Gouge Away

So it's late, and a micro-nap earlier this evening seems to have put me into a state of sleeplessness. So I'm up, and tossing and turning, and wondering about that gouge in the space shuttle tiles.

They say it goes all the way through the outer heat shield tile. I'm thinking that's a bad thing. (...but I'm no rocket scientist. [ba-dum])

Gets me wondering about the odds these days. There were 5 shuttles at one time. Two of them became spectacular fireballs that the crews didn't survive. Now about those other 3... I'm wondering at what point NASA starts working on a new design. It's clear that the shuttle is necessary/important (i.e. servicing ISS, bringing astronauts home) or else it wouldn't be flying. But at what point do you say that the vehicle is past its prime? And if, heavens forbid, this shuttle doesn't make it home in one piece, that means there'd only be 2 left. Which makes the notion of a orbital rescue somewhat dodgy indeed.

Missions are planned until 2010 in order to finish assembling the ISS - and it also seems that it's almost all shuttle flights that are sending the goods up there. A couple Russian trips, but mostly shuttle.

Did you know that the Russians had a space shuttle too? Golly, it sure looks a lot like the NASA version. Rumor has it that there was a bit of engineering sharing between countries on this one. I guess it makes sense in the realm of "both nations are participants in the space station and there should be redundant vehicles."

But definitely something of a different approach to getting it pointed at the sky by assembling it horizontal and then lifting it into position. We'll never really know which is a better launch procedure - Buran's shuttle only flew once. It apparently was capable of totally unmanned flight, including landing, and it seems they were even almost finished building the second one, but the program was discontinued, and what's left belongs to Kazakhstan.

And in the free-association that goes on in the wee hours of the night/morning, the two things that come to mind when I hear Kazakhstan? Borat and Vino. The former made me feel sorry for the people mocked in the movie. The latter, not as much - I can't decide whether it's the continuing variety of doping cases or the stupidity of his particular one that's making me feel numb to it.

dork crush

Holy crap... I saw "Pipedream" at the St. Paul science museum, checked out this guy's stuff, and I just have to say that I got a big old mental boner looking at his work. Check out some of his projects at www.taomc.com.

I am so gushing... I think I want to be this guy when I grow up. I looked at his mini-CV and wondered "why did he give up a career in internal medicine?" Well, it's pretty obvious... if you can make a living out of doing cool stuff like this... well, I can definitely understand giving up a lot of stuff.

You don't have to *solve* the mountain

A little revelation I had last week about the nature and effects of problem solving...

I'm an engineer. By inclination, education, and experience. I have this tendency to solve problems, come up with widgets that address this or that shortcoming. When something is difficult or inefficient or wasteful, I start thinking that there's a better way of doing it and want to do it right. I think of problems and the need for solutions.

So what's the revelation? There's a difference between a problem and an obstacle. Sometimes in life or in work, there's an obstacle, and sometimes it's a problem, but regardless, it's an impediment to moving forward. The distinction though is that a problem (a design flaw/defect, dependent factor, puzzle) is something that needs to be changed to be able to go forward, where an obstacle (long slow tedious work, sensitive personalities, deadlines, high-cost tooling) is something that really just needs to be gotten past. It doesn't always need to be fixed because once you're past, you might never have to deal with it again, and "fixing it" is a waste of time if it doesn't ever recur.

Just get past it. You can't fix the mountain, and you don't have to. You just have to get over the mountain.

of spaceships and chariots

Can't *not* post a link - how apt it is. Regardless of how contorted you might think the reason for something is, it's not necessarily whimsy, even if it has roots in ruts.

I love the idea that it's essentially an average-actual rut width essentially based on the mean of all wagon traffic, with the distribution biased by, but not controlled by, the influence of a "standards organization" like the Roman Empire

"prompt and highly motivated escape behavior"

What the hell is this? I mean, other than a device for cooking people?

Panama Canal opening anniversary

As feats of engineering and logisitics go, the Panama Canal is a pretty good one. It also turns out that today is the anniversary of the first day it opened to traffic - courtesy of Wikipedia's "On This Day" section. Interesting thing - I had no idea that that canal had so much competition out there. I would have thought it posessed a fairly unique purpose and position in the world. Goes to show - there is no such thing as job security, even for geographic features.