Astronauts Having Trouble With Tranquility Module 300
Coldeagle writes "Astronauts ran into trouble while trying to connect up the new Tranquility module onto the ISS. A critical insulating cover didn't fit quite right: 'The fabric, multilayered cover is supposed to go between Tranquility and its observation deck, but the metal bars are not locking down properly because of interference from a hand rail or some other structure at the hatch.' One has to wonder if this is another imperial/metric snafu."
Metric Everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Atleast in scientific application there is no reason to use Imperial. Metric makes all calculations simpler, and is accepted by a much larger portion of the world, and should be the standard in all science.
Re:Metric Everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I have basically no concept in my mind of how far a "kilometer" is. Oh, I know it's
Re:Metric Everywhere (Score:4, Funny)
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Not to mention movies like "the Green Kilometer" - doesn't have the same ring to it.
I can see my ipod now, "Aerosmith" "Toys in the Attic" "Big 25.4 Centimeter Record"
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I prefer 0.33814023 fluid ounces [wikipedia.org].
Re:Metric Everywhere (Score:5, Funny)
*ahem*
"The Green 1.6 Kilometres"
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"The Green 1.6 Kilometres"
You might laugh at this, but this is part of what made the metric system fail in the US. Instead of putting new signs at point like 10Km from a destination they would put a metric sign at the same location as the imperial sign. So a lot of signs had "16.09 Kilometers to destination". This led people to believe that metric is complicated with the obvious result.
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The Green Klick (Click?)
Re:Metric Everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, we changed our currency in a couple of years. I know it's not the same, but it hardly caused any major issues. And the Spanish didn't have a nice conversion: an Euro is 166.386 Pesetas. Doing conversions in your head was troublesome!
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Americans are just mental wimps (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest the world has to deal with english, American technical terms, corporations, IP laws, military bases, a hysterical anti-terror crusade and occasionally our messed up measurement system. Yet Americans can't handle having to transition to metric because it would be too hard and too difficult. The greatest generation could have done it, but not the current ones - its beyond their abilities.
Legacy parts? live with it. Eventually, they stop being produced anyhow. It can take decades to move hardware but a ton of stuff can be moved quickly.
Bunch of wimps. I know, I live here.
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We (the Spanish) didn't have a truly terrible time with it, because 6 Euro happened to be damn near 1000 Pesetas (it's actually €6.01, but no one cares), so we were saved by the inverse relationship. That was the reference point that everyone used during the transition, and in fact most people still think of large amounts of money in terms of millions of pesetas. This is why you'll often hear people calling €6000 "un kilo" (1 million pesetas used to be called a "kilo" - no, it doesn't make sense).
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It was tried 30 years ago [wikipedia.org] and some small-scale attempts are still in progress. The problem is that it's all small-scale so it won't really make inroads.
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I'd be fine if we picked one or the other and stuck with it. My biggest problems are the interactions between the two systems.
The other day, I couldn't get the damned oil pan drain plug out of my Chrysler car. Why? It's a Chrysler car, build in the Americas (well, Mexico, close enough), but the damned drain plug is a *metric* size. (Size 13... 13mm? I guess?)
I had to borrow a wrench for it... in a million years, I'd never guess Chrysler would use a metric size. (In retrospect, I'm guessing they standardized
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I've been around Ford and Chevrolet vehicles for the past... oh, as long as I've been driving. As long as I've been changing my oil, they've always used metric (14mm to 16mm, depending on vehicle).
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One could make an argument on a base twelve measure system...but then everyone would need to learn a new set of multiplication tables.
Still...it would have advantages. But you'll never convince everyone to change the way they count. You'd need to have started back in Babylon, and convince them that base 60 was too complicated to catch one.
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In the U.S., where the pint is a little smaller than in the UK, a pint is basically half a liter. The only time we ever mention liters, though, is when buying soft drinks, like Coke or 7-Up (which all come in two-liter bottles). Seriously -- I can't think of any other product that we'd buy in liters. We'd say quarts (and then two quarts is a half-gallon, etc...)
