Driver to drive?

[Eeyore]

Andrew wrote:

bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote
Eeyore wrote:
In 30 years, the largest figure according to your choice of smoothing
etc and data source is about 0.2C.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/07/april-global-temperature-anomal...


-So what? You keep on getting excited about short term noise,

Well, it's interesting to see how it doesn't match temperatures.

- as if it said anything about the long term trend generated by the build up
in
-C02 in the atmosphere.

1. Average temperature increase may be good for the earth and humanity.
Nobody knows "the best" temperature.

Absolutely. A couple of degree more may be excellent. Think of the energy
savings in heating for one.

2. CO2 is good for plants. Nobody knows "the best" concentration if the CO2.

CO2 is *excellent* for 95% odd of plants.

3. Ocean temperature was not rising recently.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025

Also true.

4. Last summer thousands of scientists signed a petition asserting that "
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse
gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic
heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate"

In short, the reasons behind "global worming" myth are political, not
scientific.

Yes, purely an attempt to 'cow' the populace.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Archimedes' Lever wrote:

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

We were, but cutting down on the chlorofluorocarbons seems to be doing
the trick.

You've obviously never seen the hole.

Quite a few suggest the hole was always there in the first place. It was
finding it that caused the panic.

Graham

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 10 May 2009 23:12:58 GMT) it happened nico@puntnl.niks
(Nico Coesel) wrote in <4a075982.971841109@news.planet.nl>:

Why keep all that antique analog stuff around?

Because it works? OTOH, changing the timing in an analog circuit is
difficult if it means modifying a lot of components on a lot of
boards. If you go analog, you must be sure it is right before going
into production. Which is not necessarely a bad thing because it
forces you to really think about what you're doing.

In the old (well very old for some) days NOS (at that time Dutch television network)
used equipment from Fernsehn GMBH, nice plugins, LOADED
with trimpots.
Much analog, anything you could think of had a trimmer
Now to service such a thing requires, when replacing just a transistor,
a lot of alignment.
We need to design circuits so no trimming is needed.
Sure for some state of the art stuff, trimmers are needed anyways.
The old tek scopes had zillions of those, I have done QC for Tek ...
But for normal stuff any adjustment point that can be avoided makes it cheaper.
Competition.

I recall designing a device and using a GAL16V8 for some simple logic
functions (including some timing). I used an extra 74HC14 to have
schmit-trigger inputs for the RC timing networks. Having something
programmable in a circuit can help to implement those last-minute
changes some customers like to make.

With EEPROM and FLASH and digital, as in PIC, you can calibrate via a simple computer link,
remotely if need be, I design that in all the time.

But... using a PIC is a really bad idea.

Well, if you are religious about that, there is no use to argue, I do not
argue with Jehovah witnesses at the door either, but do have good conversation.
Does it help them? I dunno.

I never was a fan of PIC
controllers based on what I've seen being made with PICs and the specs
from Microchip. Unfortunately one of my customers has a product for
which the PIC 16Fxxx firmware needs to be rewritten by me.

So you know shit about PICs and blame it on the PIC?
Most small micros have severe limitations in registers, instruction set, etc.

Throwing
out the stock is just too expensive. The PIC processor's architecture
is even worse than I thought. Multiple memory banks, weak instruction
set. I need to jump through a lot of hoops to write C code for it and
work around the flaws in the hi-tech compiler.

Well FYI I have done video on a PIC 12.
In asm.
But then my old Z80 experiences did make me learn to count instruction cycles,
about timing.

Can't even re-use
existing C code because pointers don't work well with multiple memory
banks.

Look, if you want to use gcc use an embedded module running Linux.

Having all data global is the most convenient. Altogether it
costs a lot of extra development time (=money). I start to wish they
had used an 8051!

8051 / 8047 EPROM? Well I have used those, even wrote an assembler for it,
designed my own development system, but ... PIC is simpler.

The PIC really is a dead-end around the next corner
if you want to get some serious work done.

Bull excrement.

I've hear they do not even have 'gas' in Almere.

 

[Archimedes' Lever]

On Mon, 11 May 2009 11:32:19 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

Archimedes' Lever wrote:

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

We were, but cutting down on the chlorofluorocarbons seems to be doing
the trick.

You've obviously never seen the hole.

Quite a few suggest the hole was always there in the first place. It was
finding it that caused the panic.

