Pluto Mission a Scam?

[Bugsinrugs]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

So no comments about this amazing photo?

Truly an amazing photo!
I would rather see our or my tax dollars spent on space exploration than wasted on wars. Sorry, had to say that.

[KNS]

Incredible photo. Amazing that we can bring back such an image from so far away.

And I also wish NASA's budget was much bigger than it currently is, it seems like they make do with scraps.

[pavulon]

That is like, so not real. I've seen every Star Wars so far and none of the planets look like that one.

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

So no comments about this amazing photo?

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by KNS

Incredible photo. Amazing that we can bring back such an image from so far away.

And I also wish NASA's budget was much bigger than it currently is, it seems like they make do with scraps.

There's still some interesting stuff going on.

Part of The Orion Space craft being welded. https://www.facebook.com/NASAOrion?fref=ts

[javadog]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

You want to know why the public doesn't understand science? Read this link.
I've got a degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in materials engineering. I'm not exactly a stranger to math. But I don't know WTF this person is trying to say. It purports to answer a layman's question, but doesn't bother to use layman's language to do it. Science needs to learn to communicate.

I read the link and found it easy to understand. The answer was what I expected it to be, based on the description of the problem. It was the only logical answer.

JR

[javadog]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

There may well have been some computers used in the production of the SR-71, I don't know that just a guess. They sure as heck were very primitive number crunchers nothing like the CAD design computers used in aerospace design currently.

They had some real super computers with 4 or 8 KB of core memory back then. Zero graphics, just numbers.

They had access to an IBM 700 series mainframe through their engine partner, Pratt & Whitney, but I don't know if they used it much. Back in Burbank, the slide rule was king.

JR

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by javadog

They had access to an IBM 700 series mainframe through their engine partner, Pratt & Whitney, but I don't know if they used it much. Back in Burbank, the slide rule was king.

JR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_700/7000_series

Vacuum tube mainframes. In the pure sense of definition of the word computer, yep they were state of the art computers. With a speed so slow that they are off the scale so slow and predate any measurement or comparison to a computer of today.

I would love to figure out a valid comparison of the computing power of the 700 series room size computer to a iPhone 6s with 128 Gig of memory.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

There may well have been some computers used in the production of the SR-71, I don't know that just a guess. They sure as heck were very primitive number crunchers nothing like the CAD design computers used in aerospace design currently.

They had some real super computers with 4 or 8 KB of core memory back then. Zero graphics, just numbers.

Darn, my best buddies dad worked on the SR-71... his dad is now RIP or I would ask him.

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_700/7000_series

Vacuum tube mainframes. In the pure sense of definition of the word computer, yep they were state of the art computers. With a speed so slow that they are off the scale so slow and predate any measurement or comparison to a computer of today.

I would love to figure out a valid comparison of the computing power of the 700 series room size computer to a iPhone 6s with 128 Gig of memory.

Dunno if this is true but I heard that a modern cell phone has more computing power that the early space shuttle.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

With a speed so slow that they are off the scale so slow and predate any measurement or comparison to a computer of today.

Faster than a slide rule... faster than mine, anyway.

I wish I still had my slide rule. It would be fun to play with it again.

The number of calculations they did had to be mind boggling. Just the aero testing of the inlets was incredible; I think they measured 250,000 things. Not many people in that group, either.

JR

[GH85Carrera]

Again, it would be cool to see an app on a cell phone do that same testing and how long it would take and if the numbers came out the same.

I used to drive across the country with nothing more than a paper road map to guide me. Now I use my cell phone to get me to destinations. I can even make a phone call right from my car with it!

[javadog]

I use a Garmin, which I find better than my phone, but I still take a road atlas, too. They are useful for things that a Garmin or phone are not.

JR

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by M.D. Holloway

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this ... but a friend who is always skeptical about everything believes that the Pluto mission is a scam. The images are computer generated. Not sure why a scam if its true but its possible. Of course they think we didn't land on the moon either.

Lessee, they TOOK $720,000,000 of our tax dollars and used it to fund the new horizons project.
Ten years later in return for our $720,000,000 we got ........ a few crappy pictures that don't mean squat.


OF COURSE IT WAS A SCAM, A HUGE ONE!

Sure it went to Pluto but it was still a SCAM!


NASA has become nothing more than a $19 billion a year lab-coat welfare program.
DEFUND NASA NOW.

[gacook]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Lessee, they TOOK $720,000,000 of our tax dollars and used it to fund the new horizons project.
Ten years later in return for our $720,000,000 we got ........ a few crappy pictures that don't mean squat.


OF COURSE IT WAS A SCAM, A HUGE ONE!

