Scotty (James Dohann) of Star Trek is now Lost in Space

ScottM

ScottM

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The private company that did the launch, SpaceX, is 0-3 so far.

I don't think this bodes well for their planned foray into manned spaceflight. In fact, it seems like wasted effort to cremate somebody before launching them on one of these rockets.
-harry
 
They should have put him into a transporter feedback loop jury-rigged through the phase inducers with the unit set in diagnostic mode so the pattern buffer would stay refreshed -- we could have brought him back in, oh, 75 years...

...just saw that TNG episode on SciFi last night.
 
Ron Levy said:
They should have put him into a transporter feedback loop jury-rigged through the phase inducers with the unit set in diagnostic mode so the pattern buffer would stay refreshed -- we could have brought him back in, oh, 75 years...

...just saw that TNG episode on SciFi last night.
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As did I.

I met James Doohan once. Neat guy, and it was weird to hear his regular voice.

He lost part of his finger when he landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944
 
smigaldi said:
He lost part of his finger when he landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944
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...and the rest of it was amputated, and after that he went through pilot training to become a Canadian Army artillery spotter pilot flying with the RCAF.
 
mantakos said:
The private company that did the launch, SpaceX, is 0-3 so far.
I don't think this bodes well for their planned foray into manned spaceflight.
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Why?
NASA, USSR and just about everyone else that's in the business blew a lot of rockets to smithereens early on too.
 
I met him too... he was in front of me in the line at the Safeway store in Woodinville, WA. :-) Had a nice chat. Quite a gentleman.
 
smigaldi said:
As did I.

I met James Doohan once. Neat guy, and it was weird to hear his regular voice.

He lost part of his finger when he landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944
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A little bit of everything. Sorry about the links; I don't know how to embed YouTube videos here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqedcvB8MKw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEgSAPv971I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9VxrMK0cF4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsSdLD_YodQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P32wGXbNMbo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSvV2QTAcHY

And for something really different:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhc-qgsfTHw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQKaNEp1Bbk
 
gprellwitz said:
Bummer. And now I see that the Star Trek Experience in Vegas is closing. http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/07/star-trek-exper.html I wanted to see that!
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Bummer!!!

I had been to it three times and the Borg Experience twice!

I loved eating at Quarks and still have my six pack of Romulan Ale in my house.

There is a new Star Trek movie coming out this fall and I am wondering why they do not wait to see if it will pick up interest in the series.
 
fgcason said:
Why?
NASA, USSR and just about everyone else that's in the business blew a lot of rockets to smithereens early on too.
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Certainly, but that was when we were learning how to make rockets. There were a lot of engineering details that had to be worked out...and have been thoroughly documented. Yet every year or so, we hear from companies that seem to claim that that hard-won engineering data is worthless, that a space launch vehicle doesn't have to be any more complex than a Vespa.

Well...turns out that it is rocket science, after all.

Remember, though, by Space-X says they've had only two failures. The previous launch was considered a success because most of the major mission goals were met. Just not the one where the rocket successfully reaches orbit....

They'll probably end up suing Boeing and Lockheed again, this time claiming that building rockets that work is an unfair business practice. :-)

Ron Wanttaja
 
mantakos said:
The private company that did the launch, SpaceX, is 0-3 so far.

I don't think this bodes well for their planned foray into manned spaceflight. In fact, it seems like wasted effort to cremate somebody before launching them on one of these rockets.
-harry
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Saves weight.
 
docmirror said:
Saves weight.
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But weight really isn't an issue if the rocket's going to dismantle itself and travel in little tiny pieces anyway...

I can always count on Harry for the funniest thing I'll see online all day :)
 
NASA, USSR and just about everyone else that's in the business blew a lot of rockets to smithereens early on too.
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I always wondered about that, actually. For instance, would you be willing to climb aboard SpaceX's fourth launch, knowing that the first three failed catastrophically? What if the engineers said "we know what went wrong last time, and we definitely fixed it"?

What if their fourth one went fine, would you get on the fifth one? How many successful launches in a row before you'd feel comfortable climbing aboard?
-harry
 
mantakos said:
I always wondered about that, actually. For instance, would you be willing to climb aboard SpaceX's fourth launch, knowing that the first three failed catastrophically? What if the engineers said "we know what went wrong last time, and we definitely fixed it"?