Graham

No. They didn't panic. That is the point. The laser disc is from
decades ago.

 

[Raveninghorde]

On Sun, 10 May 2009 16:06:51 -0700 (PDT), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

On May 10, 4:58 pm, Ian Bell <ruffreco...@yahoo.com> wrote:
bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On May 10, 3:03 pm, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@hotmail.com
wrote:
In 30 years, the largest figure according to your choice of smoothing
etc and data source is about 0.2C.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/07/april-global-temperature-anomal...

Graham

So what? You keep on getting excited about short term noise, as if it
said anything about the long term trend generated by the build up in
C02 in the atmosphere.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

So where is the long term data necessary to demonstrate the long term trend?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

for example.

Panicing Bill, who does not approve of people using obsolete data, is
stilll trying to flog misleading and obsolete data.

For the real picture:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html

 

[Eeyore]

Archimedes' Lever wrote:

Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:
Archimedes' Lever wrote:
bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

We were, but cutting down on the chlorofluorocarbons seems to be doing
the trick.

You've obviously never seen the hole.

Quite a few suggest the hole was always there in the first place. It was
finding it that caused the panic.

No. They didn't panic. That is the point. The laser disc is from
decades ago.

It's my impression the 'popular meeja' panicked along with the greens and
tree-huggers.

Are you saying as I'm suggesting that the hole was indeed there a long, long
time ago ?

Graham

 

[Jim Yanik]

James Arthur <bogusabdsqy@verizon.net> wrote in
news:uWONl.471$5F2.230@nwrddc01.gnilink.net:

Jim Yanik wrote:
don <don> wrote in
news:K5ydndfBW_XAWJjXnZ2dnUVZ_radnZ2d@forethought.net:

JosephKK wrote:

President Obama revealed Monday that he's half a supply-sider. If
only someone could explain to him the other half. We have a tax
code, the
What if we just take it from Cheney:

http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/cheney%E2%80%99s-hallib
ur ton-profits-rise-as-oil-climbs-to-record-highs/

By now, I am sure he can kill the national debt in no time.

don


DUH,when oil prices are high,there's bound to be more exploration and
drilling,thus a rise in profits for companies associated with that
process.

OTOH,Obama and the DemocRATs have blocked US domestic oil drilling
and refinery projects,blocked nuclear power,and expect everyone to
"keep their tires inflated and cut back,conserve,etc.". Of course
that causes the US to IMPORT more oil,with all that entails.It also
keeps oil prices high,and that doesn't help Us auto makers either.
People lose jobs when energy prices are high and people are cutting
back on their spending.

Oh,and BTW,producing more domestic oil makes MORE revenue for the
government,both thru leases and the additional jobs that pay wages
that are taxed.Those jobs extend far back into the US economy.

Mr. Obama's pushing for more ethanol too. That destroys oil.


They want Americans to lower their standard of living.

I don't think they want that, I think they're just clueless.

doesn't make sense;Obama is smart and does know what he's doing.
Remember Obama comes from an America-hating background.
(and I suspect he's a closet Muslim;there's too much evidence to not
suspect it.)

Here,
anyway. Or maybe they think they can legally force people to work
hard and be extra productive even when it doesn't benefit them, and,
ultimately, used against them.

they believe that people are stupid,and events are proving them right.

This too shall pass.

Except it may bring about the destruction of the Constitution and the US as
we know it. USSC Justices serve for many years,and once social programs are
enacted,they never go away.


--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

 

[Jim Yanik]

James Arthur <bogusabdsqy@verizon.net> wrote in
news:u_ONl.472$5F2.328@nwrddc01.gnilink.net:

John Larkin wrote:
Why do we want to put humans back on the moon?

it's the High Frontier.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

John

For the cheese?

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Raveninghorde]

On Mon, 11 May 2009 05:41:34 -0700 (PDT), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

On May 11, 1:13 pm, Raveninghorde <raveninghorde@invalid> wrote:
On Sun, 10 May 2009 16:06:51 -0700 (PDT), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On May 10, 4:58 pm, Ian Bell <ruffreco...@yahoo.com> wrote:
bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On May 10, 3:03 pm, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@hotmail.com
wrote:
In 30 years, the largest figure according to your choice of smoothing
etc and data source is about 0.2C.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/07/april-global-temperature-anomal...

Graham

So what? You keep on getting excited about short term noise, as if it
said anything about the long term trend generated by the build up in
C02 in the atmosphere.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

So where is the long term data necessary to demonstrate the long term trend?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

for example.

Panicing Bill, who does not approve of people using obsolete data,  is
stilll trying to flog misleading and obsolete data.

For the real picture:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html- Hide quoted text -

Same story, same point. As I've said before, I've got reservations
about the URL, not least because you are pushing it.

But no reservations when Don uses it? I'm "pushing" it beacause it is
up to date which is why you don't want to accept it.

So a. You are paranoid and b. You are happy to peddle misleading and
out of date data.

 

[Raveninghorde]

On Mon, 11 May 2009 05:37:11 -0700 (PDT), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

On May 11, 4:32 am, "Andrew" <andyv...@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

The data present there reflects real measurements, not models. The
most plausible explanation of the increase - an increasing greenhouse
effect driven by rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere - does
rely on layered models of the atmosphere to describe what's going on,
but that's what physics is about.
=============================

Funny, how temperature does not correlate with changes in hydrocarbon use.

- How much CO2 was generated by humanity in 1920 vs 1980? Temperature slope.
- What is the reason of the temeprature drop between 1940 and 1970 despite
rising use of hydrocarbon?

http://ginacobb.typepad.com/gina_cobb/images/2008/06/06/solarvsco2.jpg

The usual explanation is sulphur dioxide pollution from burning high-
sulphur oil, which also caused acid rain. Once we went over to
scrubbing the SO2 out of the chimney stacks of dirty-oil fired power
stations, acid rain went away, and with it the aerosols high in the
atmosphere which had been raising the earth's albedo and cooling the
planet.

Some people have also pointed the finger at the North Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation, which seems to have been in a cooling phase
back then, and may be in another such cooling phase at the moment.

A slightly longer temperature sequence puts your - cherry-picked -
data in context

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

where one can see that the 1940 to 1980 feature is just a wiggle in a
longer term rising trend.

And up to date data that puts your cherry picked data in context:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html

 

[legg]

On Sun, 10 May 2009 15:50:59 -0700 (PDT), wimabctel@tetech.nl wrote:

On 10 mayo, 21:06, Tim Williams <tmoran...@gmail.com> wrote:
Question the first: where to find transformer (or inductor) cores?
Mouser and Digikey don't sell them plain.  Who's the magnetic
equivalent of Digikey?

Other question: how to select cores?  Specifically, I'm looking for
something in the 10kHz (square wave, PWM), 10kVA range, with high
permeability to minimize the number of turns.  Saturation should be
fairly high, given the low operating frequency.  Ratio 4:1, with about
200Vrms (fundamental component) primary and 50Vrms secondary.  The
secondary will be copper tubing, 1/4 or 3/8" dia., so a one-turn
secondary is advantageous.

Given the permeability and saturation, I'm thinking something like
Metglas.  I know I need something in the 2-3" range, and I can
calculate things like A_L and A*t(sat) from the properties, but it
would be a whole lot easier if I had both parameters laid out in a
table of standard shapes.  I can't really make any estimates on what
size I need if I don't have a standard formula for the geometry, so I
don't even know what inductance and magnetizing current and saturation
I have to look for.

And why do they never specify amp-turns saturation?  It's always in
B.  I can measure amp turns, I can't measure Teslas.  They give A_L by
the core, but not saturation, what the hell?

Tim

Hello Tim,

You said 50Vrms at 10 kHz, 1 turn. This means you need peak flux = 1.2
mT. So using a ferrite up to B=200mT, you need a cross section of
about 1.2m/0.2 = 0.006 m^2. That is a square with 3" sides. I never
saw ferrite cores with that large cross section.

Probably you have to increase the number of secondary turns and/or use
a low loss material that has higher Bsat (so you can design at higher
peak flux density). This will result in less cross section for the
magnetic path.

Given the power, a complete electrical / thermal design is required
when the duty cycle of this transformer will be high.

Best regards,

Wim
PA3DJS
www.tetech.nl

Or putting it more generally, for fully reversing AC flux,

Ae = V / (2.f.n.Bpk)

Ae = core cross-section in square meters
V = average volts applied
n = number of turns
Bpk = permitted peak flux determined for core loss limited
or saturation-limited design.

