Space Exploration,astronomy & Cosmology

Did you get to see anything Bwood ? Was cloudy with light rain last evening and night.

 

Shame. Bleeding weather always interfering.

 

Ever wondered why the phrase "T-MINUS" is a well used phrase when counting down to a lift off? <put's her computer science hat on>

It's to do with the code that launches the rockets. In the most basic explaination possible, SpaceX cannot handle negative numbers. Ada (which is used to design the landing/launching hard code) does not explicitly handle negative numbers. A phrase of T, meanung "Take Off" is play on the "take off the negative" subset of a numbered value. So, when you get to "T-MINUS 10.. 9.." etc. It's a cheeky nod to the algorithms used to make the rocket take off.

For example:

Code:

--
-- trying to abuse the language
-- Rose, Skyla
-- Apr'23
--

N : Natural range 0 .. Integer'Last;

Ada.Integer.Text_IO.Put(Item => N'First -1);

Would give me:

Code:

GCC Gnat2023 GMAKE Compiler (Pro)
-----------------------------------------------
[ada]compiling...
-wall -c -g at line 145 requested value outside of defined scope
-wall -c at line 145 error: invalid request to the right of token 'First'
Compilation failed. Return Code: 1
Source Dir: E:\usr\SkylaRose\funprojs\ada\demo\src\main.adb

 

Do you think mankind will ever create a probe that can enter the harsh atmosphere of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, withstand their extreme environment and take images? Would that even be possible? Looking at each planet as an individual, you have the elements of gas, moisture, pressure, gravity, dramatic changes in atmosphere weather, wind and in Jupiter's case a massive ocean of liquid diamonds... Imagine though the images we could see.

 

Only to a certain depth in the Jovian & Saturnian atmosphere but materials technology is improving all the time. Here's a video on the Challenger disaster you might like to watch Skyla. No Roger Boisjoly in this however. The great Richard Feynman demonstrated how the O rings failed by simply placing identical rings into cups of frozen water and then showing their lack of flex thereafter.

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As you can see in the comments Morton Thiokol made the rocket in segments as they had to transport it from Utah. The person who made the selection of constructor was a Mormon who generally are from Utah. The best design did not have any O-rings.

 

Thank you for those. That first video was brilliant, but it still made me so danm angry they never listened to the engineers and scientists. Power of the upper level won against safety and testing. Considering I work in this area, I can first hand tell you how many tests, modifications, reviews and even re-writes go into writing the launch software. One thing I am always told is test it, test it again, do this then test it. Testing to find faults, redesigning and testing again is key to good relaible software, which in turn makes good reliable hardware. I've written a test program (in my free time) which tests the temperature of an element and doesn't fire the boosters unless it meets a pre-defined value. Could of worked, but I have no idea if the O-Rings were under supervision by an external source. SpaceX has moved on so much since then though, both in hardware and software. Space travel in general is relaitivly safe, but the slighest error and you lose everything. Shuttle, momey and most importantly human life.

Still it was a good watch and makes me hope something like this never happens again within our control of course.

 

I've a keen interest I don't know why in maritime disasters since I am petrified of the oceans and what they can do. No vessel is safe and certainly with global warming the possibilities of ever fiercer storms and bigger rogue waves is increasing so you won't get me on a cruise on one of those deathtrap floating hotels.

The number of times basic safety regulations were overlooked fought against and downright ignored is staggering. Often the cause being senior management and owners. Contingencies were known about but no planning was made for them. It took years for the Plimsoll line for instance to be introduced and even then right up to the mid twentieth century politicians favoured the shipping companies. Sometimes they would change a ship's layout adding weight or creating weaknesses and then proceed to either bribe officials or pretend they were only relatively minor. Even now they are trying to get away with all sorts of things. From flags of convenience, poorly trained crew speaking multiple languages that they recruit for a pittance from poorer countries have all contributed to so many losses. Not to mention captain arrogance.

There are a plethora of books on disasters be they building collapses, pandemics and the like and they all have common root causes. Complacency, arrogance, financial and/or political pressure. As Feynman said nature cannot be fooled but the value placed on human life seems remarkably low. For instance on the sea merchant ship design remains remarkably poor in resisting the ocean or trying to preserve crew lives.

 

Very well said, hard to disagree with any of that. Your right of course, doesn't matter if it's outer space, at sea, on the roads or on the rails - safety and maintence should always go above everything else. You could also throw amusement parks in that same pot. Look at the Smiler at Alton Towers a few years back, it was preventable had the system recongised there was still an empty carridge on the track. Whether that was down to employee fault or mechanical I do not know, but again it proves no matter how well designed you think something is it can go wrong. Nothing is 100% fail proof. Back on topic, of course the engineer's could not predict mother nature but they were aware of the cold snap, and especially on the night before the launch of the Challenger. To give them credit they did try to have it delayed, they knew about the problem with the elastic of the rings against freezing temps. Could the rings of been manufactored to prevent this? Maybe, but we are talking about the late 1980's when materials or design for such a feature would of been alien to most. They did the best they could, and I've never blamed them for what happened. All NASA had to say was "delay it, wait till it warms up". Seven lives are saved.

 

A documentary on the first man in space. Just avoided being shot by the Nazi's in World War Two. A fascinating character.

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A lot of fault lies with the line itself. Substandard steel used with a lot of defects, aesthetics prevailing over common sense in not having so many lifeboats, sailing at full speed into an ice field to set a record and captain arrogance on the part of Smith. And the sheer belief we have conquered nature. The sinking was a rude awakening. Indeed in this instance the use of by Binns on the SS Republic to bring help after a collision with the liner Florida also brought the mistaken belief that in the case of a sinking sufficient help could be summoned regardless to carry away the entire complement crew and passengers.

I have been reading Into The Raging Sea by Rachel Slade covering the sinking of the El Faro. So many errors led to the sinking. Poor maintenance, radical ship redesign that made the points of water entry that much more accessible for the ocean even at a relatively small list angle. A lack of flooding sensors in the holds. Remote management due to the onshore ship captain role being made redundant. Senior management who knew nothing about the sea. And then on top of it all a captain who's arrogance claimed 32 other lives. If anyone could have been saved the simple fact that they were just open lifeboats on board despite new regulations being brought in for enclosed ones, would have meant a death sentence to the crew immersion suits or not.

The author pictures the unfortunate crew on a secondary deck watching as the ship sinks by the bow while enormous waves of sixty feet on average plunge across the deck and the wind speed of 120mph means the air is full of spray so you can barely breathe anyway. The voice recorder transcripts are harrowing. Yet even at the end the company that ran the ship TOTE tried to pin blame solely and squarely upon the captain despite their own multiple failings.

In safety management there is absolutely zero tolerance for complacency and corruption.

 

The new Tim Marshall book is a good read for cosmological novices, such as myself.

 

If it's this one, yeah I've got mine reserved.

 

Possibly, it seems very similar to the one just released, The Future of Geography.

 

Reports that Belegeuse is about to go Super Nova anytime. No real timescale, but then again a few of my work colleagues' are suggesting it's already happened. Since it would take about 430 years or so for the light to reach us.

Here she is in all her glory.

 

It's a good reason for human science to hurry up and perfect the 'Body Freezing' technique. I wouldn't mind waking up in the year 2623 to see it. Even it was just for a few moments.