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Post by dragonblaster on Oct 20, 2008 3:29:32 GMT -4
Someone harangued me once about why the LRV would not have "bounced into orbit."
I did the arithmetic and showed how ludicrous that was. However, because I admitted to looking the relevant equation up on Wikipedia, I got the usual screamed chorus that I'd just copied and pasted it, despite actually having worked the damn thing out in the post. That rendered the proof invalid.
Evidently, logic and algebra are nothing against the awesome power of mindless faith.
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Post by Count Zero on Oct 20, 2008 5:39:23 GMT -4
Evidently, logic and algebra are nothing against the awesome power of mindless faith.That looks like a signature line waiting to happen.
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Post by dragonblaster on Oct 20, 2008 6:37:33 GMT -4
Certainly worthy of consideration since Adam Savage appropriated "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"
I bet some HB somewhere is spitting nails that he didn't think of that one... although he thinks irony means like something that sticks to a magnet.
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Post by Grand Lunar on Oct 20, 2008 9:21:02 GMT -4
I already use that signature on IMDb.
Indeed, I see this with Cosmored (aka DavidC). He dimisses science that does not fit his world view by claiming that "scientists can be bought". Gee, how useful that would've been to "buy" scientists into agreeing with the Bush admin about climate change. Surely they could've "bought" them more easily with that than Apollo.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Oct 20, 2008 12:19:31 GMT -4
Call it denial instead of faith.
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Post by JayUtah on Oct 20, 2008 12:42:05 GMT -4
However, because I admitted to looking the relevant equation up on Wikipedia...
A helpful enough resource. But I keep a copy of the Big Yellow Book handy for such occasions. (The Big Yellow Book is a common study guide for engineering licensure -- it's 800 pages of basic engineering principles along with the relevant equations.)
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Post by JayUtah on Oct 20, 2008 12:48:42 GMT -4
He dimisses science that does not fit his world view by claiming that "scientists can be bought".
But results cannot be, and that's all that one ultimately wants. The most fervent wishes of SpaceX did not stop their third test flight from ending in recontact catastrophe for the simple reason of having ignored a well-known second-order propulsion effect. You can indeed buy "science" in the form of designs and proposals that look good on paper. But none of that corrects the physically impossible dichotomy of "magic" sand that is susceptible to air resistance in one geometrical dimension but not in another, or is simultaneously of two different grain sizes.
To conspiracy theorists, science and engineering are pursuits that occur outside of any world with which they are familiar. They don't comprehend the notion that one simply cannot lie about them for very long. Conspiracy theorists interpret scientists, engineers, and technicians as mere intelligentsia pawns for the Powers That Be against which they rail -- the only reason science exists is to support the power brokers with bogus glittery findings that no one will ever question anyway.
One has a steep uphill battle against that form of delusion.
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Post by dragonblaster on Oct 20, 2008 13:46:42 GMT -4
I'm an electronics engineer (the square root of -1 is j instead of i to me since i is reserved for instantaneous current), so alas I fear it might not be too useful for me.
I still remember a lot of the mechanics I learnt at school (one thing to thank HBs for) but beyond m v, r and sin theta, this one was getting hazy...
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Post by gillianren on Oct 20, 2008 15:10:29 GMT -4
It would mean even less to me, I promise you. I admire all of you who are capable of working math like that out on your own, but I cannot.
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raven
Jupiter
That ain't Earth, kiddies.
Posts: 509
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Post by raven on Oct 20, 2008 16:13:03 GMT -4
Call it denial instead of faith. I am going to have to go with dragonblaster on this one. Faith and Denial are but the positive and negatives in the algebra of Belief.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Oct 20, 2008 22:08:44 GMT -4
Call it denial instead of faith. I am going to have to go with dragonblaster on this one. Faith and Denial are but the positive and negatives in the algebra of Belief. Well, one consists of believing something and the other consists of the refusal to believe something. Most hoax believers have shares of both, but lean heavily on refusing to believe the official stories. In fact it's the thing they have in common (they don't necessarily have theories consistent with each other's beliefs). Therefore it's more denial than faith.
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Post by Kiwi on Oct 22, 2008 7:21:25 GMT -4
I keep a copy of the Big Yellow Book handy... Did you know, Dragonblaster, that (IIRC) Jay once proved mathematically that an astronaut could launch himself into space from an appropriately-sized asteroid by peeing. I don't recall whether the same figures applied to a female. Now where and when was that? Old Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board posts at BAUT? [Edit: See next post.]
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Post by Kiwi on Oct 22, 2008 10:39:00 GMT -4
Aha! Here we are, for the record -- It's PhantomWolf's thread Secret NASA Images Hide Hoax in July 2004. 3d-vd started the subject with his question in post 13: If you were on an asteroid, could you pee hard enough to achieve escape velocity not only for your urine but yourself, sort of like having a self contained rocket?This produced further gems such as:-- JayUtah:Sheesh, thanks to this thread I've spent a great deal of time trying to discover the velocity of a human urine stream so I could do the rocketry calculations.Gethen:Almost a whole page of a thread devoted to the flow of urine on the Moon, and Jay thinks he needs to get a life. Looks like a bunch of folks with the same problem. :wink: Myself included. That's what I love about this board. The unrestricted "flow" of information. (Fully expects page or so of bad elimination puns to follow.)Helpful hints from Kucharek:-pee horizontally -measure height above ground of point of initial pee release -measure horizontal distance travelled by pee before hitting the ground. -calculate velocityAGN Fuel:Bladder muscle has exceptional properties of extension and can expand to quite remarkable volumes (just ask a pregnant woman about to have an ultrasound!). If output velocity can be increased through rigorous training (and I have no data that says it can't), then I would be confident that a trained and bloated astronaut would have sufficient fuel and thrust to permit a UAOI* from the surface of Eros. (* Urine Assisted Orbital Insertion)Bob B.:Another question is how much delta-V can be acheived? If we accept Jay's figure of 2.5 m/s for urine stream velocity, and if we assume a mass of 140 kg for a suited astronaut, then all we need to know is the propellant mass. The maximum capacity of a human bladder ranges from about 500 to 1000 ml. One will experience the urge to urinate when the bladder contains about 200 ml, however this urge can be voluntarily overridden. Let's say our astronaut can hold out until he has produced 500 ml of propellant, or 0.5 kg. Therefore we have: Delta-V = 2.5 m/s * LN[ 140 / (140 - 0.5) ] = 0.009 m/sJayUtah:...science is not just the detached pursuit of bespectacled and white-coated men and women standing around with clipboards and stroking their chins. It governs our lives, whether we want it to or not, and that governance extends from the lofty to the absurd. It's not important to know whether you can fart your way into orbit around an asteroid. It's important to know how to answer that question, and to know that the same principles apply to that problem as apply to rockets.Donnie B.:It's also easy to understand how the astronaut might think of using this unusual propulsion technique, given that his EVA suit would probably be equipped with a Portable Impactor Survival System. Oh, I've got a million of 'em... 3d-vd:You guys rock! Thank you for all the hard work, considering I was just kidneying around. See you bladder! Pee ess, Shouldn't this tread be in "Againt the MainSTREAM"?
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Oct 22, 2008 11:05:11 GMT -4
Sounds painful. I know I wouldn't want to have my fly open to space for long enough to launch.
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Post by BertL on Oct 22, 2008 11:39:07 GMT -4
That would be another problem, urinating in space without a space suit intervention.
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