"Offtopic-posts-topic" NSFW

[velocity3x]

Anybody have any construction experience?

You could form & pour the footings and first 16" of wider wall using your floor joists as form material. Run the forms wild to minimize cutting joists and run the rebar wild for the conc block.

[POLAND_SPUD]

well something tells me something WILL go wrong on 5th Aug... I do hope I am wrong...
but even they themselves admit - 'if one single thing goes wrong we're screwed'

I am like WTF did you make it that complex in the first place?

0.5 MOA accuracy at 3000 yards

lol seriously ? sounds to good to be true

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

I am like WTF did you make it that complex in the first place?

Yup...

0.5 MOA accuracy at 3000 yards

lol seriously ? sounds to good to be true

Well...

The "effective" range is listed as 3000 meters (limited mainly by group size) but one round killing hits have been obtained at close to 6000 meters and reported accuracy is sub minute of angle.

[Brian the brain]

Especially for you guys I offer you a chance of a lifetime.
For sale:
One almost brandnew electric jigsaw.
Perfect for cutting random shapes out of wood.
Only used once.

so perfect in fact that no matter what you do...it won't cut straight.
Not one inch!
Not even when you clamp on guides on both sides of the bottomplate..

Like I said..perfect.
hardly used...I gave up after 10 tries and discovered it is also perfect as a bouncing toy.
After impact with the ground it bounced back up twice my height.
I bet it would have bounced even higher if I was still in shape.

It is now missing several vital bits, like the outer shell, but I assure you you will have as much fun with it as I have had.

P.M. me if you're interested.

[MrCrowley]

I am like WTF did you make it that complex in the first place?

Because they have to be that complex. You have to realise that the MSL is a radically different rover compared to Spirit and Opportunity; if NASA want to move forward with their research they need to take risks like this. It's all about moving forward and trying to accomplish the most they can with the little bit of money they get.

The MSL is freakin' huge, I'm not surprised by the complexity of the 'landing' system one bit. Considering the intellectual resources NASA has at hand for such an operation, I doubt that there is a KISS option that they have missed.

Things like this remind me of conspiracy theories or people on the internet who argue they have found the "theory of everything" in physics. People sit at home on their computers and think "I betcha they never thought of this idea!", well they probably did, they just didn't include it in any releases because there would be a straight forward reason as to why it wasn't right/applicable.

I wouldn't fund them.

They receive roughly 0.5% of the federal budget (less than $20 billion). You seriously wouldn't fund them that little bit? Considering what they achieve with that sort of budget, that's quite a bold statement. The bailout from the other year cost only slightly less than NASA's budget for its entire history. I think a year of military spending also exceeds this number.

I'm not here to knock military spending as, like NASA, it also generates: jobs, new technology and pumps money back in to the economy of many states. My point is that NASA gets paid f*ck all and considering what they do each year with that measly ~$20 billion, it's pretty damn impressive.

Perhaps if they had more spending they could have afforded a KISS option for the MSL.

[Fnord]

I doubt that there is a KISS option that they have missed.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp


Ok, read on and you'll find they had their reasons for this too, but there are more elegant solutions and better ways to spend a million dollars.
I'd be funding NASA like 5% if I could actually keep track of it, but remember there are more important issues to deal with in America, I.e, violent video games, gay marriage and what the hell is a snooki anyway?

One almost brandnew electric jigsaw.
Perfect for cutting random shapes out of wood.
Only used once.

so perfect in fact that no matter what you do...it won't cut straight.
Not one inch!

I'm sure JSR could make some custom novelty attachments for such a device which only require accuracy within two or three inches.

[MrCrowley]

Ok, read on and you'll find they had their reasons for this too, but there are more elegant solutions and better ways to spend a million dollars.

Not that it was NASA's million dollars

Rant:
I'm sure there are more simple methods for landing the MSL but they probably have a lower success rate or some other problem. There's also the possibility that they are trying a new technology that will definitely be required for future missions and it would be better for them to get a handle on it now when they're only risking a billion or so dollars on a planet not so far away.

I wouldn't be surprised if the development and initial production of some tanks or aircraft for the military exceeded the entire cost of the MSL. Major civil engineering jobs for cities commonly exceed a billion dollars also. Not that those civil engineering projects aren't necessary, I'm just providing examples of how freely and often a billion dollars is spent but when it comes to NASA, people are happy to complain that they (NASA) are wasting their taxpayer money.

