STS51L Accident Questions

D Schneider wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:

Speaking of which, digital cameras have pretty much replaced
Polaroids to the point where I couldn't even sell my old Spectra
camera, so I tore it apart last night to have a peek at the innards.


Did you take pictures?


Nah, the digcam's batteries are dead.
I was trying to locate a cutaway of it on the web so everyone could see
just how complex it was inside, but no luck.
They've got a version with a transparent top that lets you see the
electronics:
http://www.p3designwork.com/media/po...a_onyx_top.jpg
But the optics of the viewfinder are the really complex part.

Pat

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 12:27:24 -0800, "D Schneider" wrote:

In the US, the "Technician" class has been no-code for around 12 years.
Most HF bands require Tech-Plus (equivalent to old Novice and Technician
exams) for the 5 WPM, and I think they've lowered the WPM for General.
Extra and Advanced classes have unsplit back together, IIRC, and there's
still a high WPM involved, but then you're supposed to show you are
special to get those tickets.

According to http://www.arrl.org/FandES/ead/classes.html#extra, they
don't call it Tech-plus anymore. But a Tech who passes a 5 wpm CW test
has more HF privileges. After that, no more code tests. To upgrade from
General to Extra requires a 50 question multiple-choice exam, for which
the entire question/answer pools are available in advance.

It's become CB radio for those with the slightest amount of reading retention.
Too bad.

Dale

If the S.S.Minnow were shipwrecked today, the Professor wouldn't even know
how to carve sex toys for Ginger from driftwood

Dale wrote:

.... It's become CB radio for those with the slightest amount of
reading retention. Too bad.

Don't forget that licensing procedures for amateur radio operators did
not develop in isolation. They were originally closely based on those
for professional radio operators, especially of the shipboard variety.
In most jurisdictions, the elements of the old-style amateur exam
correspond perfectly with those of the old-style professional exams
including Code, regulations, theory, hand-drawn diagrams, and an
interview with the examiner. (The old-style professional exam included
elements not on the amateur exam, including demonstration of the ability
to perform minor repair and maintenance of shipboard radios and
operation of a lifeboat radio.)

The great fork seems to have occured about thirty years ago when
jurisdictions began to actively look for ways to reduce unnecessary
licensing procedures in all areas in an effort to reduce the burden on
both users and regulatory agencies. This led to their questioning why
licensing procedures for amateur radio operators should be closely based
on those for professional radio operators. The cost of licensing
professional radio operators could be justified by the safety
implications. Not so for radio amateurs.

On that note, the ARRL, in its many and varied publications, does a
great job of conveying the history of amateur radio. It's unfortunate
that it's a slightly distorted view because it rarely if ever seems to
put amateur radio licensing in the context of licensing for other radio
services. Whether this is deliberate or unintentional isn't clear to me.

--
Dave Michelson

Dave Michelson wrote:

The great fork seems to have occured about thirty years ago when
jurisdictions began to actively look for ways to reduce unnecessary
licensing procedures in all areas in an effort to reduce the burden on
both users and regulatory agencies. This led to their questioning why
licensing procedures for amateur radio operators should be closely based
on those for professional radio operators. The cost of licensing
professional radio operators could be justified by the safety
implications. Not so for radio amateurs.

Not at all. Licenses for professional radio operators have been
effectively eliminated. There is no more First Phone, there is not
even a General Radiotelephone Operator's license any longer. Any idiot
can hang up a shingle and call himself a broadcast engineer, and many
do. Anybody can take a job as a shipboard radio operator if they fill
out the Restricted permit and send in their $35.

On that note, the ARRL, in its many and varied publications, does a
great job of conveying the history of amateur radio. It's unfortunate
that it's a slightly distorted view because it rarely if ever seems to
put amateur radio licensing in the context of licensing for other radio
services. Whether this is deliberate or unintentional isn't clear to me.

Amateur Radio is one of the few services left that actually licenses
operators. In other services, station licenses still exist, but operators'
licenses have either disappeared or become a useless formality.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Dave Michelson wrote:

The great fork seems to have occured about thirty years ago when
jurisdictions began to actively look for ways to reduce unnecessary
licensing procedures in all areas in an effort to reduce the
burden on both users and regulatory agencies. This led to their
questioning why licensing procedures for amateur radio operators
should be closely based on those for professional radio operators.
The cost of licensing professional radio operators could be
justified by the safety implications. Not so for radio amateurs.

Not at all. Licenses for professional radio operators have been
effectively eliminated....