Re:Metric Everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh well, re-adjusting your intuition to new units of measure isn't nearly as hard as it seems at first, before you actually have to do it. I say this as an european, who not that long ago switched from a national currency to an european one. Back then, many people were scared of the very same thing, but it really didn't take long for people to adapt. I guess it would be pretty much the same for any physical unit relevant for people's everyday lives.
Re:Metric Everywhere (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. I'm an American, but I'm familiar with SI units. If I tell a friend that something is about two meters long, he's surprised, but he understands what I mean. That goes for everyone. Even in the US, people intuitively grasp how much a liter is, how heavy a kilogram is, and how long a kilometer is. We seem to have more trouble with temperature and speed though. I'm still a little taken aback when I drive into Canada and see speed limits far higher than what I'm used to.
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I've seen signs posted using metric dimensions (mainly boats, expressing lengths in meters) and somebody would scribble on the sign "This is America, we use feet here." Probably the same stubborn type that blames anything and everything on those "damned commie liberal pieces of shit."
Some argue that Imperial units work better, since things desig
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Even in the US, people intuitively grasp how much a liter is, how heavy a kilogram is, and how long a kilometer is.
I don't, except for the liter since that's how soda is sold. I guess that weighs about a kg, but that doesn't help much. There may be athletic events measured in meters, but that also doesn't help with my intuition!
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It's mainly educated people. There is a large percentage of our populous that wants creationism in schools and thinks that telling teens to abstain works.
When visiting other countries switching over to metric for time and distance takes all of a week to get into my head. It helps that all those countries are in Metric. So when I want to go from Delhi to Agra. I know it's X km and trains travel about X km/hr, so it'll take X hrs.
It's like Americans that point at manual transmissions and claim that takes too
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How are those ten day weeks working out for you, anyway? :-D
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Are you sure this switch hasn't happened yet? All those obesity problems sure make it look like it did. ;)
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Well, if I wanted a pound, I think I'd order 0.5 kg rather than 2 kg. Why buy four and a half pounds of meat when you need one?
Oddly enough, I've never had any problem dealing with either SI or Imperial. Contrary to rumour, there's no real ease of use difference - it's not like we do our math with sliderules anymore, and my calculator can divide by 12 (or 5280 or whatever) as easily as it can by 10.
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Actually, 1 pound = aprox. 0.45 kg.
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When visiting other countries switching over to metric for time and distance takes all of a week to get into my head.
No countries use metric time.
Grocery store patrons would take all of a week to need to order 2kg instead of 1lb.
And get four times as much as they wanted?
While I get the point of your post, you're not really demonstrating a good fundamental knowledge of metric here. :)
Re:Metric Everywhere (Viva Base 12) (Score:2)
One thing that Imperial units have going for them is that they better divide by 3 and 4. 12 and arguably 60 make a "nicer" unit base mathematically. Ten is merely a happenstanc
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One thing that Imperial units have going for them is that they better divide by 3 and 4. 12 and arguably 60 make a "nicer" unit base mathematically. Ten is merely a happenstance of tetrapod evolution. A "smart" god would have given us 12 digits instead of 10.
By that argument a power of two should surely be best, but I expect that fourteen fingered aliens would favor base fourteen anyway.
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Ah sure it's childsplay to switch over.
Just gradually use km on new road signs. Sure it's no big deal if people get a bit confused as to whether the distances are miles or kilometres. Then 20 years later you can finally change the speed limits to km/h overnight. Admittedly this is a bit of a more major cost/manoeuvre, but sure by now people will just want an end to it all, and most people would agree a mix of km/h and mph speed limits is not good.
I kid you not, this is pretty much what happened here in Irel
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Honestly? I've been living on metric for as long as I can remember and I have no concept of a "kilometer" either. Why? Because it's just "a few minutes of walking" or "a few seconds of driving". 1 or 1.6 kilometers isn't a big difference there.
