Beagle ... alas

In article ,
says...
Henry Spencer wrote:
The software business has a name for this: "Second System Effect". Same
principle.
(the SR-71 itself incorporating many hard-learned lessons from the
failed CL-400 "Suntan" project),

Consider the U-2 as the first system ("system" == Skunk Works spy plane
sophisticated enough to overfly the USSR). CL-400 would then be the
second system, and it shows the hubris common in the second system
effect. The Blackbird would then be the third system, showing a bit of
humility.


In the same way, the Space Shuttle would probably have been quite
differently if we had it to do all over again after years of experience
with he one we have,

North American's first manned spaceship was the Apollo CSM. Their second
was the Shuttle. The early Shuttle goals of being the one and only
universal, cheap, reusable spacecraft shows the the hubris of the second
system effect.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins

Scott Hedrick wrote:

Could this be a three-way switch, which allows more than one switch to
control a light? Or did some moron wire them in series?

Well, I can tell you what it did, and maybe you can figure it out from
there; the switches were at the top and bottom of the
upstairs/downstairs staircase- I think the intention was that you could
flip either switch to cause the upstairs' hallway light to go from its
present status (on/off) to the opposite status...but sometimes flipping
one would have no effect whatsoever on the light- and it could be either
one- it was apparent that there was sort of "voting" going on between
the two switches in regards to the status of the light; in at least one
case there was a noticeable delay between flipping the lower switch and
the light going off upstairs...which was kinda spooky in regards to
where exactly the electrical power was going. The thing seemed dependent
on whether the upstairs and downstairs switches were in either the
raised or lowered position- there were four possible conditions: both
up; both down; downstairs down/upstairs up: or the reverse. And this
meant that any attempt to change the light's status seemed to have a
50/50 chance of working via either of the switches being used alone.
Turning off the light at bedtime was a two-person job (there is a joke
in there somewhere) with my mother at the lower switch, and myself or my
siblings at the upper one, with one or both switches being thrown as needed.
Oddly enough, my present apartment has the same problem with it's two
switches to the living room power outlet that controls the main
lights...with both up, the lights are on; I can shut them off by turning
either of the switches to the down position- this sounds like you
said...that they are wired in series.
Whatever was going on at the house seemed more involved than this; as
there were times when the light could not be turned _off_ when either of
the switches was thrown on its own.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

Whatever was going on at the house seemed more involved than this; as
there were times when the light could not be turned off when either of
the switches was thrown on its own.

Did you ever consult a priest in consideration of the required exorcism?

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Remove invalid nonsense for email.

Kevin Willoughby wrote:

Consider the U-2 as the first system ("system" == Skunk Works spy plane
sophisticated enough to overfly the USSR). CL-400 would then be the
second system, and it shows the hubris common in the second system
effect. The Blackbird would then be the third system, showing a bit of
humility.


The U-2 was a highly modified F-104 Starfighter at heart. There wasn't
any commonality of mission except that both the U-2 and CL-400 were
designed to overfly the same place at high altitude; U-2 was subsonic
and the only even marginally radical technology that it incorporated
were its engine which had a redesigned compressor stage for high
altitude operation and it high-altitude fuel- which was basically "Flit"
big repellent; both the CL-400 and the Blackbird incorporated
breakthrough technologies in regards to structure and propulsion (and
even fuel in regards to the LH2 driven Suntan), and were designed to
posses performance well beyond the state of the art of then-current
aircraft (sustained long-range Mach 2+ flight at over 80,000 feet- only
the canceled F-108 Rapier and soon-to-be canceled B-70 Valkyrie were
getting into that area of design performance at the time).



In the same way, the Space Shuttle would probably have been quite
differently if we had it to do all over again after years of experience
with he one we have,



North American's first manned spaceship was the Apollo CSM. Their second
was the Shuttle. The early Shuttle goals of being the one and only
universal, cheap, reusable spacecraft shows the the hubris of the second
system effect.


