot of the Puget Sound the power is a public utility run by or through the government rather than a company like most of the country.
I know this is kind of pointless but it's nice to see Dr. B mentioned in a normal article. He taught my Space Systems Concepts class a year ago at UCF and I have met with him a few times as an advisor for our senior design project with the Nanosat-4 competition. He's pretty heavy into the propulsion side and is developing an operational Microwave-Electro-Thermal thruster. Interesting guy but a bit obessessive with the aliens thing. He always throws klingon references into his school lectures/presentations. I won't give his precise work location but it's at Cape Canaveral.
I find it highly amusing that they screwed up their units on the Falcon 9 website. They list "Thrust on liftoff: 2.85 mN (765 klbf)" What they failed to take into account is that there's a difference in metric abbreviations between Milli "m" and Mega "M". 2.85 millinewtons isn't going to lauch my cat. The reason this is amusing is because we (as engineers) are drilled from the beginning to get them accurate. Somebody should proofread it. It's also interesting that they chose to write it "klbf" instead of "kips" like is normally done.
There are actually many satellite projects for stuff this small. The space industry in Florida holds an annual competition for college students to design picosats called Funsat that uses the Cubesat format.
It should be noted that hall thrusters are extremely low thrust but high ISP. This is effectively an ion drive. This means that it's a relatively slow method of doing orbital transfers. In other words, don't expect this thing to drag the satellite L1 in half an hour.
Our nanosat-4 project is using a PPT although we considered an MET for a while. We have to maintain formation flight between three satellites which requires high thrust/quick burn types of thrusters. That burn time ruled out the MET.
My programming skills are extremely valuable compared to my classmates when we graduate in less than a year. A lot of the industry is simulation based or robotics based, both of which require extremely good programming skills.
The sad part is how lacking the Aerospace and Mechanical programs are at most universities (including mine) when it comes to emphasizing this. Many aspects of engineering are becoming more and more software oriented and many software developers could find alternative work in engineering teams if they knew where to look.
Subjects for those interested to reference include Feedback Control and Mechatronics.
Actually, I made consistently over $25/hour from about 1997 to 2002 when I quit programming and returned to school for an aerospace engineering degree.
But I worked in the CS (software) field for 10 years and absolutely hated it. I'm a technical person and I was bored to tears. I abandoned that career and went back to school for a degree in Aerospace Engineering because my passion is space. The programming/admin abilities I have are invaluable considering how much work involves simulations at this point but writing database applications, except as a quick solution for a problem, is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. Software is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole pie.
Actually, even if your local Panera isn't listed it probably has wi-fi. I know the one here in Orlando right off Lake Eola has it and none of the local ones are listed.
I'd go with Reynolds Transport Theorem or possibly Bernoulli's equation. A whole lot of the modern world wouldn't exist without mathematical representations of fluids.
But with a horizontal launch you could keep the speeds down until after you achieved a higher altitude and recduced the air pressure.
Remember that drag increases at v^2
Very true.. but then you are essentially combining the two vehicles I mentioned before into one. This is basically a single stage to orbit system where white knight and spaceshipone used more of a two stage system for it's suborbital hop.
I still believe you'd expend more energy but you bring up an interesting point because you do it gradually which makes it much more practical for "safe" launch systems. It would require at least two engine systems on the vehicle or a really good way to throttle a single rocket engine to avoid too rapid of an acceleration. i.e. conventional jet to get you up to the high altitude (like white knight) and a rocket to push the rest of the way (like SpaceShipOne).
Biggest problem I see with the whole nuclear salt water thing is the water it's self.. Being a liquid, water is not compressible without extremely high pressures. That true, the tank to hold the water would have to be massive compared to those used to hold a compressed gas fuel source. This would make construction of the vehicle in orbit difficult and ground launch is pretty much dead anyway when environmentalists even think they hear the word nuclear. The engine itself is awesome but I think this fuel storage problem is a killer.
