Nova (PBS) Tuesday - EXCELLENT Program

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 18:29:10 GMT, "Robert J. Kolker"
wrote:



Franz Heymann wrote:


Am I indeed right in thinking that you have just declared yourself to be a
fascist?

No. Just a misanthrope. I have no love for any form of collectivism. On
principle I prefer justice to mercy and being kind to the weak is the
greatest cruelty. It makes them soft. Any blow that does not kill,
strengthens.

Make that a trite misanthrope.

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 18:29:10 GMT, "Robert J. Kolker"
wrote:



Franz Heymann wrote:


Am I indeed right in thinking that you have just declared yourself to be a
fascist?

No. Just a misanthrope. I have no love for any form of collectivism. On
principle I prefer justice to mercy and being kind to the weak is the
greatest cruelty. It makes them soft. Any blow that does not kill,
strengthens.

Make that a trite misanthrope.

well, you spun your post off of it, so I assume from your standpoint
it has some value!

Of course the $400m per you cite does not represent net price on each
unit alone. I mean, it's not a Mediacom hedge product being doled out by
the pixel per minute per number of cockroaches per apartment! The $400
mil represents a whole bag of costs and production costs, etc etc tc. Hell!
Your Aunt Mable's job may even be part of these costs - especially all
her personal business and personal calls made on University-State-Company
time not to mention her spending each Friday afternoon shopping at the mall
.... again on company time?

Think of it this way: You are God creating the universe. You allow
everything we now know and have for $2.99 picked up on sale from God-Mart.
Pretty good deal. You want to set a probe on Mars so you hock a molecule for
a bead, you trade that bead to an Indian for the State of Nebraska, you sell
Nebraska to the Hunt Bros for a pencil, you trade that pencil to an
Aboriginee for the continent of Australia, you sell Australia to
the Bush Family for ten barrels of oil, you sit on the oil and light a
match,
and now you have a probe up your ass and you're headed for Mars.

Happy landing, pilgrim.

EZ











Fix It.



"Robert J. Kolker" wrote:

Sam Wormley wrote:

Dear Everybody--Nova (PBS) normally airs on Tuesday evenings
and will do so again, Tuesday, January 6th. It will be the
same excellent program that aired tonight (Sunday) but promises
to include in its last five minutes the latest images (in color)
from Gusev Crater (what is believed to have once been a terminal
lake basin) on Mars.

These rovers are like remote geologists on wheels... It's the best
we can do right now as they extend some of our senses down to the
planet's surface!

And they only cost $400,000,000 apiece. What a bargain! And how much new
technology is spinning off of that effort?

Wouldn't it be nice if our space effort actually paid for itself?

Bob Kolker

well, you spun your post off of it, so I assume from your standpoint
it has some value!

Of course the $400m per you cite does not represent net price on each
unit alone. I mean, it's not a Mediacom hedge product being doled out by
the pixel per minute per number of cockroaches per apartment! The $400
mil represents a whole bag of costs and production costs, etc etc tc. Hell!
Your Aunt Mable's job may even be part of these costs - especially all
her personal business and personal calls made on University-State-Company
time not to mention her spending each Friday afternoon shopping at the mall
.... again on company time?

Think of it this way: You are God creating the universe. You allow
everything we now know and have for $2.99 picked up on sale from God-Mart.
Pretty good deal. You want to set a probe on Mars so you hock a molecule for
a bead, you trade that bead to an Indian for the State of Nebraska, you sell
Nebraska to the Hunt Bros for a pencil, you trade that pencil to an
Aboriginee for the continent of Australia, you sell Australia to
the Bush Family for ten barrels of oil, you sit on the oil and light a
match,
and now you have a probe up your ass and you're headed for Mars.

Happy landing, pilgrim.

EZ











Fix It.



"Robert J. Kolker" wrote:

Sam Wormley wrote:

Dear Everybody--Nova (PBS) normally airs on Tuesday evenings
and will do so again, Tuesday, January 6th. It will be the
same excellent program that aired tonight (Sunday) but promises
to include in its last five minutes the latest images (in color)
from Gusev Crater (what is believed to have once been a terminal
lake basin) on Mars.

