STS51L Accident Questions

In article ,
Terrell Miller writes:
Peter Stickney wrote:

The other one was a real terror and would probably have worked- put
perforated pipes offshore at suspected beaches that the Germans might
land on in time of invasion, and pump gasoline through them- this rose
to the surface and was ignited (by some chemical that had been added to
it IIRC), turning the sea into a mass of flames.
I'd hate to think what the landings at Normandy would have been like if
the Germans had had enough gasoline to implement a scheme like that.
Even if the fire itself didn't get you, the burning gasoline would
superheat the air while depleting its oxygen.


It wouldn't have worked - the wave action would break up the burning
oil slick, which would have 2 effects - gaps in the flames, and the
burning oil would turn into a mass of small burning oil puddles, which
wouldn't receive enough fuel to keep burning.

doesn't matter, by the time the flames disperse all the ammo in the
Higgins boats would have cooked off and the entire invasion force would
be charred hamburger patty

No, actually - the bow wave of the boats would push the flaming oil
out of the way. And the "Consuming all Oxygen" claim is, shall we
say, wildly exaggerated. How would the fire stay lit, after all?

Consider, if you will, that very early on, techniques for the survival
of unprotected (Unless you count a Kapok Life Jacket as protection)
survivors of torpedoed oil tankers were developed. Thet's certainly a
much worse situation. It might work for a castle moat.

Flame weapons, unless you've got some way to the fuel to stick to the
target, are wildly ineffective. Even when the fuel does stick
(Napalm, for example) It's really mostly effective against unprotected
personnel, or inherently flammable targets. The Soviets, back in the
bad old days, made a big show about training their recruits to run
through Napalm fires.

--
Pete Stickney

Without data, all you have are opinions

Dave Michelson wrote:


Given that Pat's original question was about cameras with
ultrasonic range finders, that shouldn't be too surprising.


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. The thing was
fiendishly complex inside- full of lenses and mirrors (the viewfinder
alone used around six lenses and an equal number of mirrors; its optical
path is all over the place.)
The ultrasonic emitter/receiver was a lot less complex than I thought it
would be. It's a circular disc shaped spring with a aluminum disc on its
front surface. The aluminum disc has circumferential grooves on it, and
is pushed up against a sheet of gold-plated mylar. I'm not completely
sure how this works, but I suspect that it uses a solenoid to vibrate
the disc and make the mylar covering emit an ultrasonic acoustic wave.
There is a second coil of some sort next to the solenoid, and I suspect
it is associated with the receiver function. What makes this interesting
is the mylar sheet is covered by a perforated protective screen that
somehow doesn't jam the system by echoing the wave right back into it;
so I assume there is a small time delay between the emission of the
ultrasonic pulse and the receiver function being activated.

Pat

OM wrote:

In hindsight, I admit that I shouldn't have explicitly paraphrased your
earlier dismissive responses to Pat and others when I responded to you.



...Tsk.



I'm still trying to figure out how I've unintentionally started two
flame wars inside of a week.
A troll would be taking notes on all of this. :-(

Pat

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 14:47:44 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

I'm still trying to figure out how I've unintentionally started two
flame wars inside of a week.

....In this case, it's more Dave letting his ego get the best of him.
He'll calm down in a week or so and get off his net.god complex.

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:


...In this case, it's more Dave letting his ego get the best of him.
He'll calm down in a week or so and get off his net.god complex.



Lets not go for three here, shall we? ;-)


Pat

OM wrote:

I'm still trying to figure out how I've unintentionally started two
flame wars inside of a week.

...In this case, it's more Dave letting his ego get the best of him.
He'll calm down in a week or so and get off his net.god complex.

This brings back an uncomfortable memory of one time that I gave
the antenna lecture for a radio amateur licensing course.

I thought I had done a great job of explaining how beam antennas worked
while keeping the math to the bare essentials, but attendees were
obviously still quite puzzled. A fellow instructor stepped forward and
cleared things up by explaining that, "A beam antenna is like a big
flashlight...." Every face in the place immediately brightened up.
Except mine :-\

--
Dave Michelson

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:10:52 GMT, Dave Michelson
wrote:

This brings back an uncomfortable memory of one time that I gave
the antenna lecture for a radio amateur licensing course.

....Is this the one where you tried to explain the best ways to
properly prepare and serve all those dead birds most Hams find under
their quads after a QRM session?

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:

This brings back an uncomfortable memory of one time that I gave
the antenna lecture for a radio amateur licensing course.

...Is this the one where you tried to explain the best ways to
properly prepare and serve all those dead birds most Hams find under
their quads after a QRM session?

Well, we don't run "Texas-size" transmitters up here so that's not as
much of a problem for us as it is for you folks.

--
Dave Michelson

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:35:46 GMT, Dave Michelson
wrote:

OM wrote:

This brings back an uncomfortable memory of one time that I gave
the antenna lecture for a radio amateur licensing course.

...Is this the one where you tried to explain the best ways to
properly prepare and serve all those dead birds most Hams find under
their quads after a QRM session?

Well, we don't run "Texas-size" transmitters up here so that's not as
much of a problem for us as it is for you folks.

....Show me a Ham who doesn't run a linear on a constant basis, and
I'll show you someone that's either a) broke or b) scared of his
neighbors' lack of high and low-pass filtering.

[****_it_mode=on]

....Tell you what, Dave, I'll throw the gauntlet down right here and
now: Bull**** Code Requirements, yes or no?

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

Dave Michelson wrote:



I thought I had done a great job of explaining how beam antennas worked
while keeping the math to the bare essentials, but attendees were
obviously still quite puzzled. A fellow instructor stepped forward and
cleared things up by explaining that, "A beam antenna is like a big
flashlight...." Every face in the place immediately brightened up.
Except mine :-\


This was the same guy who later came up with describing that Gamma Ray
Burster as being in our backyard, rather than our living room.
He makes over twelve million dollars a year- to get some idea how much
that is, consider you had a wage of twenty thousand dollars a year, and
ate two hundred peas every night with your dinner. Now, if you made
twelve million dollars a year, you'd be eating six thousand peas every
night with your dinner- or around seven to ten cans of peas...which
wouldn't leave much room for dinner, would it? But if you were to take
those peas and plant them in a garden rather than eating them, then you
could eat just a few of the fresh peas that grew everyday, and assure
yourself a steady supply of them, while bartering the rest away for
other useful things....like a full-auto AR-15 rifle.
In this way, not only do you not have to force down too many peas at one
sitting, but you have a gun to protect your pea patch from any who would
try to steal from it.
But say a Communist Rabbit got into your pea patch and ate twenty
percent of those peas every year- you'd say it was stealing them, but it
would say that it was taxing you, and that you had no right to trade
those peas for that rifle with out getting a "permit" for it, which the
Godless Rabbit will sell you for four hundred cans of peas, and the
right to put your name down on its death list- even though your right to
have that rifle is protected by the Bible, under the Second Commandment.
Well, you wouldn't like that Godless Rabbit very much, would you? And
you might just want to shoot it to stop it from eating your peas all up,
trying to nibble the stock off of your AR-15, marking you for death on
its "Gun owners Registration List", and corrupting your children with
non-aryan rap music! What would you do then, as a decent God-Fearing
White Man? Sounds like time to serve some peas with Ventilated Rabbit
Stew, doesn't it Whitey?
But suppose that the rabbit knew a bunch of Freemasonic Badgers who it
sent to your survivalist cabin in Montana to kill your Firstborn on Good
Friday... what would you do then? I'd shoot those damn SS Badgers too,
wouldn't you? Or better yet, take some of the nitrate fertilizer you use
to fertilize the pea patch, mix it with some of that fuel oil we have to
buy from those burnoosed rats in the Mideast that the Skull And Bones
Rabbit is in business with, and shove it down every badger hole in the
vicinity regardless of whether they have baby badgers in them or not!
Well, some people have already tried that- but the rest of us are being
drugged by the chemtrails, and having our thoughts addled by the HAARP
transmitter.... so it's time to construct a little airtight hut out of
aluminum foil and copies of the Bible, and crawl into it while we read a
copy of Mien Kampf by the light of a whale-oil lamp, as those damn
Mideastern rats don't have the world's supply of whales cornered yet and
God has given us permission to kill them (no matter what any ACLU
tree-hugger says), in the Book Of Revelation.

We hope that this makes everything clear. ;-)

The Posse Comatose