What I have trouble with when I'm in the US is mostly with more "handy" values. I know a can here is 0.33 or 0.5 liters. A bottle is 1, 1.5 or 2 liters. And, curiously, the cans and bottles have the same size in the US. So picking one up isn't so much of a problem. Th
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An entire country of people who don't have an intuitive sense of the units they're using would be chaos.
Quick, time travel back to Canada circa 1973 and warn them of impending doom!
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When I picked up a camper van in Auckland and started driving around New Zealand (and once I'd gotten over my initial terror at driving on the wrong side of the road) I found it was really easy to adapt. I made a game of it for an hour or so, trying to pick an object in the distance when I thought it was 1 km away and watching the odometer to see how close I was.
The only time it nearly caused a problem was one evening when I came to a turn that was marked <<<< 45 <<<< and I instinct
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We took the big bang approach in Australia for most things in the early 1970s. Speed limits changed overnight. Signs changed over a couple of weeks before the change. People who claimed they couldn't cope were pretty much told to STFU. I have a friend who went to a private school which stuck it out teaching imperial units as long as they could do it legally and he had a lot of trouble later at college when people wouldn't understand what he was talking about when he talked about inches, feet, etc.
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And even many of these metric parts have fun values like "2.54 mm" as standards
Thats not a metric part, thats a 0.100 inch pin spacing expressed metrically.
Thats like reporting the length of the space shuttle in cubits, then using that number to describe it as a "biblical" spacecraft, since it was reported in cubits.
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"That's exactly my point. Even the most popular standard "metric" parts in design use today are really Imperial."
And that surely has nothing to do with the fact that USA goes Imperial.
Change USA to metric and you'll see what happens with all those 25.4mm components.
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Bad example. Pin spacing in multiples of 1/10th of an inch was the standard for through-hole electronics components, but with the switch to surface mount everything is being switched over to mm. The first and largest surface mount packages (SOIC, PLCC, etc) used 1/200 in spacing, but pretty much everything smaller is using fractions of a mm. And connectors smaller than your standard humongous (these days) pin headers are also done in mm: flat flexible cables, tighter pitch connectors (e.g. the pin headers o
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That should be 1/20 in spacing, not 1/200.
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There's absolutely no reason to think this has anything do do with units conversion, that's just a silly strawman.
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Do Italians even use Imperial units? The Tranquility module and the cupola were both designed and built through the Italians and the European Space Agency. I seriously doubt conversion had anything to do with it. I'm sick of people making such dumb statements as the submitter did without checking simple facts beforehand.
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Actually, Aircraft , and for that matter, almost all machine shop work is done in decimal inches (of course except for fastener sizes, which are their own odd 'wire gage' sizes, but are not really added/subtracted), and measurements are usually NOT reduced to feet and inches, so you'll see things like 78.50 inches (and yes, the significant figures matter for tolerances, so 78 1/2 - which yes is sometimes used in old drawings is different than 78.5, 78.50 and 78.500)
So, yes, metric IS easier, but the inch sy
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He means that metric makes prefix-changing calculations easier, even though no one ever does those outside of middle school science classes. And he's assuming that you'll ignore the fact the most real-world calculations involve a coefficient that isn't a multiple of 10 because the physical world is not dictated by our measurement system, even when using SI units -- is 6.67300 × 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 somehow easier to use than 1.06891206 × 10^-9 feet^3 pounds-force^-1 s^-2?
Used by a large portion o
Re:Metric Everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
He means that metric makes prefix-changing calculations easier, even though no one ever does those outside of middle school science classes. And he's assuming that you'll ignore the fact the most real-world calculations involve a coefficient that isn't a multiple of 10 because the physical world is not dictated by our measurement system, even when using SI units -- is 6.67300 × 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 somehow easier to use than 1.06891206 × 10^-9 feet^3 pounds-force^-1 s^-2?
