Yup. I never check luggage, I always fly carry on only. It saves a good hour on each end of the trip.
Wait, what? How does not checking any luggage save any time at all at the departing end of the trip? Since when does it take an extra hour to check in, if you have luggage to check? Do they hold the flight for you, while this extra hour of processing occurs? WTF?
What's the fuel efficiency of these things? With only 1 passenger, it sounds like the passenger-miles-per-gallon efficiency would be abysmal. This isn't an environmentally viable option for tons of people to take up, unless you're extrenely selfish and don't care about spewing pollutants into the atmosphere.
Do some research before condemning them. You'll find that some light aircraft are actually more fuel efficient than cars or trucks, even when only occupied by a single person (the pilot). For example, the 2-seater Diamond Eclipse DA20 cruises at 138 knots, while burning 5.5 gallons per hour. That's almost 160 (statute) miles on 5.5 gallons of fuel, or 29 miles per gallon. Factor in that you're not burning any fuel sitting at stoplights or crawling along in traffic, and you'll realize that even from an environmental point of view, flying can be very efficient.
Because you don't really own it if you have even a single cent of debt.
That doesn't make any sense. If I have roughly $750,000 in various investments, and I have a $200,000 mortgage on my house, are you really claiming I don't "own" my house?
What's worse, you can't simply walk out from debt, while you can walk out from a rented apartment
Bull crap. You most certainly can walk out from a mortgage. You sell the house and pay off the mortgage. If you've been in the home and paying the mortgage for even a short period of time (a couple of years), and the market hasn't utterly collapsed underneath you, then the sale price of the home will more than cover the remaining outstanding balance of the mortgage. So if you sell the house and walk away, you get to keep the equity you'd built up in the house in the meantime. With the apartment, however, you walk away empty-handed.
Additionally, you can't just "walk away" from an apartment either. Lease agreements typically have notification periods. You may be obligated to continue renting until the end of the year, or pay some sort of penalty. With a home, you could be gone in as little as a week, if you're able to find a buyer fast enough and rush the paperwork through.
Never take any debt if you can avoid it;
Absolutely terrible advice. In fact, my wife and I recently refinanced our mortgage to take some of the equity out of our home and invest in in real estate in a hotter area. We "borrowed" more money from the bank, at about 5% interest, and will (hopefully) make more than that back in the investment.
If you're confident that an investment will earn you a rate of return that exceeds the interest rate of the loan, then it makes sense to take the loan and invest it.
In Canada, interest on investment loans is tax-deductible. And the loan we took is secured against our house (obviously, since it is a mortgage), which means we were able to get a good rate. We're profiting off the bank's money. We're assuming a small amount of risk in order to profit from their money.
Why did your debtor lend the money to you ? Surely, if you can invest the money in ways that exceed the interest of the debt, he could as well.
Yet again, you are wrong. The lender (note the correct term. The "debtor" is the one borrowing the money, not lending) most certainly would invest the money as you are, if they were allowed. Banks are subject to much stricter regulation than individuals, when it comes to investing borrowed money. They are required to stick to "sure-things"; that is, loaning to people whom they are confident can pay it back. You, however, as the borrower, are free to do whatever you want with the money. Including investing it in somewhat less than "sure-things."
Taking loan to save your own money was stupid. Loans must be paid back with interest. You'd been better off living out of your own money and only borrowing money if you actually needed it.
I honestly don't know why you bothered to post at all. You clearly have absolutely no financial experience or insight to contribute to this discussion.
My wife and I recently bought a new car. We had $25,000 sitting in our bank account. We picked a car. The dealer offered us financing. At this point, if I were dumb enough to listen to you, I'd have jumped up and said, "No! Never take any debt if you can avoid it; Always pay with cash!" (that's actually exactly what you said; see your post above).
However, given that I can actually do math, I asked him what the interest rate of the loan was. He said 1.9%. I said I'd like to borrow the entire value of the car, minus whatever minimum down payment was required. Then I took my $25,000 and invested stuck it in a savings account that earns a meager 3.5% per year.