RL

 

[Nobody]

On Mon, 11 May 2009 14:52:47 +1000, David L. Jones wrote:

You're comparing a PIC to a real CPU. This thread was comparing a
PIC to 74-series logic. Do you actually need to use C (with
pointers, relocatable code etc) to write the firmware for a quad
monostable?

Well, it is a substantial compromise from using C++ with inheritance,
constructors and destructors. ;-)

Or filling the ROM with a BASIC interpreter and 3 lines of BASIC.

But seriously, even the tiniest 12-bit PIC architecture will handle
this in assembly without having to fret and whine about diddling those
few bits for bank switching. Something that takes up less than a page
in PIC assembly is not much of a program (a page in APL could probably
program the Apollo moon mission).

The 16-bit architectures (eg. PIC24/dsPIC30/33) are C-friendly. Maybe
there's one that's pin compatible with that 16F?

The 18-series can handle C without much trouble.

FSR/INDF addressing crosses page boundaries rather than wrapping, I/O
registers are all in the access bank, you have MOVFF, and CALL and GOTO
take 20-bit absolute addresses. The end result is that you should rarely
have to deal with bank-switching even if you code in assembler.

I've had very little problem using C on the 16F series PIC's (using the
HiTech compiler). IIRC it handled the bank switching and other issues
automatically.
IME, the perpetual PIC/C beat-up is a load of hot air.

If you're programming the 10/12/16-series chips, you really should be
thinking about bank/page switching, even if you're programming in C. I.e.
grouping related subroutines into the same page, grouping related
variables into a common bank etc, rather than storing data and code in
arbitrary locations then littering the code with STATUS/PCLATH changes as
needed.

With 8086 DOS compilers, you had a choice of using the large/huge memory
models which provided a flat address space at the expense of continually
modifying segment registers, or using separate "near" and "far"
pointers. The former was simpler, but the performance hit was quite
noticable.

 

[John Fields]

On Sun, 10 May 2009 15:15:02 -0400, "Martin Riddle"
<martin_rid@verizon.net> wrote:

"Jim Thompson" <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@My-Web-Site.com> wrote in
message news14e05pn4sn2o16gvebjc5h5eov2nqhd48@4ax.com...
On Sun, 10 May 2009 13:33:06 -0400, "Martin Riddle"
martin_rid@verizon.net> wrote:



"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:gu6ahg$nu9$1@news.albasani.net...
On a sunny day (Sun, 10 May 2009 11:49:25 +0200) it happened Marco
Trapanese
marcotrapaneseNOSPAM@gmail.com> wrote in
gu67v9$lte$1@tdi.cu.mi.it>:

Hi,

I'm looking for a dual (quad) monostable retriggerable
multivirbrators
with minimal components count.

I need:

* +5V single power supply
* THT technology as well SMD
* "long" pulse width (> 500 ms - the 74HC123 doesn't seem to reach
that)
* best would be one RC for all parts

Could you suggest me some products?

Thank you
Marco

PIC
LOL

LM555 or mc1455

Cheers



I prefer 'HC4538 for such long-time-constant tasks.

...Jim Thompson

I use that part often, nice non retriggable dual one shot.

---
Retriggerable also.

See page 9 of:

http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC14538B-D.PDF

JF

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 11 May 2009 05:10:17 -0500, flipper <flipper@fish.net> wrote:

On Sun, 10 May 2009 20:08:23 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sun, 10 May 2009 20:59:47 -0500, flipper <flipper@fish.net> wrote:

On Sat, 09 May 2009 19:50:14 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sat, 09 May 2009 21:06:41 -0500, flipper <flipper@fish.net> wrote:


I'll do you even better. Data shows the world has been in a warming
trend since it exited the LIA.

I suppose that's why it's no longer the LIA. You know, cold... ice
age.... warmer... not ice age.

Geez, quit getting technical. I hate it when people get technical.

John


Hehe. Yeah, I've been accused of that before

At the risk of even further technical confusion, AGW proponents often
claim a desire to "save the planet."

Well, if that's what they want then they're working in the wrong
direction because we are currently on the cold, cold, depleted CO2,
side of the planetary life range.

If you look over the past 500 million years, only 1 or 2C lower, and
150 or so ppm less CO2, is associated with large scale gaciation and
mass extinctions with 10C to 12C warmer, and 1600ppm more CO2, being
the periods of flourishing life and maximum bio diversity.

Or, to put it bluntly, we're only 1C to 2C of cooling, and a smidgen
less CO2, away from a planetary catastrophe exceeding even biblical
proportions but we're quite a ways down from being hot enough for the
historical 'life giving' bio diversity planet lovers so often speak
of.

I have noted here before that the planet is running out of CO2. In
another 50 million years or so, most plant life as we know it will be
unable to survive. We were put here to dig up all that sequestered
carbon and get it back into circulation.

John


Might have a point. Maybe that's Goddess Earth's reason for us being
here, eh?

Among others.

John

 

On May 11, 4:32 am, "Andrew" <andyv...@yahoo.com> wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

The data present there reflects real measurements, not models. The
most plausible explanation of the increase - an increasing greenhouse
effect driven by rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere - does
rely on layered models of the atmosphere to describe what's going on,
but that's what physics is about.
============================
Funny, how temperature does not correlate with changes in hydrocarbon use..

- How much CO2 was generated by humanity in 1920 vs 1980? Temperature slope.
- What is the reason of the temeprature drop between 1940 and 1970 despite
rising use of hydrocarbon?

http://ginacobb.typepad.com/gina_cobb/images/2008/06/06/solarvsco2.jpg

The usual explanation is sulphur dioxide pollution from burning high-
sulphur oil, which also caused acid rain. Once we went over to
scrubbing the SO2 out of the chimney stacks of dirty-oil fired power
stations, acid rain went away, and with it the aerosols high in the
atmosphere which had been raising the earth's albedo and cooling the
planet.

Some people have also pointed the finger at the North Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation, which seems to have been in a cooling phase
back then, and may be in another such cooling phase at the moment.

A slightly longer temperature sequence puts your - cherry-picked -
data in context

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

where one can see that the 1940 to 1980 feature is just a wiggle in a
longer term rising trend.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On May 11, 1:13 pm, Raveninghorde <raveninghorde@invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 10 May 2009 16:06:51 -0700 (PDT), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On May 10, 4:58 pm, Ian Bell <ruffreco...@yahoo.com> wrote:
bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On May 10, 3:03 pm, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@hotmail.com
wrote:
In 30 years, the largest figure according to your choice of smoothing
etc and data source is about 0.2C.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/07/april-global-temperature-anomal...

Graham

So what? You keep on getting excited about short term noise, as if it
said anything about the long term trend generated by the build up in
C02 in the atmosphere.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

So where is the long term data necessary to demonstrate the long term trend?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

for example.

Panicing Bill, who does not approve of people using obsolete data,  is
stilll trying to flog misleading and obsolete data.

For the real picture:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html- Hide quoted text -

Same story, same point. As I've said before, I've got reservations
about the URL, not least because you are pushing it.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[MooseFET]

On May 10, 2:53 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sun, 10 May 2009 17:42:15 -0400, Phil Hobbs



pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 10 May 2009 17:02:39 -0400, "Martin Riddle"
martin_...@verizon.net> wrote:

Apparently this will never happen again.  Because of the Hubble service
mission, Endeavour is ready in case a rescue is needed since they are
not going to the space station.

see thumbnail 9 for a view of pads 39 A & B

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts125/mult....

Cheers

Crazy. For the price of one repair trip, we could have funded dozens
of ground-based telescopes with resolution superior to Hubble and many
decades of lifetime each. Throw in a few expendable UV and gamma-ray
satellites too.

Pity the space station isn't usable as a telescope platform. At least
it might claim to have a use.

Read Chaisson's book, The Hubble Wars.

John

The whole space thing isn't a scientific endeavour, it's a military one
at bottom.  That's why the scientists have been puzzled by the
priorities from day 1.

I don't even think it's military. And it's sure not science. It's
politics, money, and show biz. NASA won't even buy magnetic storage
for some of the data that older satellites are sending back.

Why do we want to put humans back on the moon?

China is working on putting a man on the moon. I think it is a case
of "We are doing it because they are. They are doing it because we
did." It is all about pride and ego. NASA isn't likely to put a
human onto Mars any time soon so repeating the moon trick will have to
do.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 11 May 2009 05:56:59 -0700 (PDT), MooseFET
<kensmith@rahul.net> wrote:

On May 10, 2:53 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 10 May 2009 17:42:15 -0400, Phil Hobbs



pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 10 May 2009 17:02:39 -0400, "Martin Riddle"
martin_...@verizon.net> wrote:

Apparently this will never happen again.  Because of the Hubble service
mission, Endeavour is ready in case a rescue is needed since they are
not going to the space station.

see thumbnail 9 for a view of pads 39 A & B

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts125/mult...