Sure it went to Pluto but it was still a SCAM!


NASA has become nothing more than a $19 billion a year lab-coat welfare program.
DEFUND NASA NOW.

You do realize nearly all technology-based items you use in your daily life got their start at NASA, right? Your "hate everything government" attitude gives you a very myopic view of the world you live in, Sammy.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by gacook

You do realize nearly all technology-based items you use in your daily life got their start at NASA, right? Your "hate everything government" attitude gives you a very myopic view of the world you live in, Sammy.

I'm all for space exploration and I even work in the science field.

However I'm not sure I buy the "look at all the cool tech we got from the space program" angle.

Of course we will never know but what if we had dumped all the billions of dollars directly into tech development here on planet earth?

[gacook]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

I'm all for space exploration and I even work in the science field.

However I'm not sure I buy the "look at all the cool tech we got from the space program" angle.

Of course we will never know but what if we had dumped all the billions of dollars directly into tech development here on planet earth?

Still would've been government funded, so...certain people would automatically hate it all.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by gacook

You do realize nearly all technology-based items you use in your daily life got their start at NASA, right? Your "hate everything government" attitude gives you a very myopic view of the world you live in, Sammy.

Gotta call bull **** on that one.

But just to give you a chance, start naming them.
Here's a head start:
Let's see ...tang, Velcro,..... mylar ......... uh ........ hmmmm....... uh... oh then there's .......

My father and grandfather made careers out of being rocket scientists, and they would NEVER repeat the urban myth you just posted.

And even the things that THE SPACE PROGRAM (NASA itself doesn't make ANYTHING, they pay other companies to do it for them) did develop would have been 1/100th the cost if the same money had been offered to private enterprise R&D companies instead of plundering it in the muck that is gubmint waste.

And I do not hate everything government,
I hate government waste and manipulation and over-regulation. That's all.
But that pretty much sums up what all of gubmint is, doesn't it?

[javadog]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Let's see ...tang, Velcro,..... mylar ......... uh ........ hmmmm....... uh... oh then there's .......

LAOROSA | DESIGN-JUNKY: 26 NASA Inventions That We Take For Granted Everyday...

Over 6,00 patents, you can look them up.

JR

[sammyg2]

OOPS looks like I was wrong, NASA didn't even come up with TANG.

As a pre-emptive strike, I list the following technologies that are often wrongly attributed to
NASA.

Mistakenly attributed NASA spinoff technology (NASA didn't do it)

The following is a list of technologies sometimes mistakenly attributed directly to NASA.


Barcodes (NASA developed a special type of barcode, but this should not be mistaken for the original one.)

Cordless power tools (The first cordless power tool was unveiled by Black & Decker in 1961. It was used by NASA and a number of spinoff products came after that.)

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), best known as a device for body scanning. (NASA contractor JPL developed digital signal processing, which does have applications in medical imaging.)

Quartz clocks (The quartz clock dates back to 1927. However, in the late 1960s, NASA partnered with a company to make a quartz clock that was on the market for a few years.)

Smoke detectors (NASA’s connection to the modern smoke detector is that it made one with adjustable sensitivity as part of the Skylab project.)

Tang juice powder (Tang was developed by General Foods in 1957, and it has been for sale since 1959. It was used in the first orbit missions, which gave awareness to it.)

Teflon (Invented by a DuPont scientist in 1941 and used on frying pans from the 1950s.[4] It has been applied by NASA to heat shields, space suits, and cargo hold liners.)

Velcro (A Swiss invention from the 1940s. Velcro was used during the Apollo missions to anchor equipment for astronauts’ convenience in zero gravity situations.)

Space Pen (A common urban legend states that NASA spent a large amount of money to develop a pen that would write in space (the result purportedly being the Fisher Space Pen), while the Soviets used pencils. While NASA did spend some money to create a pen to work in space, the project was cancelled due to public opposition, and US astronauts used pencils until the 'Fisher' space pen was invented by a third party.)

Microchip (The first microchips were developed more than ten years before the first moon landing.)

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by javadog

LAOROSA | DESIGN-JUNKY: 26 NASA Inventions That We Take For Granted Everyday...

Over 6,00 patents, you can look them up.

JR

The first two items on that BS site are the cat scan and the microchip.

Not surprisingly, they also appear on the list of things that are often WRONGLY ATTRIBUTED TO NASA.

Fail.

Microchip (The first microchips were developed more than ten years before the first moon landing.)

[sammyg2]

This is the statement that was made:

You do realize nearly all technology-based items you use in your daily life got their start at NASA, right?

I'm still waiting for ONE example of a technology-based item that I use in my daily life that got it's START at NASA.