61–70 of 82 posts
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18 years. Took them long enough.
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." -- Winston Churchill
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"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." -- Winston Churchill
I think that was meant mostly as a compliment. Both trying everything and doing the right thing are rare enough behaviors, even by themselves. We should strive to be as good as we were, when he said that.
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His point (I believe) is you always need to label units regardless of system. You could have the same problems with microseconds vs nanoseconds.
Tloewald's point was that microseconds and nanoseconds are not SI base units, so standardizing on base units eliminates the ambiguity (the second alone is the SI base unit of time). Of course additional mechanisms of double and triple checking are probably still warranted to account for human fallibility.
And that is their second launch within 14 days. The previous launch was a satellite to a geostationary orbit.
This 14-day interval between Falcon 9 launches was the fastest consecutive launch since Gemini 7 & 6A in December 4 & 15, 1965. SpaceX plans to beat that record soon with launches a week apart becoming routine.
And that is their second launch within 14 days. The previous launch was a satellite to a geostationary orbit.
This 14-day interval between Falcon 9 launches was the fastest consecutive launch since Gemini 7 & 6A in December 4 & 15, 1965. SpaceX plans to beat that record soon with launches a week apart becoming routine.
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It's common for pretty much all of engineering really. It's ludicrous to make calculations a bit more complicated by using weird non-SI units. The fact that NASA managed to crash a probe into Mars because they hadn't yet learned the lesson says it all really. Just use SI units and stop worrying about it.
No, the important lesson is to always label your units, and another one might be to always be careful passing dimensionful numbers between codes and teams. You can run into the same problem by accidentally even forgetting to convert between, e.g., newtons and millinewtons.
Furthermore, you are suggesting that the same entities--highly trained engineers and scientists and project managers--that proved inadequate to follow the policy you are suggesting last time can somehow be expected to follow the policy correctly at all times in the future.
Reducing needless complexity--in this case by enforcing a standard of common units so that when the inevitable inevitably occurs and someone forgets to label things--there is a much reduced (but still non-zero) chance of undetected mis-matches occurring.
Furthermore, it is very difficult to confuse milli-newtons with newtons even if a project was for some reason using both, because they differ by three orders of magnitude, which tends to get noticed. Whereas kilograms and pounds differ only by a factor of 2.54, which might be--and in fact has been--missed.
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18 years. Took them long enough.
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." -- Winston Churchill
Whenever I see ISS dockings I wonder why the arm isn't computer controlled. There's no specific information on this page but I'm assuming it was a manual docking. Can anyone explain why the process is still manual?
[1]: http://www.space.com/1033-remote-access-canadarm-2-hand-grou...
[2]: http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/013/140923arrival/#.VCHgLy...
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18 years. Took them long enough.
Except automation in spaceflight was a solved problem long ago. The Buran had more automation than the STS because of US politics in regard to the STS than some major innovation. In fact, the Buran is the poster-boy of lack of innovation. Its just a slightly souped up COPY of the STS long after the STS was in production. This like calling a 2014 Kia that looks like a 2003 Mercedes innovative because it has the option…