The bulk of the atmospheric density is below 25km in Altitude (space is considered 100km). In fact, sea level is 101kPa and 25km is around 5kPa. For this reason, it's beneficial to get your ass as high as you can as fast as you can. If you launch horizontally you have to deal with lift and a much higher amound of drag (what people here on slashdot are referring to as wind resistance). Launching vertical punches you out of the densest part of the atmosphere the fastest and conserves a lot of energy that would be expended with lift and the much higher drag of a verical launch.
It's also a matter of the fact that rocket propulsion using a C-D nozzle accelerates a vehicle much more quickly than standard turbo jet aircraft are capable of accelerating. As a result you don't really deal with the extra drag nearly as long. That drag equates to friction which in turn equates to heat on the skin of the vehicle. If you used a rocket engine in a horizontal position you'd have higher drag for longer and therefore higher heat loading on the vehicle.
The vehicles that launch from a horizontal position are almost always carried to 50,000 feet by a conventional aircraft. Examples include SpaceShipOne being carried up by White Knight and a Pegasus booster being lofted by a B-52 for a satellite launch.
Daniel
(Aerospace Engineering major.. Senior year finally.. I love my high-speed aero class.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's been great reading your stuff over time. Enjoy whatever awaits you. :-)
The Taco abides.. o/
Incidentally they did catch that cougar :-)
Ironically the outbreak was at WASU who use the cougar as a mascot.
And yes I did catch some form of the flu. To be honest, there were a lot of keyboards, mice, and game controllers swapping hands constantly so anyone that didn't see this coming was a bit of an idiot.
Good times though. Had a lot of fun even if I am still hacking up a lung.
Agree completely.. I've been a fan for over a year and have no intention of leaving the game anytime soon. It's one of those love or hate games in terms of interface and complexity. If you love it, you love it.
We use it to import and export data between different subcontractor engineering software.
On January 28, 1986 I was a 12yo boy in Florida staring out of my math class day dreaming as a I watched that oh so familiar arc of light streak into the sky. I was a boy who had been building spacecraft with Legos since I was 4. I was never a normal boy. I always did things like build airlocks into my spacecraft. It just seemed obvious. From the time I was 4 my mother has been terrified that I would get my feet off the ground.
On February 1, 2003 I had given up my first career as a software developer and had returned to school at the University of Central Florida to study Aerospace Engineering. I was early in my second semester and I was sitting in the Engineering atrium between Engineering Buildings 1 and 2. I was studying Calculus (calc 2 specifically) and I looked up at the flat screen monitors hanging from the walkway. I was sitting there staring at the screens watching the multiple pieces of debris streaking across the Texas sky. I sat and paused but I didn't cry. Challenger had hardened that in me. I thought for a moment and went back to my text book.
On May 6, 2006 I graduated UCF with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Two weeks later I had moved to Seattle and began working at Boeing on the 787 as a Systems Engineer. I spent my senior year mastering orbital mechanics and satellite design.
Am I there yet? No. But my own history has taught me two things: the road is long and others will be lost. Morbid? possibly.. But I never gave up a dream and I never will. Someday my career will take me there, to insure that I will do what I need to do.
For some people it is natural to dream and then move on. For others, that dream never quite dies.
This was essentially the point of Boeing's Connexion service but since Boeing canned Connexion it's essentially a non-issue. Connexion was the in-flight internet among other things. Whether or not an equivalent comes around in the future is completely up to the company and it's definitely not a priority among the 787 people in BCA.
For my senior design at UCF we designed and built systems for a pair of satellites. I was the team lead for the ADCS team (attitude determination and control system) which had 3 other seniors in it along with me. We ended up deciding which sensors to use and creating all of the control algorithms for the satellite. We finished the class by creating a satellite simulator which allowed the users to see how the satellite behaves when the sensors are moved using a laptop computer. Other teams on the project built the frame, a sample thruster, the power control system for the solar cells, and a stereoscopic camera system. The whole project was for the Nanosat-4 competition hosted by the US Air Force.
