CEV PDQ

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
I'd particularly like to try the goose
eggs. :-)

How do you goose an egg?

On Wed, 25 May 2005 14:01:19 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

"Mikey! Get your shillelagh- there's a Texacan that needs enlightening
on a few matters!" :-)

"If the truth be a'hurtin, laddie, yer not had enough t'drink."

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

OM wrote:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 11:04:03 -0400, "Scott Hedrick"
wrote:


"Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer)" wrote in
message ...
4. The Irish are responsible for the invention of the bagpipe in the
British Isles. There's probably a special circle of Hell reserved for
the inventors and the popularizers

Note that the bagpipe is the only proper instrument to use to play "Amazing
Grace".

...I *have* heard one incorporated into a polka band once. It wasn't
*that* bad.



The Marines are using them in Iraq. But shouldn't they use them on the
enemy instead of on our own troops?


http://www.tonyrogers.com/humor/accordion_usmarine.htm


I know, against the Geneva Convention.


8-}

Rusty

On Wed, 25 May 2005 14:20:45 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Now picture Judy Tenuta with bagpipes... =-O

....I've come up with an image of that skank that I would actually love
to see happen - Rand Simberg trapped in the Green Room at some seedy
comedy club, with her *and* the accordion in heat.

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 Mon, 16 May 2005 19:10:23 -0400, "Scott Hedrick"
wrote:

What you're being intentionally obtuse about, of course, is that *in order
to get the prize money, -other- money had to be spent first*. Clearly, Rutan
did *not* get the prize money *first* in order to build his entry. Other
organizations also expended money on entries, and did not get the prize, so
clearly *they* were not spending prize money, either. *Rutan did not get his
construction money from the X-Prize*. You're welcome to provide verifiable
evidence to the contrary. Of course, since Rutan admitted spending more than
twice as much as the prize, that's further proof that he didn't get his
funding from the prize.

I don't agree with your argument here. What you describe is the
normal course of events in aviation. Charles Lindbergh got a pack of
St Louis businessmen to front him the money to win the prize for the
first solo east-bound crossing of the Atlantic. Paul McCready raised
a lot of money to build the human-powered airplane that flew across
the English Channel for that prize. In both cases, there were others
working to win the same prizes, and they, too, had raised funding
based on winning the prize.

I think it's more correct to say that they all got their funding in
anticipation of winning the prize. Had there been no prize, it's very
likely there would have been no funding.

Had the prize not
occurred, he probably wouldn't have gotten the investment.

A poor investment if the money was the incentive, since he spent far more
than he got.

There's more than just money; there's also winning the prize itself.
I'm sure Paul McCready and his team spent a lot more on the autonomous
Quetzalcoatlus northropi vehicle than they got back, too, but they
also had the joy of getting it to fly well.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or

On Mon, 16 May 2005 18:54:58 -0400, "Scott Hedrick"
wrote:

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 16 May 2005 12:37:42 -0400, in a place far, far away, "Scott
Hedrick" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

That's nice, but that doesn't mean that money is being allocated *now*.

Actually it does.

How does the promise of money offered as a prize for completion of a task
mean that actual money is being allocated to accomplish that task?

It gives credibility to the project, by proving that there's enough
serious interest in the goal that's its worth investing in. It worked
for Lindbergh and McCready, to name just two who raised the money to
accomplish tasks that carried prizes for the first to do them.

Do you know the names of the Lindbergh backers? How about where they
lived?

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or

On Tue, 17 May 2005 22:59:43 GMT, (Alan
Anderson) wrote:

I found something more to add that isn't merely rehashing old stuff.

Herb Schaltegger wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2005 21:27:09 -0500, Derek Lyons wrote

Where the discussion is breaking down is Herb's insistence that we
must act as if those limits are laws of nature.

No, where the discussion is breaking down is my insistence that
*present day designs* must adhere to *present day limits*.

On the face of it, that insistence sounds reasonable. However, as George
Bernard Shaw famously noted, being reasonable often tends to result in a
lack of progress. If you never design outside the box, the limits will be
perpetuated.

Having been designed outside the box is why NASP, OSP, and X-33 are
all such successful vehicles, then? I'll try to keep that in mind.

If the launcher can't put an entire integrated Mars-bound spacecraft up
there in one piece, designing it to be assembled by a small army of
clean-room workers on the ground isn't going to result in an assembled
vehicle in a useful location. I think it seems rather plausible to assume
that the pieces will need to be put together after they're delivered to
orbit.

Then they should be assembled the same way the Command Module, Service
Module, and Lunar Module were, not by folks floating around in space
stringing wires and plumbing and installing subsystems. It's silly to
rely on assembling the vehicle the hardest way possible. The
difficulty of EVA work has been demonstrated time and again.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or

"Dave O'Neill" wrote in message
oups.com...


They then completely revamped the over rides and put more power back in
the hands of the pilot. Toulouse also dramatically changed pilot
training to cover this problem in more detail in the mid-90s. Airbus
CFTs seem to have dramatically dropped now. But certainly in the early
90s it was a good reason to feel nervous getting onto a Fly by Wire
airbus.

The means of getting control inputs to the surfaces and engines had nothing
to do with the crash. It was the fact that the computer couldn't be
overridden - which is a separate issue.

"Scott Hedrick" wrote in message
...

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
I'd particularly like to try the goose
eggs. :-)

How do you goose an egg?

Incubate it?

"Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer)" wrote in
message ...
On Mon, 16 May 2005 18:54:58 -0400, "Scott Hedrick"
wrote:
How does the promise of money offered as a prize for completion of a
task
mean that actual money is being allocated to accomplish that task?

It gives credibility to the project, by proving that there's enough
serious interest in the goal that's its worth investing in.

Perhaps, but that doesn't answer the question. How does the promise of money
offered as a prize for completion of a task show that actual money *is being
allocated*, as opposed to *could be allocated*,to accomplish that task?
Being able to answer that question means that you can also *name* the
organizations actually spending non-prize money- if you cannot name names,
then you're *assuming* that money is being spent.

It worked
for Lindbergh and McCready, to name just two who raised the money to
accomplish tasks that carried prizes for the first to do them.

That means that it *could work* to improve EVA capability, but that isn't my
question. Rand insists that the existence of a prize itself means that money
*is* being spent, but admits he doesn't care enough to find out who. That
means that he *cannot* provide any supporting evidence for his claims, but
he's not man enough to admit it or to even admit the possibility of error.
He fails to understand his assumptions, no matter how logical they may
sound, are not *facts* without supporting evidence.