Prefix changing calculations are used a lot even outside middle school. If you have measurements in smaller units (mL, cups) and need to convert them to larger units (m^3, ft^3) because you have some table which only lists the larger units (for example a table of volume densities of various materials), then you need to do more complex calculations in the imperial system.
1mL=1e-6 m^3
1cup = 0.00835503472 ft^3
and here is when you get the extra complexity.
that's the point. While the coefficients that were observed in the real world rarely match our units evenly, with metric system at least the units themselves are a power of 10 of larger and smaller units.
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Yes, metric is easier to convert between different types of units (cups to ft^3, as in your example), and often different units within a single measure (inches to miles). This is why it's the customary measurement for scientific purposes.
However, in daily life, it's rare for any extremely difficult conversion to come up. Cooking is an example where it may prove difficult, but when I started cooking as a child I memorized "3 tsp to a tbsp, 4 tbsp to 1/4 cup," and "8 fl oz to a cup, 2 cups to a pint, two pint
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I find it kind of bizarre that in a discussion about the origins of and standard usage of units, you used a non-standard unit for fuel-economy. Well, sort of. Generally, fuel-economies less than 1 mpg aren't reported in mpg, but instead in gallons/mile, which would make 40 rod/hogshead = 504 gallons/mile. Holy shit would that be bad.
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Of course there's also an enormous cost in switching between systems, and little direct benefit to anyone who was happy with the old system, which is why no one does it.
This sentence is correct if by "nobody" you mean "everyone on Earth at some point in history except for Americans." It's not like everyone in the world outside the US has been on metrics since time immemorial; they all managed to make the switchover at some point.
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And yes, it makes math easier, if you have numbers of different units... a mile + 3 foots is harder to do than a kilometer + 3 meters.
Don't these people carry toolboxes? (Score:2)
Didn't they learn anything from the apollo missions?
duck tape (Score:2, Funny)
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Um, no one doesn't (Score:4, Insightful)
One has to wonder if this is another imperial/metric snafu.
Uh, why? Yes, NASA made that mistake once, ten+ years ago. Aren't there plenty of other mistake categories that are just as if not more likely?
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Yeah, this sounds much more like an issue of not thinking through interferences and tolerances well enough. Those problems tend to be hard to find in a computer model, since its all perfectly precise in those cases.
Of course it could also just be that something else was attached improperly and causes everything else to be messed up. There are a huge number of issues that this could be, and I think maybe the poster just has an axe to grind with Imperial units.
Re:Um, no one doesn't (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately you are about 50 years too late. In the aerospace industry, virtually ALL the data about most components is already "stored" in conventional units, no Metric. Forcing it to all be converted to Metric just creates the problem you are trying to solve.
BTW, the MRO incident may have *started* with a units conversion error, but the real flaw was with the lack of due dilligence. The trajectory was diverging for months, and the problem could have been detected and solved easily if the normal checks and balances were applied.
Brett
Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct about Hubble. Mars Climate Orbiter however (Score:2)
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One solution is to use only metric.
The other solution is to use only imperial.
I blame the rest of the world for trying to force their system of measurement upon us.
Re:Correct about Hubble. Mars Climate Orbiter howe (Score:2)
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I also heard that they skipped an integrated (final) test to save money, relying on unit tests instead (like the paint scratch story you give). As we in the software biz know, unit tests are not a true replacement for the real thing. Unit tests merely reduce the problems in the final contraption, not prevent them.
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True but then NASA pretty much invented formal interface definitions, and as a result integration tests of hardware go much smoother than might be expected. And it is only hardware anyway. Its a bit like what my wife does as an architect. She specifies this type of wall and this type of fitting and expects them to work on site.
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Who said anything about Hubble?
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It's probably the most famous example of a misconstructed space module, and ordinarily one might have to wonder if it was an imperial/metric snafu.
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Uh, it's not in the article and it's not in the summary, and Hubble's flaw had nothing to do with imperial/metric. That was a reference to Mars Climate Orbiter.
So, in short, fail.