Dumb, you say? It's slightly fictional (we didn't actually have $25,000 sitting in an account with which to buy a car. I already knew it would
Trying to win by taking out loans and investing them is no easy task.
I'm not sure if there are similar provisions in the US, but here in Canada, loan interest on investment loans is tax-deductible. This effectively decreases the rate of return necessary to see a profit.
Not to mention the fact that it screws other students who actually need the money, because that money supply isn't infinite.
News flash: The student supply isn't infinite either.
There's plenty of loan money to go around. If a bank is convinced you'll be able to pay it back, they'll lend you money. If they don't have the money to lend you, they borrow it from the central bank, then turn around and lend it to you. Also, banks are allowed to loan out money they don't actually have (to a limit - I'm not up on financial law, I can't give you hard numbers). What I'm saying is, there is more than enough loan money available to easily loan money to anyone and everyone who wants it and is able to pay it back.
This is not quite correct - you are thinking of Part 91 ops, and the section you are grasping for is the following:
My bad, I mistakenly assumed the US regs were the same as Canada's. In Canada, the regulations are as I said. See the relevant section of the CARs, 605.31.
I don't think the modest pressure drop (from 14.7 psi at sea level to 9.5 psi at 3500 m) is going to cause accidents.
I don't know if I'd categorize that as a "modest" drop. That's 1/3 of an atmosphere. That's low enough pressure to manifest measurable, visible symptoms of hypoxia in humans not accustomed to the high altitude. Airplanes are forbidden from flying above 10,500 MSL for more than 30 minutes without carrying oxygen. Living at 11,000 full time would definitely affect sea-level folk, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to consider that it may affect other pressurized items, too.
Sure you can! Just pick one up, look it square in the terminals, and start talking. It's unable to run away, you can speak as long as you want.
On the other hand, I don't know if you're able to speak about lithium batteries, because you haven't told us one way or the other.
Not to pick on you in particular, but have people always used "to" in this manner? It seems like a relatively recent perversion of the word; am I wrong? I don't recall people saying things like "I can't speak to the safety of this car," or "I'd like him to speak to the source of his campaign funding" until a couple years ago. Doesn't it sound funny to anyone else? Is this actually proper English, or is this just another example of people jumping on the "sounds fancy, so it'll make me sound smart" bandwagon?
If an airplane is pressurized (basically anything that flies over 18,000', i.e. every commercial airplane, is) so is the cargo hold. It's the same environment as the passenger cabin.
1. Airplanes require oxygen above 13,000 feet MSL, not 18,000 feet MSL. You're confusing the upper limit of oxygen-less flying with the base of class A (IFR-only) airspace.
2. Most small-to-medium sized pressurized passenger planes do not pressurize the cargo hold. Larger planes do sometimes have a separate, pressurized hold for transporting pets and other pressure-sensitive cargo.
As another poster says, it's sea level pressure minus 4.4 psi...the pressurization is actually engaged before takeoff to put a slight positive pressure in the airplane. That makes the fuselage a bit more rigid, reducing the amount of structural fatigue it gets in the takeoff roll. If you're wearing one of those digital watches with an altimeter feature, you'll see the reading go somewhat below the ground elevation.
Actually, airplanes with pressurized cabins are pressurized to the pressure at 8000 feet, not "below ground elevation." If you did in fact have an altimeter watch, as you describe, it would indicate you were at an altitude of 8000 MSL.
Right on - instead of sticking their heads in the sand and pretending they can outlaw internet gambling, the US needs to get on board and try to take some leadership in this area. Given the huge amount of cash flow involved, I'm amazed that Congress doesn't want to tap into it rather than try banning it.
Just for the sake of argument, I want you to re-read the above paragraph, but replace "internet gambling" with "internet child pornography." Heck, replace it with "crack cocaine use" or "drunk driving."
Online activities can be outlawed and enforced. It's not sticking your head in the sand to try and eliminate it if it's truly something your society rejects.
Do you concede that the minefield that's at the DMZ has helped to keep North Korea from invading South Korea?
Only if you'll concede that euthanizing every last HIV and AIDS victim would eradicate the diseases, or that executing anyone convicted of a felony would drastically reduce crime rates.
Just because a solution is effective doesn't mean its ethical or justified.
Bwaaaahaha! Are you seriously trying to compare Russia to North America? You're holding up Moscow as a beacon of liberty? Is this the same country that would quietly "vanish" outspoken critics of the government in the middle of the night? The same government that slaughtered those who dared suggest the superiority of Democracy over Communism? The same place that made "glasnost" a household word, because having a free press was such an extraordinary and noteworthy thing for the people of Russia, even though the rest of the world has had it for over a century, in many cases? Where workers' rights are non-existent? Where the mob rules the government?
Yeah, great argument. The former soviet states have so much "liberty" that they're terrorist havens, where they can freely and openly trade in arms without fear of some oppressive government interfering with their violent "commerce."
You're confusing "lawlessness" and "anarchy" with "liberty." But thanks for playing.
You're absolute right. As another poster pointed out, the shuttle does not carry any onboard equipment for closing the gear doors. Once they've been opened, they remain open until the shuttle has landed, and the ground crew preps the shuttle for the next mission. There are many reasons why opening the gear doors is a very well-protected, stricly manual operation. There's no turning back once those doors are opened.
NASA is running out of shuttles (only 3 left) and it would be exceedingly difficult to produce more
Not to be pedantic, but strictly speaking, there are 4 shuttles left (Enterprise, Endeaver, Atlantis, Discovery). Enterprise is a non-spaceworthy testing and training unit that I believe is in a museum now, but if they needed to bring another shuttle into service, they wouldn't be starting from scratch. They do have a mothballed shuttle they could modernize and bring into service.
My brother is an airline pilot. A Kat C procedure lets a modern airliner basicly land fully automatic (sight below 150ft.). However, if the weather conditions allow it they will land that damn thing by hand just for the fun of it (and for not to loosing training, it's said that older pilots have particularly problems flying manually because some of them get out of training due to too much auto-piloting).
Wow. This is an example of a little information being a dangerous thing.
First of all, it's called a "Category III ILS Precision Approach", not a "Kat C procedure. It requires 3 criteria to all be in place in order to be attempted. The landing facility must be equipped, certified, and current. The airplane must be equipped, certified, and current. And the pilot-in-command attempting the approach must be certified and current for Cat III approaches.
Secondly, it is not a routine landing. Not all runways at all airports are equipped with Cat III ILS. Airlines make a lot of flights to smaller airports that just have the basic Cat I or II ILS systems, or even localizer-only, ADF, or VOR non-precision approach guidance systems. Pilots land "by hand" almost all the time. The "auto-lands" are the rare occurences, and they are required to do them every so often to keep current.
Landing the space shuttle is very, very different from landing an airliner. The glideslope is ridiculously steep. There is no second chance. The shuttle is practically plummetting at between 6000 - 8000 feet per minute (normal aircraft descent at around 500 feet per minute when on approach for landing). The shuttle enters the approach pattern at over 35,000 feet. If it needs to do a 360 degree turn, it will lose over 30,000 in altitude. It has an absolutely horrible glide ratio. Its glideslope angle is 20 degrees (normal glideslope angle is 3 - 5 degrees). It comes in at almost 300 mph (waaaay too fast for any other normal aircraft). It truly is a very special aircraft.
I remember hearing that it was a political move by the astronaut office that the landing gear had to be manually deployed, assuring them a job for the duration of the program.
You heard wrong. The shuttle gear is deployed manually to ensure that a short circuit doesn't inadvertently extend the gear while the shuttle is still in orbit, thus causing the tires and hydraulics to explode in the vacuum of space, rendering the shuttle unable to land.
Failure to protect rights has killed more people than second-hand smoke ever has.
Ridiculous, unsubstantiated hyperbole.
If you don't like second-hand smoke, exercise your rights and boycott those establishments that permit it.
My problem with smoking in bars and restaurants isn't with the patrons. On that level, I agree with you. I'm a capitalist at heart. Let the market sort it out. Supply and demand.
My problem with smoking in these places lies with the employees. Employees have a right to a safe work environment. Factory workers must wear protective clothing and footwear. Construction workers have to wear helmets and safety harnesses. Workers dealing with dangerous chemicals wear HAZMAT suits and masks. But for some reason, everyone thinks its OK to subject food service industry workers to unsafe work environments.
"No one's forcing them to work there," the critics say. But the people who work in these types of jobs don't have many other options. We're talking about low-income, largely unskilled workers just trying to make ends meet. In our culture and society, it's not up to the workers to pick "safe" jobs; it's the responsibility of the employers to make every job "safe." Besides, the same selfish argument could easily be applied to sexual harassment laws. After all, if you're offended by the occassional tush-slap, and being referred to as "Babe," then perhaps you should just get another job, no? Actually, no. We as a society have spoken and decided that nobody has to put up with that kind of treatment at a place of employment.
And it's high time we decide that the workers don't have to put up with airborne carcinogens, either. Fortunately, I live in a progressive region which has already passed such laws (Ontario, Canada). Smoking is banned here in all public indoor places, including bars and restaurants. And I hope this spreads everywhere, like the cancerous smoke billowing out of the leathery, selfish smokers that oppose safety for all workers.
Tyrany of the moronic majority! If only we could beg (oh, I mean raise) the IQ of the masses!
OK, I'm confused. Let me get this straight. Redefining "hacker" to mean "someone who toys around creatively with software" instead of the virtually universally accepted definition of "a programmer who breaks into computer systems" is OK, but redefining "begs the question" to mean "raises the question" is bad?
Exactly who gets to decide what is and isn't OK to redefine? The geeks? And what criteria goes into the decision? Or is it just whatever we happen to feel like today?
You have no idea how scared I am of those filthy Canadians sneaking across the border to take advantage of our healthcare system and steal all our good beer.
Mmph!! (spits beer all over keyboard) Since when has the US had "good beer?" Are you talking about Budwater? Ever been out drinking with Canadians? The standard jab when you catch someone drinking a Coors Light is, "Ah, you must be the designated driver tonight, eh?"
Canadian beer is so much better than US beer that... holy crap, I can't believe I'm even bothering trying to type this out. Just try some Canadian beer and compare. You'll never go back. There's no comparison.
wow, you talk big from someone who programmed a text scroller.
Thanks for the plug! You're right, I did in fact author a very popular text scrolling applet almost a decade ago. In fact, I've written all kinds of applications, both big and small. How exactly is that supposed to be a bad thing?
and it looks like your photoshop skills are at about the same level as your programming skills.
Thanks again! Considering that I'm an accomplished programmer, I'll take that as a compliment. The vast majority of my Photoshop work, however, goes unnoticed. One of my hobbies is photography (you left out that link: my photography gallery), and I edit virtually all of my photos in Photoshop. It's usually just minor tweaks, such as re-cropping, rotating slightly to level a horizon, maybe adjusting the levels, saturation, contrast, applying a slight hue adjustment, maybe a mask her or there. Occassionally cloning or healing to remove a zit or freckle. I do very little "pure" Photoshop artwork, such as the example on the page you linked to, or of course, the graphics of my website itself.
But then again, you're an Anonymous Coward, so I don't know why I'm wasting my time with you.
and thats the attitude that leads us to having a future windows version that wants a 3D card for basic desktop operations, and eat 15GiB of storage space...
Hardware is advancing whether we ask it to or not. So why not take advantage of the better hardware by adding language features that make the programmer's job easier? Automatic garbage collection, cross-platform intermediate bytecode, and some runtime interpretation. If it makes the programmer's job easier, then it will result in fewer bugs, and more robust software. Why not do it?
Do you think we should all still be writing C++ to-the-metal in Visual Studio 6.0 on Windows 98? And just relishing how incredibly quickly our programs run (and occassionally crash) on the otherwise ridiculously unnecessary CPUs and RAM in modern machines?
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Yup. I never check luggage, I always fly carry on only. It saves a good hour on each end of the trip.
Wait, what? How does not checking any luggage save any time at all at the departing end of the trip? Since when does it take an extra hour to check in, if you have luggage to check? Do they hold the flight for you, while this extra hour of processing occurs? WTF?
What's the fuel efficiency of these things? With only 1 passenger, it sounds like the passenger-miles-per-gallon efficiency would be abysmal. This isn't an environmentally viable option for tons of people to take up, unless you're extrenely selfish and don't care about spewing pollutants into the atmosphere.
Do some research before condemning them. You'll find that some light aircraft are actually more fuel efficient than cars or trucks, even when only occupied by a single person (the pilot). For example, the 2-seater Diamond Eclipse DA20 cruises at 138 knots, while burning 5.5 gallons per hour. That's almost 160 (statute) miles on 5.5 gallons of fuel, or 29 miles per gallon. Factor in that you're not burning any fuel sitting at stoplights or crawling along in traffic, and you'll realize that even from an environmental point of view, flying can be very efficient.
Because you don't really own it if you have even a single cent of debt.
That doesn't make any sense. If I have roughly $750,000 in various investments, and I have a $200,000 mortgage on my house, are you really claiming I don't "own" my house?
What's worse, you can't simply walk out from debt, while you can walk out from a rented apartment
Bull crap. You most certainly can walk out from a mortgage. You sell the house and pay off the mortgage. If you've been in the home and paying the mortgage for even a short period of time (a couple of years), and the market hasn't utterly collapsed underneath you, then the sale price of the home will more than cover the remaining outstanding balance of the mortgage. So if you sell the house and walk away, you get to keep the equity you'd built up in the house in the meantime. With the apartment, however, you walk away empty-handed.
Additionally, you can't just "walk away" from an apartment either. Lease agreements typically have notification periods. You may be obligated to continue renting until the end of the year, or pay some sort of penalty. With a home, you could be gone in as little as a week, if you're able to find a buyer fast enough and rush the paperwork through.
Never take any debt if you can avoid it;
Absolutely terrible advice. In fact, my wife and I recently refinanced our mortgage to take some of the equity out of our home and invest in in real estate in a hotter area. We "borrowed" more money from the bank, at about 5% interest, and will (hopefully) make more than that back in the investment.
If you're confident that an investment will earn you a rate of return that exceeds the interest rate of the loan, then it makes sense to take the loan and invest it.
In Canada, interest on investment loans is tax-deductible. And the loan we took is secured against our house (obviously, since it is a mortgage), which means we were able to get a good rate. We're profiting off the bank's money. We're assuming a small amount of risk in order to profit from their money.
Why did your debtor lend the money to you ? Surely, if you can invest the money in ways that exceed the interest of the debt, he could as well.
Yet again, you are wrong. The lender (note the correct term. The "debtor" is the one borrowing the money, not lending) most certainly would invest the money as you are, if they were allowed. Banks are subject to much stricter regulation than individuals, when it comes to investing borrowed money. They are required to stick to "sure-things"; that is, loaning to people whom they are confident can pay it back. You, however, as the borrower, are free to do whatever you want with the money. Including investing it in somewhat less than "sure-things."
Taking loan to save your own money was stupid. Loans must be paid back with interest. You'd been better off living out of your own money and only borrowing money if you actually needed it.
I honestly don't know why you bothered to post at all. You clearly have absolutely no financial experience or insight to contribute to this discussion.
My wife and I recently bought a new car. We had $25,000 sitting in our bank account. We picked a car. The dealer offered us financing. At this point, if I were dumb enough to listen to you, I'd have jumped up and said, "No! Never take any debt if you can avoid it; Always pay with cash!" (that's actually exactly what you said; see your post above).
However, given that I can actually do math, I asked him what the interest rate of the loan was. He said 1.9%. I said I'd like to borrow the entire value of the car, minus whatever minimum down payment was required. Then I took my $25,000 and invested stuck it in a savings account that earns a meager 3.5% per year.
Dumb, you say? It's slightly fictional (we didn't actually have $25,000 sitting in an account with which to buy a car. I already knew it would
Trying to win by taking out loans and investing them is no easy task.
I'm not sure if there are similar provisions in the US, but here in Canada, loan interest on investment loans is tax-deductible. This effectively decreases the rate of return necessary to see a profit.
Not to mention the fact that it screws other students who actually need the money, because that money supply isn't infinite.
