My secret clearance was covered by a small company of about ~ 200 employees out of Huntsville, AL, contracting direct with the Army, not one of the big players you mention. And this is not uncommon, at least down here - there are companies from 5-500 employees contracting directly with the Army/NASA for services, and anything missile or defense related, of course, is Secret.
But I know people who have done it all ways, starting at school or through bigger companies, etc. That was my point - at least here, the security clearances don't seem to be an issue, that's why I was curious where you resided, because your experiances run contrary to mine, and friends I graduated with. We all got jobs in the defense sector very quickly after graduation. Even now in this so-called "recession", many companies I know of and have experience with are hiring, in defense and NASA... they can't find enough employees. Too many retirees, not enough college grads, it's a good time to be in aerospace.
Right now I work at NASA and my clearance is actually suspended, I don't need it for the work I do (very little at NASA is secret), but it's on file in case I need it in the future, reactivating is a lot cheaper (and quicker, since the primary background check is complete) than starting over.
Most excellent and rolls excellently off the tongue, I am assured that episodes two and three will revolve around the concepts of "shrinkage" and "Mac Nazi", correct?
Don't know, don't care, but I have a $300 Compaq-branded-HP with Vista which checks email, web, plays my favorite MMO, and writes code as fast as I need. I don't need to check the length of it's e-peen to that of a Mac to be satisfied.
There are conflicting reports but virtually every independent observer outside of Iran concurs that the launch failed after second stage ignition, well short of orbital insertation.
Been watching SpaceX for awhile and part of their problem is that they are making changes and upgrading between sparse launches. For example the failure #3 was caused because they upgraded their first stage engine, which had residual thrust for an additional 1.5 seconds, which was not accounted for in the timeline for second stage ignition, causing it to ram into second stage as it ignited, causing failure. Had they not upgraded the first stage engine (or had the bookkeeping noted the extra thrust, and updated the control logic for second stage ignition) that anomaly would not taken place.
So upgrade-itis caused at least 1 of 3 failures. Kinda makes sense coming from a computer guy:)
As someone noted, there's plenty of margin in first stage.
Second point: If you look at the math for a two stage rocket, the effect of adding a pound to the first stage is inconsequential compared to the effect of adding a pound to the second stage. Sadly I'm away from my books (in a job transition at the moment) but the simple way to think of it is this: you only drag first stage with you for the first 2 or so minutes of flight, and then upper stage carries you for the next six minutes or so. So the weight is only with you for a short integrated length of time.
You can see this in effect when you consider the difference between first stage and second stage - first stage is essentially a modified Shuttle solid rocket motor, and second stage is essentially a re-designed external tank (yes, it's different, but the construction is the tank, thin wall aluminum with TPS).
First stage is thick, heavy steel, overdesigned for re-entry.
Second stage is thin, light aluminum.
The first stage is heavier, again, because of reuse and because mass isn't the design driver. Upper stage, however, since it nearly inserts orbit and is drug along the entire time is an incredible mass driver and must be as light as possible.
Sorry for rambling, and apologies for not showing the math, but in short, that's why adding 3/4 a ton to first stage isn't as big a deal as it sounds like. In the long run, it might effect maybe 10% of its weight in payload, if even...
My friends and I who became defense contractor employees (since left for NASA) have had no problem getting jobs and getting clearances. I had a job within 3 months of graduation - and that's because I wasn't looking very hard, I was actually doing the graduate research assistanceship thing, just keeping my eyes open when I got a referral from a friend-of-a-friend.
Actually, they are so backed up in granting security clearances, you get your interim clearance within a few months, but your actual clearance will take a year to grant, and that's presuming they don't have to do an extensive background check (no funnies in your background check). My secret clearance 3 years ago took over a year to process, my brothers' secret 2 years ago took almost as long.
In fact the local college will sponsor security clearances if you are working on a project for a professor as a GRA in collaboration with the Army, etc.
(1) Buy your books online or used from other students - I only paid retail on four books in my entire college career (BS, MS, PhD).
(2) Anyone who sells their books back to the college bookstore is an IDIOT. You are giving up the profit margin to the bookstore. Either sell them straight to the student (surely you know some of your colleagues?) for a few bucks less than they will have to pay the bookstore next semester, or put up a flier on the bulletin boards in the dorms/class buildings, or sell them online. Myself, I knew underclassmen and we worked out a price between the bookstore buyback price (just call them up, they will give you an estimate) and the selling price in the bookstore (again, call them, they will tell you). Which was pretty close to the price I paid online in the first place. This was back in 2000, now in 2008, you have no excuse.
