Hubble to be abandoned

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
Zeta Reticulan Flying Disks.

They were scheduled to land months ago- why don't we ask them about their
safety records?

Edward Wright wrote:

Herb Schaltegger lid
wrote in message ...

Have either of you done an Environmental
Impact Statement on the effect of dumping 17 tons of extremely toxic
chemicals in the South Pacific?

Have you looked at the MSDS's and other reference material to determine
how much of your "17 tons of extremely toxic chemicals" will survive
entry? Have you examined entry plans to determine how much of your "17
tons" will even remain aboard when entry starts?

I thought not . . .

You want me to do your Environmental Impact Statement for you?

It's not mine to create. It's debatable whether NASA is required to do one
at all, even presuming (which you're far too guilty of doing in every
thread you take part in) that any debris survives an
intentially-destructive entry. Cite me the section of the Environmental
Protection Act that requires an Environmental Impact Statement from NASA
for a destructive entry - if you can.

Are you offering to pay me for it?

*You* are the one suggesting there is a hazard from "17 tons of extremely
toxic chemicals", a contention unsupported by anything but your own posts.
Do you know if those toxins would even be aboard following an
intentionally-destructive deorbit burn, considering how much of consists of
propellants which will be expended?

I thought not...

You're the one who suggests such a statement is required. Prove it.

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

"Scott Hedrick" wrote in message
...

"Mary Shafer" wrote in message
news
There
were probably Roman engineers saying the same thing, only in Latin.

Shades of "History of the World, Part I."

I always preferred Life of Brian for my Latin.

In article ,
says...
However, there's an entirely foreseeable difficulty in getting into
the loop when you've just been sitting and observing. Taking the
pilot out of the loop until there's a problem means that there will be
a certain time delay before the pilot reacts at all, and even longer
for the pilot to get into the loop and in control. Better and safer
to have the pilot flying the whole time.

Here is another potential tall-tale that someone here maybe able to
confirm/deny. I've been told that the US Navy deliberately designs
nuclear submarines with minimal levels of automation. In part, this is
due to a reluctance to trust fancy automatic systems, especially since
when all hell breaks loose these systems may be in an unexpected
situation. In part this is because it gives the crew a chance to develop
a gut-feel about how the system should work, making the crew more
sensitive to unusual conditions.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

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

In article ,
says...
However, the one big driving factor was the horribly low turnout.

Think of that as the closest the electorate has to voting "neither of
the above".

I think the (limited) success of the third party candidates often is
another way of saying "neither of the above". An argument can be made
that Bush-43 should thank Ralph Nader and that Clinton should thank Ross
Perot.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

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

In article ,
says...
I think the whole electronic voting machine idea is an invitation to
electoral fraud, and out to be scrapped.

No, done correctly it has the potential to be more trustworthy than
current paper ballots. (Remember the stories about LBJ winning elections
in Texas because certain ballot boxes seemed to be mysteriously delayed
during the vote counting process?)

I don't know that it is necessary, however. Canada, e.g., seems to do
quite well with paper ballots.


A system that doesn't generate some sort of reviewable back-up is very
easy to screw with right from the word go.

Yep. Some kind of tamper-evident audit trail is part of what it means to
be "correctly designed".
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

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

In article , derekl1963
@nospamyahoo.com says...
rk wrote:
The numbers of bugs and glitches in these machines is alarming. No paper
audit trail is inexcusable as the entire voting process becomes unverifiable;
the people would be down to just listening to the machine as opposed to the
machine being a tool

However, that's becoming more general in society than many people
might be comfortable with. So long as the computer gives a seemingly
reasonable result, people tend to believe it without actually
performing independent verification.

All too true. But that doesn't mean that eVoting can't be done, just
that there is a requirement for a tamper-visible audit trail.


(I.E. the attitude that one does
not need to learn math because we know have calculators.)

Or that we need not proof-read because we have spelling checkers?

(I now duck&cover, realizing that I have just thrown a stone while
living in a glass house.)
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

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

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Peter Stickney wrote:

The airplane was also rather dangerous to fly, as well, and losses
were high. - by 1960, when it had been in service for 5 years, more
than 500 had been totally destroyed in flying accidents.


I knew about the roll coupling problem due to the undersized vertical
fin, but didn't know the attrition rate was quite that appalling.


this may be urban myth, but a long time ago I read that part of the "Saber
Dance" thing was because a specific old-timer at the McDonnell plant was
supposed to be installing nuts upside down for some reason, but he'd been
there twenty years and he knew damn well you don't install nuts back'ards.
So under certain flight profiles an aileron would get hung up on the
"properly" installed nut. Apparently they never told the poor schlub how
many pilots he'd killed.

--
Terrell Miller


"It's one thing to burn down the **** house and another thing entirely to
install plumbing"
-PJ O'Rourke

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 18:49:12 -0500, Kevin Willoughby wrote:

No, done correctly it has the potential to be more trustworthy than
current paper ballots. (Remember the stories about LBJ winning elections
in Texas because certain ballot boxes seemed to be mysteriously delayed
during the vote counting process?)

But the problem with electronic voting is that the tampering can be done
without the need for visible tinkering such as delaying the count.

Some might be old enough to remember Ken Thompson's classic Turing Award
Lecture "Reflections on Trusting Trust" http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/
Even if the source code is available, you can't trust it.

Charles Buckley wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:

rk wrote:

And even in engineering, with the advent of computer tools to do the analysis
and even the design work, engineers are starting to be push button operators
and do not understand the fundamental concepts and so can not tell when the
software tools are in error (which is not infrequent, it's all proprietary
code that you are not allowed to see, examine, and verify).

I'm not certain that Open Source code would change the situation any.
I don't think an engineer is going to open the code to verify, so who
does the verification? The companies that will pay for the
verification (in house or consultant) are already (AIUI) paying for
their own code. That leaves us with the moral equivalent of slashdot
ratings, which are informal popularity ratings, not formal
evaluations.

All Open Source means is that the people programming the thing
will have access and means to understand the program. Completely
different skill set from the users.

Sorry, no. Open Source means the code is open and available to
verification.

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.