News flash: The student supply isn't infinite either.
There's plenty of loan money to go around. If a bank is convinced you'll be able to pay it back, they'll lend you money. If they don't have the money to lend you, they borrow it from the central bank, then turn around and lend it to you. Also, banks are allowed to loan out money they don't actually have (to a limit - I'm not up on financial law, I can't give you hard numbers). What I'm saying is, there is more than enough loan money available to easily loan money to anyone and everyone who wants it and is able to pay it back.
This is not quite correct - you are thinking of Part 91 ops, and the section you are grasping for is the following:
My bad, I mistakenly assumed the US regs were the same as Canada's. In Canada, the regulations are as I said. See the relevant section of the CARs, 605.31.
I don't think the modest pressure drop (from 14.7 psi at sea level to 9.5 psi at 3500 m) is going to cause accidents.
I don't know if I'd categorize that as a "modest" drop. That's 1/3 of an atmosphere. That's low enough pressure to manifest measurable, visible symptoms of hypoxia in humans not accustomed to the high altitude. Airplanes are forbidden from flying above 10,500 MSL for more than 30 minutes without carrying oxygen. Living at 11,000 full time would definitely affect sea-level folk, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to consider that it may affect other pressurized items, too.
I can't speak to lithium batteries,
Sure you can! Just pick one up, look it square in the terminals, and start talking. It's unable to run away, you can speak as long as you want.
On the other hand, I don't know if you're able to speak about lithium batteries, because you haven't told us one way or the other.
Not to pick on you in particular, but have people always used "to" in this manner? It seems like a relatively recent perversion of the word; am I wrong? I don't recall people saying things like "I can't speak to the safety of this car," or "I'd like him to speak to the source of his campaign funding" until a couple years ago. Doesn't it sound funny to anyone else? Is this actually proper English, or is this just another example of people jumping on the "sounds fancy, so it'll make me sound smart" bandwagon?
That's why they [airplanes] are circular.
What, you mean like [the F-177 Stealth Fighter]?
No, I think he means airplanes whose fuselages are pressurized.
If an airplane is pressurized (basically anything that flies over 18,000', i.e. every commercial airplane, is) so is the cargo hold. It's the same environment as the passenger cabin.
1. Airplanes require oxygen above 13,000 feet MSL, not 18,000 feet MSL. You're confusing the upper limit of oxygen-less flying with the base of class A (IFR-only) airspace.
2. Most small-to-medium sized pressurized passenger planes do not pressurize the cargo hold. Larger planes do sometimes have a separate, pressurized hold for transporting pets and other pressure-sensitive cargo.
As another poster says, it's sea level pressure minus 4.4 psi...the pressurization is actually engaged before takeoff to put a slight positive pressure in the airplane. That makes the fuselage a bit more rigid, reducing the amount of structural fatigue it gets in the takeoff roll. If you're wearing one of those digital watches with an altimeter feature, you'll see the reading go somewhat below the ground elevation.
Actually, airplanes with pressurized cabins are pressurized to the pressure at 8000 feet, not "below ground elevation." If you did in fact have an altimeter watch, as you describe, it would indicate you were at an altitude of 8000 MSL.
Right on - instead of sticking their heads in the sand and pretending they can outlaw internet gambling, the US needs to get on board and try to take some leadership in this area. Given the huge amount of cash flow involved, I'm amazed that Congress doesn't want to tap into it rather than try banning it.
Just for the sake of argument, I want you to re-read the above paragraph, but replace "internet gambling" with "internet child pornography." Heck, replace it with "crack cocaine use" or "drunk driving."
Online activities can be outlawed and enforced. It's not sticking your head in the sand to try and eliminate it if it's truly something your society rejects.
Do you concede that the minefield that's at the DMZ has helped to keep North Korea from invading South Korea?
Only if you'll concede that euthanizing every last HIV and AIDS victim would eradicate the diseases, or that executing anyone convicted of a felony would drastically reduce crime rates.
Just because a solution is effective doesn't mean its ethical or justified.
I live on the busiest street in Moscow,
Bwaaaahaha! Are you seriously trying to compare Russia to North America? You're holding up Moscow as a beacon of liberty? Is this the same country that would quietly "vanish" outspoken critics of the government in the middle of the night? The same government that slaughtered those who dared suggest the superiority of Democracy over Communism? The same place that made "glasnost" a household word, because having a free press was such an extraordinary and noteworthy thing for the people of Russia, even though the rest of the world has had it for over a century, in many cases? Where workers' rights are non-existent? Where the mob rules the government?
Yeah, great argument. The former soviet states have so much "liberty" that they're terrorist havens, where they can freely and openly trade in arms without fear of some oppressive government interfering with their violent "commerce."
You're confusing "lawlessness" and "anarchy" with "liberty." But thanks for playing.
You're absolute right. As another poster pointed out, the shuttle does not carry any onboard equipment for closing the gear doors. Once they've been opened, they remain open until the shuttle has landed, and the ground crew preps the shuttle for the next mission. There are many reasons why opening the gear doors is a very well-protected, stricly manual operation. There's no turning back once those doors are opened.
NASA is running out of shuttles (only 3 left) and it would be exceedingly difficult to produce more
Not to be pedantic, but strictly speaking, there are 4 shuttles left (Enterprise, Endeaver, Atlantis, Discovery). Enterprise is a non-spaceworthy testing and training unit that I believe is in a museum now, but if they needed to bring another shuttle into service, they wouldn't be starting from scratch. They do have a mothballed shuttle they could modernize and bring into service.
But the astronauts hated the idea of just being useless cargo, so they *demanded* some human input be required.
In what alternate universe do the astronauts have any authority at all over the design engineers at NASA?
My brother is an airline pilot. A Kat C procedure lets a modern airliner basicly land fully automatic (sight below 150ft.). However, if the weather conditions allow it they will land that damn thing by hand just for the fun of it (and for not to loosing training, it's said that older pilots have particularly problems flying manually because some of them get out of training due to too much auto-piloting).
Wow. This is an example of a little information being a dangerous thing.
First of all, it's called a "Category III ILS Precision Approach", not a "Kat C procedure. It requires 3 criteria to all be in place in order to be attempted. The landing facility must be equipped, certified, and current. The airplane must be equipped, certified, and current. And the pilot-in-command attempting the approach must be certified and current for Cat III approaches.
Secondly, it is not a routine landing. Not all runways at all airports are equipped with Cat III ILS. Airlines make a lot of flights to smaller airports that just have the basic Cat I or II ILS systems, or even localizer-only, ADF, or VOR non-precision approach guidance systems. Pilots land "by hand" almost all the time. The "auto-lands" are the rare occurences, and they are required to do them every so often to keep current.
Landing the space shuttle is very, very different from landing an airliner. The glideslope is ridiculously steep. There is no second chance. The shuttle is practically plummetting at between 6000 - 8000 feet per minute (normal aircraft descent at around 500 feet per minute when on approach for landing). The shuttle enters the approach pattern at over 35,000 feet. If it needs to do a 360 degree turn, it will lose over 30,000 in altitude. It has an absolutely horrible glide ratio. Its glideslope angle is 20 degrees (normal glideslope angle is 3 - 5 degrees). It comes in at almost 300 mph (waaaay too fast for any other normal aircraft). It truly is a very special aircraft.
I remember hearing that it was a political move by the astronaut office that the landing gear had to be manually deployed, assuring them a job for the duration of the program.
You heard wrong. The shuttle gear is deployed manually to ensure that a short circuit doesn't inadvertently extend the gear while the shuttle is still in orbit, thus causing the tires and hydraulics to explode in the vacuum of space, rendering the shuttle unable to land.
Failure to protect rights has killed more people than second-hand smoke ever has.
Ridiculous, unsubstantiated hyperbole.
If you don't like second-hand smoke, exercise your rights and boycott those establishments that permit it.
My problem with smoking in bars and restaurants isn't with the patrons. On that level, I agree with you. I'm a capitalist at heart. Let the market sort it out. Supply and demand.
My problem with smoking in these places lies with the employees. Employees have a right to a safe work environment. Factory workers must wear protective clothing and footwear. Construction workers have to wear helmets and safety harnesses. Workers dealing with dangerous chemicals wear HAZMAT suits and masks. But for some reason, everyone thinks its OK to subject food service industry workers to unsafe work environments.
"No one's forcing them to work there," the critics say. But the people who work in these types of jobs don't have many other options. We're talking about low-income, largely unskilled workers just trying to make ends meet. In our culture and society, it's not up to the workers to pick "safe" jobs; it's the responsibility of the employers to make every job "safe." Besides, the same selfish argument could easily be applied to sexual harassment laws. After all, if you're offended by the occassional tush-slap, and being referred to as "Babe," then perhaps you should just get another job, no? Actually, no. We as a society have spoken and decided that nobody has to put up with that kind of treatment at a place of employment.
And it's high time we decide that the workers don't have to put up with airborne carcinogens, either. Fortunately, I live in a progressive region which has already passed such laws (Ontario, Canada). Smoking is banned here in all public indoor places, including bars and restaurants. And I hope this spreads everywhere, like the cancerous smoke billowing out of the leathery, selfish smokers that oppose safety for all workers.
Tyrany of the moronic majority! If only we could beg (oh, I mean raise) the IQ of the masses!
OK, I'm confused. Let me get this straight. Redefining "hacker" to mean "someone who toys around creatively with software" instead of the virtually universally accepted definition of "a programmer who breaks into computer systems" is OK, but redefining "begs the question" to mean "raises the question" is bad?
Exactly who gets to decide what is and isn't OK to redefine? The geeks? And what criteria goes into the decision? Or is it just whatever we happen to feel like today?
I still haven't had a Canadian beer that can compare to Sam Adams, Saranac, Fat Tire or most microbrews.
Try Alexander Keith's. If you're near Vancouver, BC, slip across the border and give Granville Island a try (excellent microbrewery).
You have no idea how scared I am of those filthy Canadians sneaking across the border to take advantage of our healthcare system and steal all our good beer.
... holy crap, I can't believe I'm even bothering trying to type this out. Just try some Canadian beer and compare. You'll never go back. There's no comparison.
Mmph!! (spits beer all over keyboard) Since when has the US had "good beer?" Are you talking about Budwater? Ever been out drinking with Canadians? The standard jab when you catch someone drinking a Coors Light is, "Ah, you must be the designated driver tonight, eh?"
Canadian beer is so much better than US beer that
wow, you talk big from someone who programmed a text scroller.
Thanks for the plug! You're right, I did in fact author a very popular text scrolling applet almost a decade ago. In fact, I've written all kinds of applications, both big and small. How exactly is that supposed to be a bad thing?
and it looks like your photoshop skills are at about the same level as your programming skills.
Thanks again! Considering that I'm an accomplished programmer, I'll take that as a compliment. The vast majority of my Photoshop work, however, goes unnoticed. One of my hobbies is photography (you left out that link: my photography gallery), and I edit virtually all of my photos in Photoshop. It's usually just minor tweaks, such as re-cropping, rotating slightly to level a horizon, maybe adjusting the levels, saturation, contrast, applying a slight hue adjustment, maybe a mask her or there. Occassionally cloning or healing to remove a zit or freckle. I do very little "pure" Photoshop artwork, such as the example on the page you linked to, or of course, the graphics of my website itself.
But then again, you're an Anonymous Coward, so I don't know why I'm wasting my time with you.
and thats the attitude that leads us to having a future windows version that wants a 3D card for basic desktop operations, and eat 15GiB of storage space...
Hardware is advancing whether we ask it to or not. So why not take advantage of the better hardware by adding language features that make the programmer's job easier? Automatic garbage collection, cross-platform intermediate bytecode, and some runtime interpretation. If it makes the programmer's job easier, then it will result in fewer bugs, and more robust software. Why not do it?
Do you think we should all still be writing C++ to-the-metal in Visual Studio 6.0 on Windows 98? And just relishing how incredibly quickly our programs run (and occassionally crash) on the otherwise ridiculously unnecessary CPUs and RAM in modern machines?