When all's said and done, I rarely paid more than 50% sticker (bookstore) price on books, often quite less, and rarely sold my books for much less than what I paid in the first place, when I chose to sell them.
That being said, two observations:
(1) in certain field, you might want to keep your books. I kept most all my books junior and senior years, and through my MS and PhD programs. They come in handy as an engineer as reference texts, both for myself and for colleagues (those who did NOT keep their textbooks).
(2) As you progress higher in education, the books tend to get cheaper. My last PhD text, new, is $50. Some of the Masters' textbooks were in the $40 range out of print, and some were just photocopies of the professors' papers and course notes, handed out by the professors in lieu of the text, no text at all.
How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place? Can you not find a blog aready to cater to any political belief no matter how bizzare? Now I'm the one confused.
One opinion I've heard, and I honestly don't know how accurate it is, is that a website that caters to a specific group (Democrat, Republican, etc.) would no longer have power to moderate opposing views, which initially might not seem bad but there's a fine line between trolling and breaking the law... someone could troll hardcore and be unstoppable under the Fairness Doctrine.
Again, that's someone elses' read, not mine... but interesting.
Re:Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn for Sega
on
The Evolution of Sega
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Vince Lombardi didn't have Gatorade, much less steroids or testosterone blood infusions stashed under his trench coat.
It isn't the desire to win that is wrong, it's the moral depravity of cheating. There's a pretty clear distinction between the desire to win and the desire to cheat.
Seconded -- as someone who **does** do atmospheric re-entry for a living and is not afraid to post as a coward, ballistic coefficient is not a be-all and end-all of a successful reentry, it's just one very small piece of the puzzle, and frequently changes during flight. While I'm sure, militarily, the US would have taken any excuse to try to do a satellite intercept again (we've done it before, it's a good exercise for a number of reasons), I would not doubt there was a good reason to do it.
There's a number of good papers out there on how this is analyzed, if someone is seriously interested I'll post some citations, I'm away from the office today.
(forgive me, Warner Brothers, and the Warner Sister, Dot)
Come join the Obama Brothers,
And the Obama Sister, Michelle
Just for fun we travel round
europe and the middle east, oh well
They lock us in the tower whenever we get caught
Then we break loose and then vamoose
and now you know the plot
We're ob-aman-iacs
Dott is cute and Yakko yaks
Wakko cracks away the snacks while Bill Clinton plays the sax
We're O-ba-man-iacs
Meet Barack and his VP who want to rule the universe
McCain and Rick Davis plot together Reporters whacks them with their purse
Congress is on vacation while Pelosi tries to sell her book
We write a script we had a script why bother to rehearse
We're Obamaniacs
We get payed for played contracts
We're zany to the max
there's baloney in our slacks
We're Obamany
totally insaney
(Here's a show that's maney)
I understand a post hoc fallacy. I also understand market forces - my father is a financial consultant, and I invest heavily in the stock market, although I invest long term I follow the day-to-day trends - and my experiences in the market trump a single link to Wikipedia. Sorry Jamie, you are going to have to do better than that. It's the single largest drop oil has seen in quite some time, and I can tell you why - stocks are driven by emotions. It's not a computer, where it's based strictly on market forces. When people - yes, the people buying, selling, speculating and betting for and against - see that we will be drilling our own reserves, they will have not just thoughts in their heads but feelings, which a computer does not have, and this influences the market. Maybe you can't grok this, but you better believe emotions ride high on the floors of Wall Street and the other trading centers around the world, and they react to what people like Bush and Bernake say.
You know, I commute to my work on a bicycle, because it's healthy, fun and clears my mind. And between my wife and I we spend about $40 a month in gas at $4 a gallon. You could double the price of gasoline and I'd still be spending way more each week feeding my family, or doing most of my budgetary line items. I could give a crap about myself, but I don't see why we shouldn't use what we got. There's no point artificially driving up the price of a resource when you are sitting on billions of barrels of it.
Slashdot Mirror
When's the last time you heard a candidate say anything nice about their opponent in an election cycle?
... link
You obviously missed the 30 second commercial that McCain took out during Obama's speech, congratulating him on his nomination
Honestly, though, with the choice of Palin as veep, Obama's gonna have an uphill climb. He shoulda picked Hillary.
ASSHOLES UZBEKISTAN!
-Borat
I think I'll fire up my dual processor 366 MHz BP-6 for old times' sake.
Is it wise to be Russian into these kinds of jokes in this political environment?
Once you turn to the dark side, forever will it dominate your destiny! and your dental plan ...
He mentioned "thinking gamers", this would clearly exclude WoWers (I kid, I kid)
My TV is an LCD flat panel. Please explain to me how it has a *tremendous* magnetic field.
Not to the same extent but it has a high voltage power transformer for the backlight.
My secret clearance was covered by a small company of about ~ 200 employees out of Huntsville, AL, contracting direct with the Army, not one of the big players you mention. And this is not uncommon, at least down here - there are companies from 5-500 employees contracting directly with the Army/NASA for services, and anything missile or defense related, of course, is Secret.
But I know people who have done it all ways, starting at school or through bigger companies, etc. That was my point - at least here, the security clearances don't seem to be an issue, that's why I was curious where you resided, because your experiances run contrary to mine, and friends I graduated with. We all got jobs in the defense sector very quickly after graduation. Even now in this so-called "recession", many companies I know of and have experience with are hiring, in defense and NASA... they can't find enough employees. Too many retirees, not enough college grads, it's a good time to be in aerospace.
Right now I work at NASA and my clearance is actually suspended, I don't need it for the work I do (very little at NASA is secret), but it's on file in case I need it in the future, reactivating is a lot cheaper (and quicker, since the primary background check is complete) than starting over.
Most excellent and rolls excellently off the tongue, I am assured that episodes two and three will revolve around the concepts of "shrinkage" and "Mac Nazi", correct?
Don't know, don't care, but I have a $300 Compaq-branded-HP with Vista which checks email, web, plays my favorite MMO, and writes code as fast as I need. I don't need to check the length of it's e-peen to that of a Mac to be satisfied.
SHRINKAGE!
There are conflicting reports but virtually every independent observer outside of Iran concurs that the launch failed after second stage ignition, well short of orbital insertation.
:)
Been watching SpaceX for awhile and part of their problem is that they are making changes and upgrading between sparse launches. For example the failure #3 was caused because they upgraded their first stage engine, which had residual thrust for an additional 1.5 seconds, which was not accounted for in the timeline for second stage ignition, causing it to ram into second stage as it ignited, causing failure. Had they not upgraded the first stage engine (or had the bookkeeping noted the extra thrust, and updated the control logic for second stage ignition) that anomaly would not taken place.
So upgrade-itis caused at least 1 of 3 failures. Kinda makes sense coming from a computer guy
As someone noted, there's plenty of margin in first stage.
Second point: If you look at the math for a two stage rocket, the effect of adding a pound to the first stage is inconsequential compared to the effect of adding a pound to the second stage. Sadly I'm away from my books (in a job transition at the moment) but the simple way to think of it is this: you only drag first stage with you for the first 2 or so minutes of flight, and then upper stage carries you for the next six minutes or so. So the weight is only with you for a short integrated length of time.
You can see this in effect when you consider the difference between first stage and second stage - first stage is essentially a modified Shuttle solid rocket motor, and second stage is essentially a re-designed external tank (yes, it's different, but the construction is the tank, thin wall aluminum with TPS).
First stage is thick, heavy steel, overdesigned for re-entry.
Second stage is thin, light aluminum.
The first stage is heavier, again, because of reuse and because mass isn't the design driver. Upper stage, however, since it nearly inserts orbit and is drug along the entire time is an incredible mass driver and must be as light as possible.
Sorry for rambling, and apologies for not showing the math, but in short, that's why adding 3/4 a ton to first stage isn't as big a deal as it sounds like. In the long run, it might effect maybe 10% of its weight in payload, if even...
Where do you go to school?
My friends and I who became defense contractor employees (since left for NASA) have had no problem getting jobs and getting clearances. I had a job within 3 months of graduation - and that's because I wasn't looking very hard, I was actually doing the graduate research assistanceship thing, just keeping my eyes open when I got a referral from a friend-of-a-friend.
Actually, they are so backed up in granting security clearances, you get your interim clearance within a few months, but your actual clearance will take a year to grant, and that's presuming they don't have to do an extensive background check (no funnies in your background check). My secret clearance 3 years ago took over a year to process, my brothers' secret 2 years ago took almost as long.
In fact the local college will sponsor security clearances if you are working on a project for a professor as a GRA in collaboration with the Army, etc.
I live in Huntsville, AL.
(1) Buy your books online or used from other students - I only paid retail on four books in my entire college career (BS, MS, PhD).