I love the use of passive voice, instead of saying "I'm the one idiot who thinks the Hubble has anything to do with this story" you can say "one might have to wonder."
Mock ups (Score:2)
Don't they have mock ups on the ground and quality control for these issues?
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Re:Mock ups (Score:4, Funny)
Step 1: Land ISS.
Step 2: Test Fit
Step 3: Spend 20 years and billions of dollars reorbiting ISS.
Not an issue (Score:5, Informative)
One has to wonder if this is another imperial/metric snafu.
Probably not. From the article:
The $27 million, Italian-built observation deck sports the biggest window ever flown in space. In all, there are seven windows that will offer 360-degree views.
The 11 astronauts aboard the shuttle-station complex opened the door Friday to the $380 million Tranquility, also made in Italy for the European Space Agency. The door leading from Tranquility into the observation deck was opened soon afterward, and that's when shuttle pilot Terry Virts and Kay Hire encountered the cover problem.
So, now even submitters aren't reading the article? Damn...
Problem fixed as of Sunday (Score:5, Informative)
The problem has been fixed, it was interference by some bolts.
"Late Saturday, the space station's commander, Jeffrey Williams, reported that bolts seemed to be causing the interference. He removed all eight bolts, saying the clearance would be tight but that the cover likely would fit. It did, with some coaxing Sunday."
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100214/D9DS3UOO1.html [excite.com]
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"...bolts seemed to be causing the interference. [b]He removed all eight bolts[/b], saying the clearance would be tight but that the cover likely would fit. It did, with some coaxing Sunday."
...And in other news, the International Space Station exploded and fell apart for some [i]unknown reason[/i] today.
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The article doesn't say if the eight bolts were reinstalled or if the bolts are necessary. I doubt that there would just be a bunch of unnecessary bolts on the International Space Station, and yet...
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Better coverage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's another mystery. Why does the headline link to a story at USATODAY.COM ?
You wanna know whats up with some peculiar internet routing? OK, we get quotes from the guys with hands on the SSH session keyboards right off the NANOG mailing list.
You wanna talk about apple stuff, Woz himself posts here, although all he talks about is his Prius accelerating.
You wanna talk about amateur space exploration, John Carmack himself posts here about his peroxide motors.
You wanna talk about star trek, you get CleverNickName posting, although not since October.
I figure Don Knuth, linus, and RMS probably post here too, although AC.
Here is a very interesting spacecraft story, and we get a hyperlink to USA-freaking-today.com. USA-freaking-today.
Slashdotters you should be ashamed of yourself for slashdot linking to USA-freaking-today, I know theres a genuine NASA console jockey out there whom can post the real goods, AC at least...
This is already a solved problem (Score:5, Informative)
Even if this gets modded up to +5, it's going to be buried under a dozen pointless and irrelevant posts about imperial vs. metric ...
From the ISS Flight Director briefing on NASA TV at 1:30pm today:
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5693:sts-130-iss-flight-director-update-fd-7-8&catid=1:latest [eu.org]
[transcribing] "Crew was able to use their eyes and hands and gave good info on interference along with photos, Jeff has had a lot of hands on the hardware and he's given us the best info. His info allowed us to validate what he's seeing with our records on the ground. Actual interference is just a bolthead, that caused us to question our clearance analysis. We went back and looked at it since we don't want clearance issue when we install Cupola on nadir, and found that we have more clearance than originally expected."
From the Flight Day 8 "execute package" sent up around 3pm to the Endeavour astronauts:
( http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/426345main_FD08.pdf [nasa.gov] )
"Because of your excellent work in checking interferences, we are now comfortable with
proceeding with cupola depress and relocate today!!! Thanks so much!!!"
From the NASA TV schedule, Tuesday:
CUPOLA MLI REMOVAL 10:39 PM EST / 03:39 UTC
After that the windows can be opened, which is what we're all waiting for!
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More problems for NASA (Score:2)
Cliche mushup (Score:2, Interesting)
"Houston, this is Tranquility Base here, we have a problem."
