Hubble to be abandoned

In article , rk wrote:

Nope, neither of the candidates motivated very many people to actually get up
and vote for them. And neither of the candidates scared very many people to
actually get up and vote against them. It was a don't care.

If either candidate had convinced people to get up and vote, they would have
one by a wide margin.

Of course, if both had there'd have been a fight :-)

But, yeah. A lot of Democratic voters didn't take Bush seriously, and
didn't feel he was a credible threat; a lot of Republican voters didn't
take Gore seriously, and didn't feel... etcetera. Plus, you know, 2000,
people were relaxed, nice quiet year...

(The canonical example over here, incidentally, is that Blair's 1997
"landslide" was actually smaller by half a million votes than Major's
1992 skin-of-the-teeth election...)

It'll be interesting to see how it pans out now; the atmosphere is
likely to be a lot more charged than in 2000, and both sides can point
at the last election and say "goddamn, it was close then, we've got to
Do Something"... it'll be easier to get the less passive of the inactive
voters on either side out.

(I am carefully restraining my rant about voter turnout here; I'll just
mention that the footnote I forgot to complete yesterday commented that
we got a SU election - proverbially the most apathetic constituencies in
existence - to have, possibly, a higher turnout than those people
managed in the general election. There's something *wrong* there.]

--
-Andrew Gray

In article , Jonathan Griffitts wrote:
In article , Charles Buckley
writes
Brian Thorn wrote:
On 15 Feb 2004 16:18:58 GMT, (Hallerb) wrote:

Are you suggesting that the Electoral College should move to Io?

sorry has to go. leave, be discontinued, no longer in use.
Maybe, maybe not. If you think elections are hotly contested now,
imagine them without the Electoral College!

You mean like by popular vote?

I keep seeing this response to the 2000 presidential election, but it
seems to me that it's irrelevant.

That election was very close, even by popular vote tally. If we had not
had the Electoral College system, the entire country would have been
engulfed in the same recount circus that Florida was subjected to.

The basic problem is the one that Henry mentioned: it was a tie vote,
with results well inside the margin of error for the process. Given
that, it's easy to reinterpret that error margin to throw the victory in
either direction.

The resolution of the problem was unruly because that situation isn't
addressed in the US Constitution. If you want to fix it, institute some
kind of "runoff election" process as is used by many other elections.

My favourite such involves declaring anything with a final margin of
.25% null, and re*running*... this may be considered impractical on
virtually any scale larger than a room, but *damn* it's effective at
preventing "well, if you count *those* votes spoiled"...

--
-Andrew Gray

"Keith F. Lynch" wrote in message ...

But I don't think you'll get politicians to take... the loss of any number of unmanned probes,
no matter how expensive, as seriously as the death of one astronaut,
no matter how accepting of the risks.

When NASA lost two Mars probes back to back, the politicians took it
quite seriously.

The death of a single astronaut creates a political uproar only when
the death is part of an expensive, high-profile program. There an
accidental death occurs in a lower-profile program, it's taken more or
less in stride. When Mike Adams was killed on reentry, there was no
big political reaction.

Al Jackson wrote:


Hmm... Glory Hog might be right,.. but in all I have read about her
,she had a
good reputation among German test pilots. Flew the Me163 quite a few
times.

Komet Squadron CommanderWolfgang Spate did not like her, or her
seductive-voiced secretary who would wheedle flights in aircraft for her
over the phone...not that she needed much help; she had a personally
signed set of orders from Hitler she carried around with her that gave
her carte blanche to fly any aircraft in Germany at any time for any
purpose.

Making her the only woman in world history (that I know of) to have
flown a
rocket plane. (I consider Eileen Collins a 'spaceship' pilot and
comander,
which is quite something itself!)

Considering that among the 7 test pilots of the Fiesler Fi 103
(piloted V-1) Hanna was the only one not injured or killed, I am
impressed.


But she smacked up a Me-163 (and herself) pretty good.

Pat

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

Not so. The man who got heads was constitutionally barred from running
again.


Took me a second to get that...good one, Centurion!

Pat

"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 14:17:09 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

Things would have been much less acrimonious, and no less fair, if
the
two candidates had just agreed to flip a coin. :-)

Doubtful. There would have been lawsuits over who got heads.

Not so. The man who got heads was constitutionally barred from running
again.

Aw geez... that's bad, Greg!


That's not what she said.


Brian

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 16:37:10 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
Peter Stickney wrote:
So, the F-102 numbers don't look so bad, in context. Don't forget
that, compared to earlier fighters, like the F-86, the Century Series
was about an order of magnitude increase in cost and complexity to
build and maintain.

And the one with the conspicuously biggest production run -- the F-100 --
was also the simplest of the lot. (Partly because its design solidified
shortly before it became clear that fighters needed their own radar, and
the shape it solidified to was severely unsuited to adding radar.)

....Which begs the question as to what shape mods would have had to
been made to the F-100 to accomodate mounting an onboard radar?

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 Feb 2004 23:24:33 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:


"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 14:17:09 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

Things would have been much less acrimonious, and no less fair, if
the
two candidates had just agreed to flip a coin. :-)

Doubtful. There would have been lawsuits over who got heads.

Not so. The man who got heads was constitutionally barred from running
again.

Aw geez... that's bad, Greg!

That's not what she said.

....Except in this case, the man who got heads wasn't in the running.
His replacement was.

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

Peter Stickney wrote:

Oh, and the Canadian Army in Germany relied on Nuke-warhead Honest John
rockets, as well.

For a small-peace-loving country, they were awfully willing to jump onto
the Nuclear Bandwagon. (Even more than we were, in fact.)

Given that we took on a nuclear role at the request of the U.S. government,
and Diefenbaker's government was defeated over the issue, I would hardly say
that we "were awfully willing to jump onto the Nuclear Bandwagon."

OTOH, it's true that the Canadian military were extremely anxious to achieve
parity with their American counterparts. The Navy in particular spent almost
three decades trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to acquire nuclear depth charges.

--
Dave Michelson

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org writes:
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 16:37:10 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
Peter Stickney wrote:
So, the F-102 numbers don't look so bad, in context. Don't forget
that, compared to earlier fighters, like the F-86, the Century Series
was about an order of magnitude increase in cost and complexity to
build and maintain.

And the one with the conspicuously biggest production run -- the F-100 --
was also the simplest of the lot. (Partly because its design solidified
shortly before it became clear that fighters needed their own radar, and
the shape it solidified to was severely unsuited to adding radar.)

...Which begs the question as to what shape mods would have had to
been made to the F-100 to accomodate mounting an onboard radar?

Well, the first thing you do, is realize that in addition to the
radar, you're going to need more performance in general. So, you'll
want a bigger engine - say, Pratt & Whitney's J75, as opposed to the
Hun's J57. With a radar, a nose inlet is out, so it'll have to go
somewhere else, and, in order to improve efficiency at high speeds, it
ought to be a variable inlet. That means a whole new fuselage, with a
pointy nose for the radar, and a variable-ramp inlet either on top, on
the sides, or below. A bigger tail wouldn't hurt, 'cause the
F-100 was marginally stable, directionally, at high speeds. Oh, and
lose the ailerons on the wings, and use spoilers, instead - that'll
improve the adverse yaw problems that the F-100 has.
Put them all together, and you get:


http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/resea...hter/f107a.htm

The North American F-107A. One of the best airplanes we never bought.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster