College Student Explains Obama's Budget "Cuts"

This is pretty good, and explains in a very visual manner about the budget "cuts" Teh One wants to make.

YouTube's embedding code isn't working right now, so here's a link.
I'll check later and edit "As Required".

Budget Cuts

25 Years Ago Today.......

The American space program lost it's innocence.
I was working for Hughes Aircraft at the time, and one of my friends answered a phone call, said "WHAT?!?", and turned ash-white. His mother had been watching the launch on TV, and immediately called him with the news that Challenger, STS-51-L, had been lost. A few minutes later there was an announcement over the P.A. system saying that Challenger had blown up in flight, and we were asked for a moment of silence.
I watched the news coverage that night and couldn't believe my eyes. How had this happened? What caused the failure leading to the loss of vehicle and crew? Since I was working on Really Neat Stuff at the time, I knew there were mountains of paperwork for all the hardware involved that had to be checked, double-checked, cross-checked, and signed off by several people, and then checked again by the people in Quality Control before the equipment could be moved to the next step in processing. If all the steps were done properly, a "defective" unit had very little chance of moving beyond where it was, let alone getting out the door. We used to joke that the equipment we shipped was half worn out from the testing we did to it!
So what really went wrong with all this highly inspected and tested hardware? How did "bad" equipment get out the door? Simply put the equipment was fine, but it was being asked to operate well outside its design parameters. Even with evidence from previous flights that this was a Bad Thing to do, the Engineers who sounded the warnings were overruled, and the launch was allowed to proceed.
The "what" that caused the launch failure was determined quite quickly (too cold, O-rings lost flexibility, hot gases escaped, etc), but the "why" took longer. I think the most telling thing was when some high-level manager had told his Engineering team to "Take off you Engineer's hat, and put on your Manager's hat". I was floored when I heard this, as a good manager will listen to their staff, and back them up when required. This was obviously a case of management deciding what was "best" and ignoring the pleas of their staff to hold the launch until the weather warmed up. Previous flights where it was 10 degrees WARMER than current conditions had shown that the O-ring seals in the Solid Rocket Boosters had a *known* problem with low temperatures causing them not to seal properly. Thiokol's engineers, and Roger Boisjoly in particular, had documented this problem, and were repeatedly ignored, leading to a disasterous result.

Construction Sequence of the International Space Station

This is an amazing Flash animation sent to me by one of my satellite buddies. It shows the growth of the ISS from 1998 to present.

I can't post the animation here, so I'll direct you to the USA Today site that hosts it.

International Space Station Comes Together

New Lyrics for Old Rock Stars

A friend sent me this, and it really cracked me up, besides making me feel OLD....

Enjoy!

Oleg Smacks Another One Out Of The Park

I really enjoy the photography of Oleg Volk. He not only uses his talents for "pretty stuff", but also for a LOT of really good pro-2A work.
I'm not sure when he made this one, but his latest over at LiveJournal gives some very interesting facts.

OUCH! Boeing To Lay Off Another 900 In Long Beach

Well, it seems like the end of Aerospace in Long Beach is near at hand. What with budget cuts here in the U.S., and the weakening world economy, the market for the C-17 is drying up. Boeing has been building up to 13 aircraft a year, and that's going to dwindle down to 9 or 10 for the next couple of years, and they expect to close the production line in 2013.
As recently as the 1990's, there were 20,000 good-paying Aerospace jobs in Long Beach, and now that's down to around 7000, and falling.
The Press telegram has an article about it here.

Delta-IV Heavy Launch Video

Well...all I got for a picture was a short, disappointing contrail, not even worth posting.
Enjoy the video!

Delta-IV Heavy Launch Thursday at 2108UTC / 1308 PST

Don't know if we'll be able to see a daylight launch from here in the SouthBay, but I'm sure gonna try!

Mission Status

Launch was successful!

All I was able to see from here was a rather short, disappointing contrail. The last launch was a night launch, and was pretty cool to see. I tried to get some pix of that one, but didn't set my camera up on the tripod, so.....nothing but blurred pics.
Oh, well....

New Phone!

I was in the Verizon store earlier today to swap out a standard-definition set-top box for a high-definition one. My stepson and his girlfriend bought a new 42" TV yesterday, so I told them I'd go get an HD box so they can enjoy HD now that they have a TV capable of displaying it.
While I was waiting to be called, I started looking at the phones they had. The Droid X really caught my eye, so when I was swapping out the STB, I asked the young guy behind the counter if he handled the phone stuff, too. He told me the counter people handled everything, and was I interested in a phone, too? We started talking prices, and since my wife has the Verizon "Family Plan" for her phone and the kid's phones, he said it would be $9.95 a month to add a line. I asked him if the Droid required a data plan (DUH! I already knew it did), and he said yep, and the data plan was $30 a month for UNLIMITED data, like I had with my iPhone.
I about fell over!
I've been paying AT&T $68 a month for my iPhone, and now I find out I can get a newer phone, with more features, for $28 a month less! Then he tells me if I buy the Droid X, they'll WAIVE the $9.95 a month extra-line fee for two years!
I talked to my wife when I got back with the new HD STB, and we both agreed that saving $38 a month was worth coughing up the $200 to replace my iPhone, as the savings would pay for the phone in a little over 5 months.
I originally had Verizon, but I got tired of carrying around a cellphone AND a PDA. Besides, I really wanted a Smartphone, and at the time I bought my iPhone, the data plans Verizon had were more expensive than AT&T was charging, so I wound up with the "original" iPhone.
So far, with the little I've played with it, I think it's going to be quite a nifty gadget. One of the things I like is that it has a replaceable battery, something sadly lacking on the iPhone.

Intelsat Galaxy-15 a.k.a. "ZombieSat" Returns!

Great day for Intelsat! The Galaxy-15 bird, which stopped responding to ground commands last April 5th and was drifting across the "Orbital Parking Slots" of other satellites, is now responding to ground commands.
This was first thought to have been caused by a solar-flare event, but subsequent ground testing (and a LOT of head scratching!) has determined it was caused by an ESD event. "ESD" stands for "Electro Static Discharge", the same thing that happens when you shuffle across the carpet, grab a door knob or other grounded item, and get zapped. Actually, the other object doesn't have to be grounded, just at a lower electrical potential than you are, and current will flow.
The breakthrough was caused when the satellite's inertial wheels (a method of stabilizing the space craft....think big gyroscope) had absorbed all the momentum they could absorb, and could no longer keep the spacecraft properly oriented with respect to the Earth and the Sun. With the solar panels now pointing away from the sun and not generated any power, the batteries became depleted to the point that the onboard computer caused a reset of all the systems on the satellite, which cleared the fault, and allowed the satellite to begin functioning normally, and respond to ground commands again.
They were very lucky that the ESD event apparently didn't do any permanent damage, like blowing out a bunch of stuff, but instead caused a certain part of the onboard computer to lock-up and ignore ground commands. Once it reset itself and cleared the fault it started operating again.

More here:

Intelsat Galaxy-15 Returns To Service
Build-Up Of Static Electricity Turned Satellite Into Zombie
Intelsat Galaxy-15 Drifts From Zombie To Phoenix-like Recovery

Been Pretty Busy Lately......

So I haven't posted much. The company I was assigned to at my last job has come out of Chapter 11, and is looking to get cranked up again. So, I've been working with another company that's going to bid on providing the services they need. It's an interesting combination of Radio (RF) work, along with a ton of networking support and PC maintenance, and regular maintenance on all the other equipment located on both of the vessels they operate. Since this job requires some very unique skills, the place I'm consulting to is ecstatic that they found me, as I've been able to explain all the arcane things that go on there. Plus, I'm still in contact with most of the old gang, so as Elwood would say, "We're getting the band back together".
I just bought a neat little gun vice from Cabela's, so I'll get some pix of it this weekend, and give a brief review of it. It's easy enough to clean to clean a handgun just sitting at the table, but my rifles were just too cumbersome to do without some kind of holding device.