(2) Anyone who sells their books back to the college bookstore is an IDIOT. You are giving up the profit margin to the bookstore. Either sell them straight to the student (surely you know some of your colleagues?) for a few bucks less than they will have to pay the bookstore next semester, or put up a flier on the bulletin boards in the dorms/class buildings, or sell them online. Myself, I knew underclassmen and we worked out a price between the bookstore buyback price (just call them up, they will give you an estimate) and the selling price in the bookstore (again, call them, they will tell you). Which was pretty close to the price I paid online in the first place. This was back in 2000, now in 2008, you have no excuse.
When all's said and done, I rarely paid more than 50% sticker (bookstore) price on books, often quite less, and rarely sold my books for much less than what I paid in the first place, when I chose to sell them.
That being said, two observations:
(1) in certain field, you might want to keep your books. I kept most all my books junior and senior years, and through my MS and PhD programs. They come in handy as an engineer as reference texts, both for myself and for colleagues (those who did NOT keep their textbooks).
(2) As you progress higher in education, the books tend to get cheaper. My last PhD text, new, is $50. Some of the Masters' textbooks were in the $40 range out of print, and some were just photocopies of the professors' papers and course notes, handed out by the professors in lieu of the text, no text at all.
How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place? Can you not find a blog aready to cater to any political belief no matter how bizzare? Now I'm the one confused.
One opinion I've heard, and I honestly don't know how accurate it is, is that a website that caters to a specific group (Democrat, Republican, etc.) would no longer have power to moderate opposing views, which initially might not seem bad but there's a fine line between trolling and breaking the law... someone could troll hardcore and be unstoppable under the Fairness Doctrine.
Again, that's someone elses' read, not mine... but interesting.
Not yet, Brodie.
yeeeeeeesssss!
Yoda, you are.
Vince Lombardi didn't have Gatorade, much less steroids or testosterone blood infusions stashed under his trench coat.
It isn't the desire to win that is wrong, it's the moral depravity of cheating. There's a pretty clear distinction between the desire to win and the desire to cheat.
Seconded -- as someone who **does** do atmospheric re-entry for a living and is not afraid to post as a coward, ballistic coefficient is not a be-all and end-all of a successful reentry, it's just one very small piece of the puzzle, and frequently changes during flight. While I'm sure, militarily, the US would have taken any excuse to try to do a satellite intercept again (we've done it before, it's a good exercise for a number of reasons), I would not doubt there was a good reason to do it.
There's a number of good papers out there on how this is analyzed, if someone is seriously interested I'll post some citations, I'm away from the office today.
(forgive me, Warner Brothers, and the Warner Sister, Dot)
Come join the Obama Brothers,
And the Obama Sister, Michelle
Just for fun we travel round
europe and the middle east, oh well
They lock us in the tower whenever we get caught
Then we break loose and then vamoose
and now you know the plot
We're ob-aman-iacs
Dott is cute and Yakko yaks
Wakko cracks away the snacks while Bill Clinton plays the sax
We're O-ba-man-iacs
Meet Barack and his VP who want to rule the universe
McCain and Rick Davis plot together Reporters whacks them with their purse
Congress is on vacation while Pelosi tries to sell her book
We write a script we had a script why bother to rehearse
We're Obamaniacs
We get payed for played contracts
We're zany to the max
there's baloney in our slacks
We're Obamany
totally insaney
(Here's a show that's maney)
An-i-mani-acs
Those are the facts
would never astroturf
... she's a campaign worker for the Obama campaign.)
(go ahead, read the article and google the name "Nikki E Sutton"
I understand a post hoc fallacy. I also understand market forces - my father is a financial consultant, and I invest heavily in the stock market, although I invest long term I follow the day-to-day trends - and my experiences in the market trump a single link to Wikipedia. Sorry Jamie, you are going to have to do better than that. It's the single largest drop oil has seen in quite some time, and I can tell you why - stocks are driven by emotions. It's not a computer, where it's based strictly on market forces. When people - yes, the people buying, selling, speculating and betting for and against - see that we will be drilling our own reserves, they will have not just thoughts in their heads but feelings, which a computer does not have, and this influences the market. Maybe you can't grok this, but you better believe emotions ride high on the floors of Wall Street and the other trading centers around the world, and they react to what people like Bush and Bernake say.
You must be one of those people that thinks an orbiting spacecraft is not subject to the forces of gravity, huh?
In what state do state employees get 100% of their pay upon retirement?
You know, I commute to my work on a bicycle, because it's healthy, fun and clears my mind. And between my wife and I we spend about $40 a month in gas at $4 a gallon. You could double the price of gasoline and I'd still be spending way more each week feeding my family, or doing most of my budgetary line items. I could give a crap about myself, but I don't see why we shouldn't use what we got. There's no point artificially driving up the price of a resource when you are sitting on billions of barrels of it.