I think a lot of people have a hard time visualising how NASA spends its money and what good it actually does. Who cares if we find more evidence of water once being on Mars? It's difficult to answer that sufficiently for some people, the best way I can sum it up is by saying "are you really content with stopping here?" (i.e. happy with human exploration and advances in science being constrained to Earth alone). NASA has to do things step by step when their budget is so small and they have deemed that this mission is the most efficient way to spend that sum of money in terms of what they can learn from it (science, discovery and engineering wise) and its chances of success.

I'm not sure if there is an online .PDF sample of a particular chapter from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot called "Is there intelligent life on earth?" but it really is a wonderful piece of writing and ends with the statement: "[p]erhaps, you think, it’s time to reassess the conjecture that there’s intelligent life on Earth".

edit: the chapter can be read here but it might be a bit long for a casual read. I don't intend for it to be a spiel about climate change, I just like how it ends. It sums up the feeling I often get when I hear/read about "important issues" (like those Fnord mentioned) that we usually waste our time with.

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

I'm sure JSR could make some custom novelty attachments for such a device which only require accuracy within two or three inches.

Go on Brian, let's see it. I might need a mechanical saw.

edit: fantastic engine stop motion

[youtube][/youtube]

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

Oh man, AHEAD ammunition is f*cking awesome. On 8 wheels.

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2005garm/tuesday/bradick.pdf

[jimmy101]

Ok, read on and you'll find they had their reasons for this too, but there are more elegant solutions and better ways to spend a million dollars.

What is the KISS solution? Off hand I can't think of one. A pencil is not a very good solution. It needs to be sharpened. After sharpening it is, well, sharp. Sharp objects, high vacuum and zero G don't go well. And, small bits of wood and graphite (or clay) floating about in zero G is not a good thing.

The $1M quoted for the pen is really not unusual. Ask the company what they spend to bring any new pen to market. I suspect the number is pretty big. Just the tooling costs tends to run into lots of $. The company got a pen that can do things that other pens can't. For example, the pen works indefinitely upside down. Perhaps not a huge deal but there are situations where writing upside down is useful. Heck most pens won't write for very long when horizontal let alone upside down.

I suspect Fisher made a nice tidy profit on the "million dollar pen" even though they only got a couple thousand dollars from NASA. The company made $$$ and NASA spent about what they would have if they had used pencils (basically zero $ given the projects total budget). Seems like a win-win situation to me.

One more issue. What happens when you put a pencil in a high vacuum? I'm not sure. I suspect that a hundred pencils probably do a hundred different things. Little bit of moisture in the pencil's wood? Perhaps a small void in the wood? Pencil explodes (probably with minimal force) under vacuum. Not only is the pencil destroyed but all those bits floating about in zero G is not a good thing.

Sometimes engineers do things that, particularly in retrospect, seem dumb or overly complex. (Such as using a pure oxygen atmosphere in a space ship.) In general though, the NOOB sitting at home sure as heck wouldn't have done as well with their "pencil" idea.

[Fnord]

What is the KISS solution? Off hand I can't think of one.

Are there no non-brittle, non-conductive substances that can be used to mark paper? Sharpening could be bypassed by making the tips replaceable or allowing the core to be pushed out as needed.
I would tend to avoid organic matter in general under these conditions, so wood is already out.

And something like a felt-tip marker which can function primarily by capillary action would be usable,. I am aware that trying to write up-side-down with a sharpie yields diminishing returns quickly, but held perfectly horizontal, to keep gravitational influence to a minimum, they work well.

[jsefcik]

a friend of mine is trying to get rid of 2 huge sized fish tank filters
anybody interested?

[mattyzip77]

Hey he needs those in the aquariums or he will kill the fish!!!!!.Fishie murderer!!!

[jsefcik]

Hey he needs those in the aquariums or he will kill the fish!!!!!.Fishie murderer!!!

ahahaha,

[Zeus]

Slightly NSFW, so be warned.

[youtube][/youtube]


Not the suggested use for spudguns, at least he had eye protection. And how he didn't wake up is beyond me.