Disaster Area

Rick Perry for President - Let's Not Go There

Remember the last time we had a Texas governor for President? Didn't that go well?

Well, let's not repeat that egregious misstep.

Rick Perry has opined about many things and shown himself to be less than smart, but his latest tirade attempts to blame the current president (in office 2 years and 6 months) for decisions that are the result of decades of poor political leadership on space issues and gross mismanagement at NASA.

"Forty-two years ago yesterday, America captured the world's imagination by putting a man on the moon, highlighting an era of excellence in space exploration. Unfortunately, with the final landing of the Shuttle Atlantis and no indication of plans for future missions, this administration has set a significantly different milestone by shutting down our nation's legacy of leadership in human spaceflight and exploration, leaving American astronauts with no alternative but to hitchhike into space.

"The Obama Administration continues to lead federal agencies and programs astray, this time forcing NASA away from its original purpose of space exploration, and ignoring its groundbreaking past and enormous future potential. It is time to restore NASA to its core purpose of manned space exploration, and to define our vision for 21st Century space exploration, not in terms of what we cannot do, but instead in terms of what we will do."

Yes, how dare President Obama shut down a shuttle program (photo: Shuttle re-entry to earth taken from the ISS) that features hardware that was conceptualized in the 60's, designed and built in the 70's and flown for 30 years! The flight computers on the shuttle are less powerful than a Commodore 64. They are barely better than a four function calculator. When you consider all the other systems on the airplane that cost a fortune to maintain and the fragility of the shuttle overall, it's remarkable that it has been as successful as it has been and that it lasted so long.

Is Rick Perry driving a 1981 Chevy Monte Carlo with a tank of rocket fuel in the trunk that could explode any minute? I don't think so.

Programs like the Space Shuttle take 20 years to come to fruition, so the time to be working on it was... 1990. Even 1980. But was it? Hell no. The political process gets worse and worse for pushing through visionary programs that look ahead decades. In retrospect it's amazing the shuttle managed to stay funded through the turmoil of the seventies.

So if there's blame to be laid at anyone's feet it should be laid at the feet of Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. and the Congressional members of the same era for 20 years of a spectacular collective failure to see a way forward and fund it. It wouldn't have hurt them to appoint NASA amdinistrators who weren't political flacks either. 

And let's not forget where NASA Mission Control is located... Pork barrel politics coninues unabated.

Leaving Salt Lake City

Second leg on way home...

Oops - When Airplanes Collide: Update

Somebody should tell this Airbus A380 Super Jumbo pilot he isn't driving a dinky little A320 any more...

From AvWeb (also with photos of damaged areas on both planes):

The Comair flight had just arrived from Boston and was stationary. What happened next is one of the reasons passengers are supposed to keep their seatbelts on until the ground crew person crosses his or her arms.

It was extremely fortunate that no-one on the CRJ700 was injured, but if there had been that "must stand up in the aisle yakking on my cellphone getting my bag out of the overhead before we get to the gate" guy/gal They could have been badly injured - not to mention injuring other people in the process.

San Francisco to Paris with the Northern Lights

Phenomenal time lapse photography of an Air France flight...

Space Shuttle Discovery's Last Few Hours in Space

NASA's image of the day

It's Women in Aviation Week.

A previous post on breaking the gender barrier.

 

 

Flying Cars - Sigh...

 

Well, take your pick:

Be aware they all fall prey to one or more of a few fatal flaws:

• Made of Unobtainium
• Violate laws of physics
• Suck as both a car and a plane

Challenger 25 Years On

Lots written about the Challenger diasater on the 25h anniversary. I was reading the 1986 presidential report and came upon this:

Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident

(In compliance with Executive Order 12546 of February 3, 1986)

Chapter VI - An accident Rooted in History...................120

EARLY DESIGN 

  The Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Booster problem began with the faulty design of its joint and increased as both NASA and
contractor management first failed to recognize it as a problem, then failed to fix it and finally treated it as an acceptable flight risk.

  Morton Thiokol, Inc., the contractor, did not accept the implication of tests early in the program that the design had a serious and
unanticipated flaw.  NASA did not accept the judgment of its engineers that the design was unacceptable, and as the joint problems grew in
number and severity NASA minimized them in management briefings and reports.  Thiokol's stated position was that "the condition is not
desirable but is acceptable."

  Neither Thiokol nor NASA expected the rubber O-rings sealing the joints to be touched by hot gases of motor ignition, much less to be
partially burned.  However, as tests and then flights confirmed damage to the sealing rings, the reaction by both NASA and Thiokol was to
increase the amount of damage considered "acceptable."  At no time did management either recommend a redesign of the joint or call for the
Shuttle's grounding until the problem was solved.

The rest, as they say, is history.

US Navy Going Downhill

And that's hard to do on water.

In a story broken by the Virginia-Pilot newspaper, Captain Owen Honors of the USS Enterprise, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, while XO (Executive OFficer, second-in-command) of the carrier produced a series of video "entertainment skits" for broadcast to the entire ships company (about 6,000 people) in 2006 and 2007. They were apparently well-made, but featured content that would make Benny Hill blush. The more boorish good ol' boys (and perhaps some of the more loutish women) on board thought they were funny, but complaints were not welcomed by Honors (I wonder why?).

In one scene, two female Navy sailors stand in a shower stall aboard the aircraft carrier, pretending to wash each other. They joke about how they should get six minutes under the water instead of the mandated three.

Update: Video excerpts on Youtube

In other skits, sailors parade in drag, use anti-gay slurs, and simulate masturbation and a rectal exam. Another scene implies that an officer is having sex in his stateroom with a donkey.

They're all part of a series of short movies produced aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Enterprise in 2006 and 2007 and broadcast to its nearly 6,000 sailors and Marines. The man who masterminded and starred in them is Capt. Owen Honors - now the commander of the carrier, which is weeks away from deploying.

It's also interesting that especially in the wake of the repeal of "don't ask don't tell" the homophobia based humor remains rampant (because let's not pretend much has changed in the last three years).

Honors was an F-14 naval aviator and a former Top Gun pilot. It's sad to say that that kind of phyical ability often comes with a puerile jock mindset that manifests itself in stunts like this. Here's some more:

After that, the video returns to Honors. "Finally, let's get to my favorite topic - something foreign to the gay kid over there: chicks in the shower," he says.

He gestures to the person next to him - who, through a trick of video, is Honors wearing the blue coveralls of a Navy surface warfare officer, or SWO. SWOs include the officers who crew the ship; they don't include fighter pilots and other aviators. Repeatedly in the videos, Honors, a former Top Gun pilot, draws distinctions between aviators and SWOs and refers to SWOs as "fags."

On one level, I can see the defense of "it's just the guys letting off steam", blah, blah, blah. Pressure cooker environment, yada, yada, yada.

But this guy was second-in-command, now commander, of a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier and its aircraft. He's also a key link in the chain of command that enacts the pointier end of US foreign policy.

As such, these juvenile antics that would be no longer be welcome in a junior high school playground are surely grounds for relieving him of his command (and for that matter, also anyone above him who condoned this kind of behavior at the time.)

What would Capt. James T. Kirk think? Sadly, this ain't Star Trek, Mr. Sulu.

Another Retirement

It seems like there's another airplane type retirement every other day. The F-111 has had an interesting and somewhat chequered/checkered history but it is unique (that In know of) for performing what's known as a dump and burn - dumping fuel into the exhaust and letting it burn like a reverse flamethrower. I saw three F-111s do it in person in 1977 at the Queen's Silver Jubillee at RAF Finningley in Yorkshire and they managed to disperse the foggy mist for a few minutes on their own. I could also feel my face going slightly crisp in the process.

Here's a picture of a Royal Australian Air Force F-111 performing the ever-so-eco-unfriendly act...

Hopefully these RAAF F-111s will find a nice home down on the retirement farm, maybe put out to stud... although only God knows what their offspring will look like.