What if their fourth one went fine, would you get on the fifth one? How many successful launches in a row before you'd feel comfortable climbing aboard?
-harry
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I am an engineer. And the saying I was most famous for when growning up was, "This should work." I'd want a lot more successful tests before I climbed aboard that thing.
 
mantakos said:
I always wondered about that, actually. For instance, would you be willing to climb aboard SpaceX's fourth launch, knowing that the first three failed catastrophically? What if the engineers said "we know what went wrong last time, and we definitely fixed it"?

What if their fourth one went fine, would you get on the fifth one? How many successful launches in a row before you'd feel comfortable climbing aboard?
-harry
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IIRC NASA's routine was to man rate launch vehicles before putting anyone on them until the shuttle came along. IOW, make sure it'll fly and there's a decent chance it won't go kablooey based on successful non-kablooey made it back down in one piece without a lot of dents flights. They flew test pilots and people who understood the risk for a looong time before they started putting passengers on the list.

Going into space once would have a very unique view and be kinda fun floating around for hours on end. Personally I won't sit on top of that much explosives (I'm spooky enough about sitting on 200lb of propane and 420 lbs of gasoline) so I guess I'm stuck with single engine propeller driven stuff UFN. Now Rutan on the other hand just might get me in the right seat fairly quickly after a series of proven flights because he's crazy enough to make it reasonably safe and he doesn't use a horrific amount of explosives.
 
Flippin danged blasted tailgaters...

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon/003/status.html
The investigation into Saturday night's failed SpaceX Falcon 1 launch has revealed the spent first stage separated and then recontacted the second stage due to residual thrust from the main engine, the company's founder says.
In a news briefing currently underway, Elon Musk says the explosive bolts fired and stage separation pushers worked as planned but the first stage propelled itself back toward the second stage because of an unexpected "thrust transient" from the Merlin 1C engine.


Oopsie. Seems they rear ended themselves.
 
fgcason said:
Going into space once would have a very unique view and be kinda fun floating around for hours on end. Personally I won't sit on top of that much explosives (I'm spooky enough about sitting on 200lb of propane and 420 lbs of gasoline) so I guess I'm stuck with single engine propeller driven stuff UFN. Now Rutan on the other hand just might get me in the right seat fairly quickly after a series of proven flights because he's crazy enough to make it reasonably safe and he doesn't use a horrific amount of explosives.
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Technical details on Rutan's designs are hard to come by, but I think there'll be more than enough rocket fuel onboard to kill everyone instantly, if it takes a notion to blow. I did a bit of back-of-the-envelope scribbling once, and decided that SpaceShipOne carried about 1500 pounds of propellant. With nearly three times the passengers, one can guess that the Virgin Galactic ships will have quite a bit more. And in passing, let me note that even Scaled has made mistakes, when it comes to handling rocket fuel.

You cannot tame a rocket...you can only tether it, and it then behooves you to watch it very, very carefully.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
You cannot tame a rocket...you can only tether it, and it then behooves you to watch it very, very carefully.
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As system complexity approaches infinity, mean time between failures approaches zero.

And therein lies the problem.
 
fgcason said:
As system complexity approaches infinity, mean time between failures approaches zero.

And therein lies the problem.
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Well...THEORETICALLY, at least, a rocket is about as simple a machine as you can get. The only moving parts are those that deliver fuel to the combustion chamber (e.g., pumps). It's the auxiliary problems that are the bugagoos of the rocket engineer...keeping the thing cool, and/or designing equipment to operate at extremes of temperatures (e.g., delivering liquid oxygen to an operating combustion chamber).

As the saying goes, "There's a fine line between a rocket and a bomb...and the finer the line, the better the rocket." A glitch in the propellant or oxidizer feed lines, a hot spot in the combustion chamber, a throat eroding quicker than anticipated, and you cross that line.

Ron Wanttaja
 
smigaldi said:
Gawd I hope not, that is nothing but the biggest bunch of BS ever foisted upon the business world next to diversity training.
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:yes: Why you no want green belt or black belt? We give you great training, $900, you like.


Trapper John
 
smigaldi said:
I moved to a new office not to long ago. I am in the same corner office where that BS was invented!
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Seriously, how could someone take a simple existing concept (DMAIC), wrap it in 20 layers of fluff, and sell it to a bunch of big companies?


Trapper John
 
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