These rovers are like remote geologists on wheels... It's the best
we can do right now as they extend some of our senses down to the
planet's surface!

And they only cost $400,000,000 apiece. What a bargain! And how much new
technology is spinning off of that effort?

Wouldn't it be nice if our space effort actually paid for itself?

Bob Kolker

well, you spun your post off of it, so I assume from your standpoint
it has some value!

Of course the $400m per you cite does not represent net price on each
unit alone. I mean, it's not a Mediacom hedge product being doled out by
the pixel per minute per number of cockroaches per apartment! The $400
mil represents a whole bag of costs and production costs, etc etc tc. Hell!
Your Aunt Mable's job may even be part of these costs - especially all
her personal business and personal calls made on University-State-Company
time not to mention her spending each Friday afternoon shopping at the mall
.... again on company time?

Think of it this way: You are God creating the universe. You allow
everything we now know and have for $2.99 picked up on sale from God-Mart.
Pretty good deal. You want to set a probe on Mars so you hock a molecule for
a bead, you trade that bead to an Indian for the State of Nebraska, you sell
Nebraska to the Hunt Bros for a pencil, you trade that pencil to an
Aboriginee for the continent of Australia, you sell Australia to
the Bush Family for ten barrels of oil, you sit on the oil and light a
match,
and now you have a probe up your ass and you're headed for Mars.

Happy landing, pilgrim.

EZ











Fix It.



"Robert J. Kolker" wrote:

Sam Wormley wrote:

Dear Everybody--Nova (PBS) normally airs on Tuesday evenings
and will do so again, Tuesday, January 6th. It will be the
same excellent program that aired tonight (Sunday) but promises
to include in its last five minutes the latest images (in color)
from Gusev Crater (what is believed to have once been a terminal
lake basin) on Mars.

These rovers are like remote geologists on wheels... It's the best
we can do right now as they extend some of our senses down to the
planet's surface!

And they only cost $400,000,000 apiece. What a bargain! And how much new
technology is spinning off of that effort?

Wouldn't it be nice if our space effort actually paid for itself?

Bob Kolker

Uncle Al wrote:

The most interesting aspect of the program was the astounding
advertised inablity of NASA to get anything done. They debated
running a ****y survivability test that they were going to run anyway
because the thing had to survive it anyway in the real world. The
parachute was especially diagnostic and damning. The top hole was too
big? Didn't anybody measure the thing before deployment testing? A
circuit board crapped out? How often does Dell, Gateway, IBM, HP...
recall boxes because of crappy boards? Critical missions should be
off-the-shelf. Continuous improvement works.

The hugely expensive wind tunnel was "cheaper and faster" than the
helicopter drop? Parachutes may be an arcane enginering task, but we
drop multi-tonne pallets and tanks and such from C-40s roaring along -
as well as the very heavy daisy cutter bomb - with no reliability
problems. Get a surplus military parachute. Make the rancid thing
out of Spectra and be done with it. Learn how to compactly fold a
chute.

Then there were the pyros. The only way to unmount them is to fire
them? In a project wherein every additional gram is a huge liability,
they're mounting 40 lumps of steel? The acres of gold plating were
precious, literally. How many automobiles are assembled in a clean
room, then to operate in the dirty real world? One suspects that the
high technology of radio controlled cars could be directly adapted
after suitable low-temp lubricants were installed. It's not like the
thing has to work for ten years.

Invent a battery that survives deep freezing.

Uncle Al really got jizzed when he saw a king's ransom of Kapton jury
rigged as a lens cover. One can only hope that they used special
$500/roll NASA adhesive tape instead of some brutally hate criminal
Scotch tape (and the niggardly cheapness that implies). Oh yeah...
don't forget the $50,000 computer-interfaced voice-actuated tape
dispensor specially designed and built for the project with
micromachined carbide jaws, real-time telemetry readouts being
recorded, and OSHA-approved multiply-redundant safety failsafes.

