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Thread: NASA Ares I-X

  1. #11
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    Re: NASA Ares I-X

    Quote Originally Posted by Grant A. View Post
    Shame, it looks like the weather delayed it.

    Why they built NASA's launchpad in a sub-tropical area, I will never know. IMHO, this is really why they should move the Kennedy Space Center somewhere out into the Great Plains. The Johnson Space Center is fine, though. Texas's coastline rarely gets a powerful hurricane that causes long-term damage. Yay for nearly constant high-pressure fronts?
    First, the earth's spin imparts more initial velocity as you travel further south. Second, would you rather have an errant rocket hit the water (where it might be recovered semi-intact) or would you prefer said errant rocket hits someplace heavily populated such as Kansas City, Oklahoma City or Omaha? Third, the Texas coast actually gets more and worse hurricanes than Florida does because so many hurricanes get funneled into the Gulf of Mexico. Look that up in your Funk & Wagnall's.

    Personally, I think that sending humans to Mars is a major waste of time. Or to the moon, for that matter. We have the technology to build very intuitive rovers. Why don't we just do that? It would probably be much cheaper, considering the fact that robots don't need food, nor a round-trip.
    Exploring is what we do and has been what we do since the first homo sapiens walked out of Europe and pushed its ancestors out of the evolutionary chase; look at the history of the 20th century to see what we've done to each other since we've run out of explorable territory. And it's not just about building intuitive rovers. Resource scarcity is something we will have to deal with in our lifetimes, as pointed out in this Slashdot journal and this Wall Street Journal item. We'll need people to find what we need and get it back here.

    Our future is out there. Let's get going.
    Direct complaints and/or flames to /dev/null for faster service.
    Everyone who chanted "Drill, baby, drill!" in 2008 now has to report to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico for oil-spill cleanup duty.

  2. #12
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    Re: NASA Ares I-X

    Quote Originally Posted by Foster Grant View Post
    First, the earth's spin imparts more initial velocity as you travel further south. Second, would you rather have an errant rocket hit the water (where it might be recovered semi-intact) or would you prefer said errant rocket hits someplace heavily populated such as Kansas City, Oklahoma City or Omaha?
    Interesting point, but wouldn't somewhere in the southern East coast (north of Georgia), work?

    Third, the Texas coast actually gets more and worse hurricanes than Florida does because so many hurricanes get funneled into the Gulf of Mexico. Look that up in your Funk & Wagnall's.
    I live in Texas. We rarely get bad hurricanes. Notice that the vast majority of all of these "horrible" hurricanes that we get are either a Category 1, 2, or a Tropical Storm. I've lived here all my life, and despite the news media saying tropical storms are "deadly", I've only evacuated and experienced flooding once. Do you know what the name of that hurricane was? Hurricane Ike. Now, while I know that hurricane Ike was a category 2, it was only 1 mile an hour away from a category 3 when it hit. Plus, it was a gigantic storm.

    Seriously, I could pee harder than most category 1 and 2's.

    From your apparent habit of misjudging the strength of hurricanes, I can definitely assume that you've [b]never[b] lived in Southeast Texas. I would appreciate it if you actually have experienced what you're talking about, before spewing out gloom and doom.

    Take a nice look at Florida, and in contrast, you'll see all of the major category 3+ hurricanes that have hit it, and seriously done damage.

    Exploring is what we do and has been what we do since the first homo sapiens walked out of Europe and pushed its ancestors out of the evolutionary chase;
    Whoa, hold on there, buddy. The first humans came out of Western/Central Africa.

    look at the history of the 20th century to see what we've done to each other since we've run out of explorable territory.
    We ran out of explorable territory? Tell that to the scientists mapping the ocean floor and Antarctica.

    And it's not just about building intuitive rovers. Resource scarcity is something we will have to deal with in our lifetimes, as pointed out in this Slashdot journal and this Wall Street Journal item. We'll need people to find what we need and get it back here.

    Our future is out there. Let's get going.
    What can a human do in a gigantic bloated spacesuit that a small, maneuverable rover can't? Honestly, the only thing I can think of waste resources on a round trip and food.

    Plus, I don't care about the dwindling resources. It's more of the fact that it takes a butt-load of money to send a human into space and back.

  3. #13
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    Re: NASA Ares I-X

    Quote Originally Posted by Grant A. View Post
    Interesting point, but wouldn't somewhere in the southern East coast (north of Georgia), work?
    No. North Carolina is a regular target. Ask anybody who lives along the North Carolina coast how much they dread hurricane season. Anywhere else is too far north.

    From your apparent habit of misjudging the strength of hurricanes, I can definitely assume that you've [b]never[b] lived in Southeast Texas. I would appreciate it if you actually have experienced what you're talking about, before spewing out gloom and doom.
    AH-HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

    Born, raised and still live in Central Florida along the Atlantic Ocean. Take a look at the map, see how the coast here curves. Pull up a map of the region on Google Earth, see how the Gulf Stream curves away from Florida. We get missed on our side; anything that starts turning northwest before it gets here ends up either at Cape Hatteras or Greenland. The major problems we have are from Gulf Coast strikes that cross to the northeast.

    One of the safest places to live on the Atlantic coast is Jacksonville, Fla., just to my north. It's only suffered one direct hit from seaward since 1871 (Dora in 1964) because of how the coastline curves in down this way.

    I wouldn't live anywhere along the Gulf of Mexico even if I were paid $1 million a year to do so.

    Here's Texas' hurricane history in the 20th century: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurr...ry/whtexas.htm

    You're at the base of a tropical cyclone catchpen (the Gulf of Mexico) loaded with very warm water. You have problems.

    Seriously, I could pee harder than most category 1 and 2's.
    Here's the secret about that: the weaker their winds are, the more rain they put down, causing more catastrophic flooding. You're young, aren't you? Ike's not even in the top 10 of wettest tropical cyclones that have hit Texas.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...d_States#Texas

    Leading that list: Amelia. Dinky little tropical storm in 1978, right? Dropped 4 feet of rainfall and killed 30 people. Claudette in 1979? The one Texans never mention because Alan got all the headlines? Claudette put 42 inches of rain down near Alvin.

    And here's Houston after Tropical Storm Allison in 2001:



    Here's a map listing maximum rainfall caused by tropical cyclones and their remnants per state; it's huge so I'm only posting the link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ma19722007.gif

    Whoa, hold on there, buddy. The first humans came out of Western/Central Africa.
    Was about to correct that on re-read. Major typo on my part.

    What can a human do in a gigantic bloated spacesuit that a small, maneuverable rover can't?
    Be on the site to make decisions on the spot, rather than trying to rely on a very-low-bandwidth connection that takes hours for data turnaround.

    Colonizing the solar system is also a very nice way to avoid catastrophic extinction as a species.

    Plus, I don't care about the dwindling resources.
    You should care. If we don't figure something out, we'll be back to horses and buggies inside of a couple of centuries because we'll have used everything else up.
    Direct complaints and/or flames to /dev/null for faster service.
    Everyone who chanted "Drill, baby, drill!" in 2008 now has to report to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico for oil-spill cleanup duty.

  4. #14

    Exclamation Re: NASA Ares I-X

    "...try, try again."
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  5. #15
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    Re: NASA Ares I-X

    With any luck these high clouds will finally clear out so NASA won't keep tripping over the static electricity flight rules.
    Direct complaints and/or flames to /dev/null for faster service.
    Everyone who chanted "Drill, baby, drill!" in 2008 now has to report to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico for oil-spill cleanup duty.

  6. #16

    Arrow Re: NASA Ares I-X

    This time is for real.
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  7. #17
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    Re: NASA Ares I-X

    About 30 seconds to launch.
    Direct complaints and/or flames to /dev/null for faster service.
    Everyone who chanted "Drill, baby, drill!" in 2008 now has to report to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico for oil-spill cleanup duty.

  8. #18
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    Re: NASA Ares I-X

    I wish they had launched at night so I couldn't have stepped outside and watched
    Yesterday it worked.
    Today it is not working.
    Windows is like that.

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