The problem with this is the population. If sea level increases significantly, many low-lying areas will be flooded which correspond to a large percentage of the population. The resulting global evacuations and panic would cause major disruption to the global economy due to the tremendous straight on local governments and the loss of some of the most vital commercial properties on the globe. If this starts to happen: Best case, governments are intelligent and evacuate orderly and relocate their citizens.. Worst case, Mass panic, large areas of India, China, the US, and Europe are flooded and global economy completely collapses due to the strain.
Now, granted 4" isn't much but the evidence suggested major loss of antarctic, arctic, or greenland ice sheet will raise sea level by several feet. Large areas of the SE US are only a few feet above sea level (especially Florida and southern Louisiana) and millions in the US alone could end up refugees if this happens.
Can we risk the possible consequences in exchange for a few extra tasty tomatoes?
I find this discussion to be a good summary of what's wrong with most of the CS program graduates who later go on to refer to themselves as "software engineers". Most of them have no clue how to take requirements and develop a final product using proper engineering principles. Yet, virtually every university incorporates some sort of senior design project as part of their engineering curriculum. It might even be required for ABET certification but I don't know.
If you want to develop a software solution, you need to determine the best tools, best language, and best hardware to satisfy the requirements which you determine the customer needs. All of this is quite a bit more in depth than CS programs usually incorporate.
I spent nearly 10 years as a software developer before returning to school to complete an engineering degree. I realized very quickly that there were a huge number of concepts and tools that I could've incorporated in software design that I had no clue existed.
I just noticed the Seattle Times has a fresh article about it..
h nology/2003338593_webmsnovell02.html>Microsoft throws support behind longtime rival Novell's Linux platform
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstec
As a Floridian (I moved to Seattle a couple of months ago) we had a huge debate after the series of hurricanes in 2004 that roared through the state and left a quarter of the population without power. My apartment complex was in one of the few areas of Orlando to never loose power during those storms. We had buried lines in that area and we were very close to a major substation.
The problem lies in the patchwork nature. Even in a state susceptible to hurricanes, unless all of the lines are buried, you'll still have outages in a situation like that. The difference is simple, the number of outages and who is affected. Flying debris causes the most damage in the gulf coast states from storms like that. In New England, I'm sure ice or something is the largest annual problem.
That said, the way the power companies restore power makes sense to everyone except a Floridian without power and therefore lacking Air conditioning. Rebuild and Repair ops begin at the trunk and work toward the branches. each step away from the trunk affects a little less people. So you fix the most in on shot at the trunk and the least at the twiggy little neighborhood branches and individual transformers (where you might fix two families with a single repair versus 100 families on a feeder line repair).
It's always the families on those little single transformer outages that complain the most because 1) they're last on priority (and rightfully so) and 2) they don't care because it's 90 degrees and 70%+ humidity and they're miserable.
In some states, such as Florida, it makes sense to move as much underground as possible because you just have to keep rebuilding the system which is itself expensive and kills profits. In other states, it doesn't make as much sense. Washington state for example has half it's population clustered around Puget Sound. Potential events that could cause those types of events are extremely rare compared to hurricanes along the gulf. Things like Mount Rainier going off or a major earthquake are possible contenders but how often do those happen?
It's all perspective. Most corporations won't invest in something that affects profits with marginal gain at best. Incidentally, in a lot of the Puget Sound the power is a public utility run by or through the government rather than a company like most of the country.
I know this is kind of pointless but it's nice to see Dr. B mentioned in a normal article. He taught my Space Systems Concepts class a year ago at UCF and I have met with him a few times as an advisor for our senior design project with the Nanosat-4 competition. He's pretty heavy into the propulsion side and is developing an operational Microwave-Electro-Thermal thruster. Interesting guy but a bit obessessive with the aliens thing. He always throws klingon references into his school lectures/presentations. I won't give his precise work location but it's at Cape Canaveral.
I find it highly amusing that they screwed up their units on the Falcon 9 website. They list "Thrust on liftoff: 2.85 mN (765 klbf)" What they failed to take into account is that there's a difference in metric abbreviations between Milli "m" and Mega "M". 2.85 millinewtons isn't going to lauch my cat. The reason this is amusing is because we (as engineers) are drilled from the beginning to get them accurate. Somebody should proofread it. It's also interesting that they chose to write it "klbf" instead of "kips" like is normally done.
There are actually many satellite projects for stuff this small. The space industry in Florida holds an annual competition for college students to design picosats called Funsat that uses the Cubesat format.
It should be noted that hall thrusters are extremely low thrust but high ISP. This is effectively an ion drive. This means that it's a relatively slow method of doing orbital transfers. In other words, don't expect this thing to drag the satellite L1 in half an hour.
Our nanosat-4 project is using a PPT although we considered an MET for a while. We have to maintain formation flight between three satellites which requires high thrust/quick burn types of thrusters. That burn time ruled out the MET.
My programming skills are extremely valuable compared to my classmates when we graduate in less than a year. A lot of the industry is simulation based or robotics based, both of which require extremely good programming skills.
The sad part is how lacking the Aerospace and Mechanical programs are at most universities (including mine) when it comes to emphasizing this. Many aspects of engineering are becoming more and more software oriented and many software developers could find alternative work in engineering teams if they knew where to look.
Subjects for those interested to reference include Feedback Control and Mechatronics.
Actually, I made consistently over $25/hour from about 1997 to 2002 when I quit programming and returned to school for an aerospace engineering degree.
But I worked in the CS (software) field for 10 years and absolutely hated it. I'm a technical person and I was bored to tears. I abandoned that career and went back to school for a degree in Aerospace Engineering because my passion is space. The programming/admin abilities I have are invaluable considering how much work involves simulations at this point but writing database applications, except as a quick solution for a problem, is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. Software is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole pie.
Actually, even if your local Panera isn't listed it probably has wi-fi. I know the one here in Orlando right off Lake Eola has it and none of the local ones are listed.
And Aero engineers (like me) make the delivery systems.
I'd go with Reynolds Transport Theorem or possibly Bernoulli's equation. A whole lot of the modern world wouldn't exist without mathematical representations of fluids.
Very true.. but then you are essentially combining the two vehicles I mentioned before into one. This is basically a single stage to orbit system where white knight and spaceshipone used more of a two stage system for it's suborbital hop.
I still believe you'd expend more energy but you bring up an interesting point because you do it gradually which makes it much more practical for "safe" launch systems. It would require at least two engine systems on the vehicle or a really good way to throttle a single rocket engine to avoid too rapid of an acceleration. i.e. conventional jet to get you up to the high altitude (like white knight) and a rocket to push the rest of the way (like SpaceShipOne).
Biggest problem I see with the whole nuclear salt water thing is the water it's self.. Being a liquid, water is not compressible without extremely high pressures. That true, the tank to hold the water would have to be massive compared to those used to hold a compressed gas fuel source. This would make construction of the vehicle in orbit difficult and ground launch is pretty much dead anyway when environmentalists even think they hear the word nuclear. The engine itself is awesome but I think this fuel storage problem is a killer.
The bulk of the atmospheric density is below 25km in Altitude (space is considered 100km). In fact, sea level is 101kPa and 25km is around 5kPa. For this reason, it's beneficial to get your ass as high as you can as fast as you can. If you launch horizontally you have to deal with lift and a much higher amound of drag (what people here on slashdot are referring to as wind resistance). Launching vertical punches you out of the densest part of the atmosphere the fastest and conserves a lot of energy that would be expended with lift and the much higher drag of a verical launch.
It's also a matter of the fact that rocket propulsion using a C-D nozzle accelerates a vehicle much more quickly than standard turbo jet aircraft are capable of accelerating. As a result you don't really deal with the extra drag nearly as long. That drag equates to friction which in turn equates to heat on the skin of the vehicle. If you used a rocket engine in a horizontal position you'd have higher drag for longer and therefore higher heat loading on the vehicle.
The vehicles that launch from a horizontal position are almost always carried to 50,000 feet by a conventional aircraft. Examples include SpaceShipOne being carried up by White Knight and a Pegasus booster being lofted by a B-52 for a satellite launch.
Daniel
(Aerospace Engineering major.. Senior year finally.. I love my high-speed aero class.)