Don't forget North American's _other_ spaceship- the X-15- that preceded
Apollo; and the learning curve for Apollo was very steep, particularly
given the fact that manned ballistic capsules had been built before in
the Mercury and Gemini programs; Apollo went through a redesign after
the fire, showing the "if you had the chance to do it all over again"
effect to some extent.
That being said, the Shuttle was a _very_ large step to take up from
Apollo in all regards- and did indeed show a large degree of hubris in
its conception and construction. Trying to build it the way we did was
like trying to go straight from the DC-3 to the 747 in one leap. I'll
bet there would have been some major changes to the Orbiter TPS if we
had 20 or so Dyna-Soar flights under our belt before starting to design it.

Pat

Pat Flannery writes:

Scott Hedrick wrote:

Could this be a three-way switch, which allows more than one switch to
control a light? Or did some moron wire them in series?

Well, I can tell you what it did, and maybe you can figure it out from there;
the switches were at the top and bottom of the upstairs/downstairs staircase- I
think the intention was that you could flip either switch to cause the
upstairs' hallway light to go from its present status (on/off) to the opposite
status...but sometimes flipping one would have no effect whatsoever on the
light- and it could be either one-

Sounds like wired in PARALLEL, not series.

Pat Flannery writes:

[...]

The U-2 was a highly modified F-104 Starfighter at heart.

Could you elaborate on this? The two aircraft seem almost nothing alike
to me. The F-104 couldn't glide to save its pilot's life, while the U-2
was basically a powered glider.

Greg, ol' chap, the losers might whine about cheating, but all you did was
interpret the rules creatively.

I went to a programming contest many years ago. One problem was certain
tricks with Compaq basic...

One of the problems involved creating a program to enter ten numbers, then
sort them in ascending, descending, and random order. Thanks to Compaq
basic, my group could never get the random part to work right. The winners
did something that some might consider cheating, but I think rather
brilliantly fulfilled the requirements. They figured the judges wouldn't
test the program more than 4 times. They programmed four DATA lines with
random numbers. From the judge's point of view (and they only tested it
three times), the numbers *were* random.

That night, I asked them how they overcame something that the 21 other teams
couldn't solve. When I learned what they did, I laughed so hard I almost got
tossed from the hotel.
--
If you have had problems with Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC),
please contact shredder at bellsouth dot net. There may be a class-action
lawsuit
in the works.

Pat, it sounds like you have old, gummy three-way switches. It requires 4
wires, white (neutral), black (hot), red (swings either way) and bare
(ground).

Old switches (especially with Bakelite) can get gummy and slow down the
internal workings, depending on how warm they get.
--
If you have had problems with Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC),
please contact shredder at bellsouth dot net. There may be a class-action
lawsuit
in the works.

Pat Flannery wrote:

Don't forget North American's _other_ spaceship- the X-15- that preceded
Apollo; and the learning curve for Apollo was very steep, particularly
given the fact that manned ballistic capsules had been built before in
the Mercury and Gemini programs; Apollo went through a redesign after
the fire, showing the "if you had the chance to do it all over again"
effect to some extent.

Part of the problem is that Apollo was being designed at the same time
Gemini was. It's a sibling, not a sucessor.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

Herb Schaltegger wrote:

Did you ever consult a priest in consideration of the required exorcism?

The only thing I can make of it is that the wiring between the two
switches was very screwed up; sometimes throwing the downstairs one
would cause the upstairs light to momentarily dim before it resumed its
usual brightness...to me it seemed that the electric current was seeking
a new path to the light that took it a bit to find.
The house had one other oddity about it...everything ferrous in it would
get magnetized to a greater or lesser degree over time- all the tools
(not just screwdrivers, but everything from wrenchs to hammers to
rulers) could pick up screws within a year after they were purchased; as
could the knives, forks, and spoons. Any watch that wasn't non-magnetic
would quit within a week or two.
The effect with the utensils is particularly odd when you consider that
they were made out of stainless steel- not a terribly magnetic
substance. I still have some of the old utensils and tools from there, I
just checked one of the knives, and it's lost its magnetism... but the
big wrought-iron C-clamps still have some residual magnetism on them,
though nowhere near as severe as when they were at the house.

Pat "Magneto" Flannery