Cheers

Crazy. For the price of one repair trip, we could have funded dozens
of ground-based telescopes with resolution superior to Hubble and many
decades of lifetime each. Throw in a few expendable UV and gamma-ray
satellites too.

Pity the space station isn't usable as a telescope platform. At least
it might claim to have a use.

Read Chaisson's book, The Hubble Wars.

John

The whole space thing isn't a scientific endeavour, it's a military one
at bottom.  That's why the scientists have been puzzled by the
priorities from day 1.

I don't even think it's military. And it's sure not science. It's
politics, money, and show biz. NASA won't even buy magnetic storage
for some of the data that older satellites are sending back.

Why do we want to put humans back on the moon?

China is working on putting a man on the moon. I think it is a case
of "We are doing it because they are. They are doing it because we
did." It is all about pride and ego. NASA isn't likely to put a
human onto Mars any time soon so repeating the moon trick will have to
do.

Humans have proven to be remarkably inept and fragile in space. If a
fraction of the manned-spaceflight bucks had been spent on robotics
and science, we'd have something to show for all that lost money and
all those lost lives. Some really talented people have died in the
name of sci-fi show-biz.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 11 May 2009 06:41:02 GMT, James Arthur
<bogusabdsqy@verizon.net> wrote:

a7yvm109gf5d1@netzero.com wrote:
On May 10, 8:24 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

Read Dragonfly for an account of the sick, vicious political beast
NASA is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly:_NASA_and_the_Crisis_Aboard_Mir
Sounds yummy. Will do.

John

It's a big, long book. Too long in some areas, but I think it's
necessary to drive home the point of the infighting and bickering in
NASA.
It's like a high school for type-A people.

I have an uncle and a friend who live in it.

One friend tells tale of stuff that flies that makes you
physically sick. Like (censored), redundant systems that
actually _add_ serial mission-critical failure nodes.
Bush-league stuff you wouldn't put in a calculator.

And, mixed in, is bleeding-edge stuff that's excellent.
Supremely frustrating for the guys who do the good stuff.

Budget-wise: man years and millions spent extravagantly to
design ___ (a two-man-month system. I can't say what--he'd
get canned.) Nitwit bosses, selected for their political
correctness. Rubber-stamp design reviews. Object, no
matter the merits, and you're black-balled.

It's a Dilbert-ville^3. Not much different from other government
shops, whatever their purpose.

"The Hubble Wars" is a fun read, especially the parts about the mirror
defect. An amateur telescope maker could have spotted the out-of-shape
mirror with a candle and a straight-edge. NASA refused to allow any
tests except the flawed, unchecked laser thing, because the other
tests wouldn't be precise enough!


John

 

[Eeyore]

Okkim Atnarivik wrote:

Archimedes' Lever <OneBigLever@infiniteseries.org> wrote:
: On Sun, 10 May 2009 15:56:54 -0700 (PDT), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:
: >We were, but cutting down on the chlorofluorocarbons seems to be doing
: >the trick.
: You've obviously never seen the hole.

www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/world_avoided.html

"...the team simulated 'what might have been' if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
and similar chemicals were not banned through the treaty known as the
Montreal Protocol".

On Mar 21, 2009 10:41 PM R Agness wrote:

Having spent time in Antarctica when DR. Suzan Solomon discovered the Ozone
hole this artical is pure fiction.
1. Ozone is developed by UP in the equtorial reagion of the earth.
2. The hole over the South Pole is formed at the time in the Austral Spring
when sunlight reaches the upper atmosphere when ozone, CFC's and noculecent
clouds are present.
3. Nuculecent clouds form over the continent when the temperture is below -80C
at a high elevation in the Ozone layer.
4. It takes clouds at that elevation, ozone an sun ligh to break down the ozone
into Oxygen.
5. The Ozone is no replentished from the mid latitudes at the rate that it is
destroyed because of the polar vortex.
6.The ozone hole does no occur at the North Pole because the temperature at the
level of the ozone layer does not drop below -80C.
7. Ozone is allways becreated over the tropic region.

Main thing to remember the sun creates ozone in the atmospere.
The hole occures only at the South Pole.
It occurs in August thru September at the S Pole region aand starts to fill in
October-November.


Graham