Agreed, but my comments referred to the situation thirty years ago when
the linkage between amateur and professional radio operator licensing
procedures effectively ended. (In Canada, the change was quite dramatic.)

The great simplification in licensing procedures for professional radio
operators (maritime service) only occurred in the 1990's when Morse code
was finally retired and there was no longer a legal requirement or
justification for carrying a highly trained operator.

--
Dave Michelson

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:18:45 GMT, Dave Michelson
wrote:

The great fork seems to have occured about thirty years ago when
jurisdictions began to actively look for ways to reduce unnecessary
licensing procedures in all areas in an effort to reduce the burden on
both users and regulatory agencies.

....This got rapidly accellerated when, following some blunders in
attempting to enforce Part 95 on two presidential relatives, President
Ford and that dip**** that replaced him arranged for the decision that
the FCC wasn't authorised to charge fees or levy fines, and then
neutered their budget so that they only had *two* field officers per
state for regulatory issues. And all during the CB boom, which
explains why by '81 they made licensing voluntary, and by '90 totally
unnecessary. Rules still appplied, but according to my sources the FCC
hasn't fined anyone for violations of Part 95 save for one or two uses
of power, and even then only exceeding 1KW, and for altering rigs to
go into CAP freqs below Channel 1 - what we used to call "Klan
Channels" back in those days.

Based on the current status of the FCC, that sort of neutering needs
to happen again...

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:00:31 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Remember that story about the bats running into the F-117 because they
couldn't see it with their sonar? And the camera that used a acoustical
focusing system not being able to focus on it? Did they even have those
back then?

Yes, they did. We used the hardware to make an altimeter for the
Gossamer Albatross. Polaroid makes it.

However, I have to say that it's hard to shine a laser pointer at an
SR-71 and see the dot. I was up in one of the sim labs one afternoon,
when all the crews had gone home (summer hours), with visitors and I
was pointing out various features of the research aircraft with my
laser pointer. It worked fine for the X-31 and LSRA, with a nice red
dot, but it didn't work for the SR-71. Of course, the SR-71 is matte
black, so this wasn't exactly a surprise.

Wasn't Sea Shadow a research vehicle, not a real operational ship? I
don't think it was designed to go to war. Actually, I think it was
just barely designed to go to sea.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

Mary Shafer wrote:


Wasn't Sea Shadow a research vehicle, not a real operational ship? I
don't think it was designed to go to war. Actually, I think it was
just barely designed to go to sea.



It was a experimental one-off like the XST Have Blue demonstrator, but
it was supposed to be a concept prototype for something that would
become operational at least partially based on the same design; in much
the way the XST became the F-117. The whole Sea Shadow crew sat up in
the cockpit at the front end of the ship, so you've got something that
has a lot of apparently empty internal volume (with the diesel-electric
motors taken into account, probably at least 75%) And I assume that
something is supposed to go in there. I think it was troops that come
out via a landing embarkation ramp up toward the bottom front; Lockheed
implied it was surface-to-air missiles, but as has been pointed out that
would require the ship to emit radar and guidance signals, and that
would defeat the purpose of the stealth design. It's been implied in
some quarters that some of the vessel's design features may have been
incorporated into classified operational vessels of different types.

Pat

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:11:01 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Jorge R. Frank wrote:

Keep in mind that DC-X was an experimental vehicle, done on the cheap, and
an operational vehicle would likely have done a lot of things differently.
Like redundant deployment methods, with simple pyro backup. Or, god forbid,
five or six legs... :-)

I never liked the concept even when I saw it in movies; the only time
it makes sense to me is if you don't have a thick atmosphere to use in
cushioning your descent. It may be "the way God and Robert Heinlein
intended" a rocket ship to land, but it gives me the heebie-jeebies. The
way the DC-X set itself on fire during that one landing didn't impress
me either.

It's not all that hot with a jet engine, either, even with atmosphere.
The Ascender and other tail-sitter aircraft were dismal failures.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 03:31:52 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:

So far the ISS has generated
some ho-hum pictures of Shuttles and Progress vehicles docking, people
EVAing and a bright moving light in the sky I've seen on four or five
occasions. Do I consider that worth the investment? No, I do not.

Most science enterprises produce fairly ho-hum images. It's a pretty
shallow criteria I must admit.

One is a criterion, two are criteria. But that's about as exciting as
it usually gets when doing flight research. Flying qualities has the
advantage of being as showy as it get, particularly when doing
handling qualities research, but it's still pretty ho-hum to watch.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer