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Winner of NASA Glove Contest Named
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat May 05, 2007 10:12 AM
from the fits-like-one dept.
from the fits-like-one dept.
eZtaR writes "The winner of NASA's $200k spacesuit glove contest has been found. He's an unemployed aerospace engineer, named Peter Homer, and claims to have bought most of the materials in local shops and on eBay."
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Internal Nasa flamewar (Score:5, Funny)
This guy should have called his the emacs glove, it would have 7 hands a kitchen sink and be able to host multiple lifeforms.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And come to think of it, the average kitchen gloves *do* host multiple lifeforms.
Does any one else ... (Score:5, Insightful)
In all seriousness, I'm sure he'll end up with a good job out of this, which should be worth more to him and his family in the long run then the $200k prize.
Re:Does any one else ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Does any one else ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Age Discrimination? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And of course the massive (and steady) shrinkage of the aerospace industry over the past 10-15 years has nothing to do with it? TFA implies that he hasn't been an aerospace engineer in quite a while - in fact the job he's currently unemployed from is 'director of a community service organization', not 'aerospace engineer'. This cached page [72.14.253.104] from Google suggests he
Radio Shack (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it stifles innovation not to have places like that around. We went in there as kids and bought all kinds of stuff to build all kinds of stuff. I recall at one point we tried to attach a guidance system to our toy rockets. Now, this had immense practical ramifications since our ultimate purpose was to terrify Old Lady Mortinson's giant hound. Yes, I know, this wasn't horribly well thought out, but what I can say - we were nine. She had this huge beast that lounged about on her front porch until it spotted children. This thing's back was nearly as tall as we were. He had, in our opinion, the largest teeth ever seen on a dog, complete with world-class doggy breath and strings of drool. This wouldn't have been so bad except she lived across the street from the school.
We'd get out of school and have to wait for someone to pick us up. The hound would see all of us gathering and bestir himself. His first act was always to start baying. All this did was drive us to huddle together like a human bait ball. Well, the huge beast would gallop across the street and plow in to us. He'd have a lovely time chasing everyone around, tongue out, and huge paws throwing mud. We'd get in trouble for getting our school clothes dirty and we were convinced that the beast was out to eat one of us.
Anyway, we starting trying to come up with ways to defeat the beast. Since we knew we'd get in trouble for hurting it, that pretty much ruled out BB guns, pellet guns, and 22's that most of us already had (hey, we were country kids). That meant we had to be more creative. We'd go to the Radio Shack and spend hours pouring through the catalog and the shelves trying to come up with something to chase the beast off. We learned more about design from that ridiculous dog. Now, with no where to go, how are kids supposed to do that? Don't tell me that they can do it on line. It's not the same as holding the part in your hand to see how much it weighs or being able to really get a sense of it's size. These are abstract concepts that come hard to a nine year old kid.
2 cents,
Queen B.
Parent
But will NASA's new spacecraft.... (Score:5, Funny)
This might be bad... (Score:4, Funny)
Think they'll buy my old pokemon cards?
Re:This might be bad... (Score:4, Interesting)
The NY Times had an article on this a few years ago: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A
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Spacewalk is hard on the... hands? (Score:5, Informative)
Spacewalks are hard on astronauts' hands
I know there is more to the sentence, but this clause made me chuckle. "Heh - they're doing it wrong."
I need more coffee...
PS Here is the link to the printer-friendly version, i.e. the article on one page [discovery.com].
I gotta call this guy (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Upon viewing (Score:4, Funny)
I thnik the contests need to be (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to recognize that individual accomplishment is still something to crow about. When schools turn to removing achievment rewards for fear of offending those who don't achieve to removing grades for the same reason we teach kids the wrong lesson. The winner of this competition was not only trying to help NASA but provide his child a valuable lesson. This is the type of stuff that needs to taught to kids in school today. Show them that one person can do what many cannot do, then explain to them the need for both individual and groups for accomplishing goals.
Many great advancements are the work of a single person, someone who thinks "outside the box". We have to remember that the village is made up of individuals and they are as important as the village.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in the UK, the Royal Society of Chemistry ran a maths challenge to highlight the fact that Chinese teenagers were required to solve a university entrance paper containing harder questions than those used to bring the maths skills of first-year British undergraduates up to scratch. I won the competition, and tried to get the message across to the press that we needed to
well, obviously! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
wait! (Score:2)
Link With Pictures (Score:5, Informative)
Both happy and sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this guy might quite literally be a rocket scientist who ended up selling computers, then a community services manager, and then became unemployed. If America wants to be the forefront of technology, America needs to ask why does a guy have to buy something at EBay to build the next generation of technology?
Maybe America needs a few more role model "Homers".... instead of some Paris Hilton's who happens to be going to jail for 45 days or ended up shaving their head out of whim!
Re:Both happy and sad... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Heh (Score:4, Funny)
Is there any other kind?
*ducks*
(I get to say that, a good friend of mine is an unemployed aerospace engineer
Re:You know all those Sci-Fi books you've been rea (Score:5, Interesting)
However, one of these days I have a dream of someday actually doing some of the engineering that I spent six years learning about.
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