You need a good laxative.


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Uncle Al wrote:

The most interesting aspect of the program was the astounding
advertised inablity of NASA to get anything done. They debated
running a ****y survivability test that they were going to run anyway
because the thing had to survive it anyway in the real world. The
parachute was especially diagnostic and damning. The top hole was too
big? Didn't anybody measure the thing before deployment testing? A
circuit board crapped out? How often does Dell, Gateway, IBM, HP...
recall boxes because of crappy boards? Critical missions should be
off-the-shelf. Continuous improvement works.

The hugely expensive wind tunnel was "cheaper and faster" than the
helicopter drop? Parachutes may be an arcane enginering task, but we
drop multi-tonne pallets and tanks and such from C-40s roaring along -
as well as the very heavy daisy cutter bomb - with no reliability
problems. Get a surplus military parachute. Make the rancid thing
out of Spectra and be done with it. Learn how to compactly fold a
chute.

Then there were the pyros. The only way to unmount them is to fire
them? In a project wherein every additional gram is a huge liability,
they're mounting 40 lumps of steel? The acres of gold plating were
precious, literally. How many automobiles are assembled in a clean
room, then to operate in the dirty real world? One suspects that the
high technology of radio controlled cars could be directly adapted
after suitable low-temp lubricants were installed. It's not like the
thing has to work for ten years.

Invent a battery that survives deep freezing.

Uncle Al really got jizzed when he saw a king's ransom of Kapton jury
rigged as a lens cover. One can only hope that they used special
$500/roll NASA adhesive tape instead of some brutally hate criminal
Scotch tape (and the niggardly cheapness that implies). Oh yeah...
don't forget the $50,000 computer-interfaced voice-actuated tape
dispensor specially designed and built for the project with
micromachined carbide jaws, real-time telemetry readouts being
recorded, and OSHA-approved multiply-redundant safety failsafes.

You need a good laxative.


-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

Uncle Al wrote:

The most interesting aspect of the program was the astounding
advertised inablity of NASA to get anything done. They debated
running a ****y survivability test that they were going to run anyway
because the thing had to survive it anyway in the real world. The
parachute was especially diagnostic and damning. The top hole was too
big? Didn't anybody measure the thing before deployment testing? A
circuit board crapped out? How often does Dell, Gateway, IBM, HP...
recall boxes because of crappy boards? Critical missions should be
off-the-shelf. Continuous improvement works.

The hugely expensive wind tunnel was "cheaper and faster" than the
helicopter drop? Parachutes may be an arcane enginering task, but we
drop multi-tonne pallets and tanks and such from C-40s roaring along -
as well as the very heavy daisy cutter bomb - with no reliability
problems. Get a surplus military parachute. Make the rancid thing
out of Spectra and be done with it. Learn how to compactly fold a
chute.

Then there were the pyros. The only way to unmount them is to fire
them? In a project wherein every additional gram is a huge liability,
they're mounting 40 lumps of steel? The acres of gold plating were
precious, literally. How many automobiles are assembled in a clean
room, then to operate in the dirty real world? One suspects that the
high technology of radio controlled cars could be directly adapted
after suitable low-temp lubricants were installed. It's not like the
thing has to work for ten years.

Invent a battery that survives deep freezing.

Uncle Al really got jizzed when he saw a king's ransom of Kapton jury
rigged as a lens cover. One can only hope that they used special
$500/roll NASA adhesive tape instead of some brutally hate criminal
Scotch tape (and the niggardly cheapness that implies). Oh yeah...
don't forget the $50,000 computer-interfaced voice-actuated tape
dispensor specially designed and built for the project with
micromachined carbide jaws, real-time telemetry readouts being
recorded, and OSHA-approved multiply-redundant safety failsafes.

You need a good laxative.


-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

starchaser wrote:


You need a good laxative.

Unc is right. NASA has spent 40 billions of dollars on ISS **** Hole One
and one billion of our dollars on the MER which is second rate
technology. NASA has lost two missions to Mars because no one checked
the contractors to see which standard of measurement they were using.
How anyone can do high tech still using English measure is beyond my
understanding. And that tin plate goldbrick, Dan Goldin was lying
through his teeth when he promised better, faster, cheaper. This is the
same Dan Goldin who was fired from being president of Boston University
-before- he started work.

NASA is a ****ed up, top heavy second rate outfit, run by managers who
are motivated by fear of having their funding cut off by Congress. Their
imperitive is never to be seen failing, lest the funding cease, so they
do stupid and desparate things and they lie to themselves, their workers
and to the government.

Those loss of two orbiters along with their crews is symptomatic of just
how bad things have gotten at the Agency. And what is more they lied to
their test pilots (all their flying crews are test pilots). The official
NASA estimate for fatal casualties in orbiter missions was one in ten
thousand. The actual figures are one in twenty five. That is pernicious
lying, and in a civilized society that would be criminally actionable.

The management at NASA bullied and browbeat the lower level engineers
who were trying to do the right thing, when these poor sincere schmucks
raised alarms over the equipment. Lower level engineers at Morton
Thiokol were pounded in to the ground like tent pegs when they warned
about launching Challenger in cold weathers. The upper management at
Morton Thiokol and NASA practically tore their nails out to get them to
sign off on the launch.

NASA was playing Russian roulette with orbiters that -routinely- shed
the outer layers of the fuel tanks on the leading edges of the wings.
That is how Columbia was lost. Not two days before launch the engineers
were exchanging e-mail on the possibilities of fatal damage caused by
collisions of the linings on the wing edges. Since management had gotten
away with this hazard for years they told their engineers to shut up if
they valued their jobs. The engineers shut up.

In a just society the managment would not only be removed, but jailed
for fraud and criminal negligence.

Bob Kolker



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-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

starchaser wrote:


You need a good laxative.

Unc is right. NASA has spent 40 billions of dollars on ISS **** Hole One
and one billion of our dollars on the MER which is second rate
technology. NASA has lost two missions to Mars because no one checked
the contractors to see which standard of measurement they were using.
How anyone can do high tech still using English measure is beyond my
understanding. And that tin plate goldbrick, Dan Goldin was lying
through his teeth when he promised better, faster, cheaper. This is the
same Dan Goldin who was fired from being president of Boston University
-before- he started work.

NASA is a ****ed up, top heavy second rate outfit, run by managers who
are motivated by fear of having their funding cut off by Congress. Their
imperitive is never to be seen failing, lest the funding cease, so they
do stupid and desparate things and they lie to themselves, their workers
and to the government.

Those loss of two orbiters along with their crews is symptomatic of just
how bad things have gotten at the Agency. And what is more they lied to
their test pilots (all their flying crews are test pilots). The official
NASA estimate for fatal casualties in orbiter missions was one in ten
thousand. The actual figures are one in twenty five. That is pernicious
lying, and in a civilized society that would be criminally actionable.

The management at NASA bullied and browbeat the lower level engineers
who were trying to do the right thing, when these poor sincere schmucks
raised alarms over the equipment. Lower level engineers at Morton
Thiokol were pounded in to the ground like tent pegs when they warned
about launching Challenger in cold weathers. The upper management at
Morton Thiokol and NASA practically tore their nails out to get them to
sign off on the launch.

NASA was playing Russian roulette with orbiters that -routinely- shed
the outer layers of the fuel tanks on the leading edges of the wings.
That is how Columbia was lost. Not two days before launch the engineers
were exchanging e-mail on the possibilities of fatal damage caused by
collisions of the linings on the wing edges. Since management had gotten
away with this hazard for years they told their engineers to shut up if
they valued their jobs. The engineers shut up.

In a just society the managment would not only be removed, but jailed
for fraud and criminal negligence.

Bob Kolker



-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----