Actually, when Apollo 11 landed and announced, "Houston, this is Tranquility Base, the Eagle has landed", mission managers were initially confused because they'd never heard the phrase "Tranquility Base" in training. Neal threw that in as a surprise. That teaser, Neal.
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They should have aborted. He wouldn't think it was so funny after that.
Only the crew had access to the abort button and I doubt any of the crews would have used it if they had a small chance of making a landing. There is some discussion in the ALSJ of what would have happened if the radar altimeter had failed to lock after high gate, preventing automatic throttle control during powered descent. Generally, engineers felt that a landing would be impossible and pilots felt that it was worth a go.
And the engineers are probably right. Pilots tended to fly too high, and too slow whi
Inside Scoop (Score:5, Informative)
I work for Boeing (the main contractors for the ISS) and the problem is that the cover will not retract over one of the CBM (common berthing mechanisms) where they wish to install the Cupola. It is actually no impact to Tranquility which is working wonderfully so far. This issue has at this time already been resolved and the Cupola is being relocated to this area, while PMA-3 (Pressurized Mating Adapter #3) is being relocated to where the Cupola used to be. This was done so that the Cupola could face the earth and create all those fantastic views everybody envisioned from the ISS, while being able to be launched in the shuttle payload bay.
Anyone else think this is 41 years late (Score:2)
Did anyone else glance at the headline and think they were talking about the Apollo mission, then feel a fool when they read the story properly? ;-)
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> then feel a fool when they read the story properly?
On Slashdot, nobody reads the story properly....
Funny how the goofes make the news (Score:2)
--- Space Craft [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
Take MY space module, will you?!? (Score:2)
"Take that NASA!"
Stephen Colbert's revenge!
Re:In before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Another preemptive strike: for anyone planning to say Fahrenheit is better because you can think of it as "percentage of warm", I call b/s:
Re:In before... (Score:4, Informative)
Any thermodynamics guy will tell you that "twice the boiling temperature of water" is 473.15 C.
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You can't multiply a C or F value - it makes no sense as they use an arbitrary zero. 746K or 473C are correct.
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The main "selling point" is really the number of other folks using one or the other.
That might be a good way to sell it to the public, but it is not the main benefit of a system. People should understand that a "degree" really does have meaning.
In America, every household appliance seems to use a different unit. My water heater is in BTUs, my electronic devices are in watts, and my air conditioner has na EER which is something stupid like BTUs per Watt - a horrible combination of systems. Even within one fieldd - say, cooking - they use different units. My microwave is in watts while m
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Metric is better than Fahrenheit, and USA should get on with the times. But Fahrenheit is more accurate. But Celsius can be just as accurate, if you take decimals into the play.
I'm just waiting for everyone to realize the true superiority of Rankine. You don't have to settle! Want for something more: Rankine.
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I prefer my Kelvin inverse scale.
300' = hottest day on Earth
320' = average Las Vegas summer day
350' = average temperature on Earth
375' = average Toronto winter
400' = very cold
450' = normal day in Antarctica
500' = very cold day in Antarctica
540' = coldest day on Earth
1000' = what we'll be seeing when we colonize Jupiter
It actually makes quite a bit of sense.
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Sure, almost every country on Earth has done it.
But the US government seems to struggle to change even trivial things. As an example look at their coinage.
Last I saw, they still had pennies in circulation, which everyone hates, and the biggest common coin was 25c, which buys just about nothing.
After decades of inflation, every other developed nation has removed the smallest denominations from circulation, and introduced larger ones.
How is the US, an otherwise capable bunch, unable to do this?
Vending machin
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...because the rest of us have ten fingers and count things in base 10.
Re:Screwup, but not an units problem... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because, ironically, the inch now is DEFINED as being 25.4 millimetres, so a clean and exact conversion is no problem since the inch is already based on metric units. Saying "one inch" is just another way of saying "25.4 millimetres". Other units are less clean and exact.