"Failure is not an Option" is a good book, but Christopher C. Kraft's book "Flight" covers many of the same events better. I closely followed the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions at the time they occurred and find Kraft's discussion of the engineering problems and solutions clearer, and he is not afraid to be critical of men (like John Glenn) when he believes they were wrong.

Kraft also originated the concept of the Mission Control Center.

I enjoyed "The Sand Reckoner", Gillian Bradshaw's fictional account of Archimedes. (I also enjoyed the original "Sand Reckoner" by Archimedes, but that was not fiction.)

Gillian Bradshaw is a well regarded historical novelist, and there is mathematical content in the novel if you know what to look for. In the book Archimedes' father dies, and Archimedes distracts by working on his mathematics. The reader does not know what he is working on until he tells his sister "It's more than ten seventy-firsts and less than a seventh." Pi minus three, of course.

However, if you are familiar with his proof, the suggestion that he could work this out in a single evening suggests that this is a fantasy rather than a historical novel.

A good read, in either case.

The method described here seems like a straightforward idea.

Wasn't a similar idea posted to slashdot five years ago?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=440258&cid=22283136
 

The fish will now have the opportunity to turn the caffeine into theorems.

(With apologies to Alfred Renyi.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfr%C3%A9d_R%C3%A9nyi

Back in the 1990s I worked as a software developer at a company that monitored a large amount of data in real time. Not stock market data or particle accelerator data, but telephone switching data (SS7). They began selling the hardware/software package in the late 1980s.

If this amount of data can be monitored and displayed in real time using 1980s technology, why can't the SEC do it now for stock market data?

In many physical problems (like the study of water waves) there are multiple length and time scales, each of which can be approximated separately. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_multiple_scales

In equity trading there appears to be at least three time scales. Fundamental analysis functions over a period of months. Technical analysis (used by day traders) works over periods of minutes and seconds. And then there is high frequency trading (accounting for over 70% of equity trades in the US in 2010) which works on the millisecond or microsecond scale.

Some persons in this forum has suggested that the millisecond scale be eliminated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running

Front running has been illegal for a long time in the USA, but as long as the second trade is made after the initial trade (even a microsecond later) it is legal. My problem with HFT is that if a person does not have access to a millisecond trading, then for all practical purposes the second trade is front running.

In December 2010 Frank Zhang of the Yale School of Management published a paper claiming that HFT accounted for 70% of the dollar trading volume in the U.S. capital market.

David Woodcock, the Regional Director of the SEC, confirmed this number in a lecture I attended at the University of Texas at Dallas in May.

As far as HFT reform goes, I think that ship has sailed. Or, quoting from the film "Giant": "You should have shot that fella a long time ago. Now he's too rich to kill."

Since when has the search for extraterrestrial life been part of NASA's mandate? And why must the search for life be the sole reason for NASA to launch a scientific mission?

Consider http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html

Here are NASA's objectives according to the National Aeronautics and Space Act:

"(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.

(2) The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles.

(3) The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space.

(4) The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.

(5) The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere.

(6) The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defense of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control nonmilitary aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency.

(7) Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this chapter and in the peaceful application of the results thereof.

(8) The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment.

(9) The preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes."

"What is happening on Mars right now?"

If you know that this question is meaningless and why, then you are ready to study general relativity.

Otherwise take a course in Special Relativity or read and study "Spacetime Physics" by E F Taylor and J A Wheeler. Wheeler once told me that he believed that every figure should have as much information as 10 pages of text, and some figures in "Spacetime Physics" come near his goal.

IMHO most scientists who can perform the algebra and solve problems in Special Relativity do not really understand the implications of their answers.

From what I have heard, the reason it took 52 years to get this spacecraft into space was political, not technical.

There is no doubt that the technology developed to measure these parameters is very impressive. The real question is whether or not it was worth the effort.

When I was at JPL in the 1980s a person who had published numerous papers in both experimental and theoretical relativity explained why scientists within the space program were not supporting this project. Since this conversation took place thirty years ago I must paraphrase:

"No modern theory of gravity predicts anything else, and if the measurements showed anything but the predicted results it would be assumed to be an experimental error. Unlike the technology used to search for gravitational radiation (which is also used to study the atmospheres of planets), the hardware in this spacecraft cannot be used for any other scientific experiment."

So for 52 years the money has been used for other science. For a much more worthy project read about the recently canceled LISA project.

If you wish to read about the politics of how a science project is chosen by NASA I can think of no better description that Steven W. Squyres' "Roving Mars" where he describes how the Mars Rovers were nearly canceled.

Didn't I suggest something similar to this on Slashdot back in 2008?

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=440258&cid=22283136

Ever wonder why you cannot buy Kellogg's Heartwise Cereal anymore? Thank the Texas Attorney General's office.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/03/garden/kellogg-files-slander-suit.html

I laughed at the lawsuit at the time because the claims were baseless. Soon I could no longer buy my favorite cereal.

The Gregorian calendar system repeats every 400 years, and the number of Tuesdays is not exactly one-seventh of the total number of days.

I am guessing that this is the key to the answer.

I had the good fortune to be working on the Galileo mission during its Mission Design phase. Many of the techniques used by the Cassini mission designers were developed for Galileo. Disclamer: I was not on the mission design team.

First of all, the Voyager encounters with Jupiter and Saturn were always when the spacecraft were moving away from the sun. However, during the Galileo satellite tour the mission designers realized that the Galileo spacecraft could encounter Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa when moving away and moving toward Jupiter. Furthermore, the closest approach ("encounter") could be targeted to be either in front of the moon (with respect its orbit around Jupiter) or behind it. These choices allowed the designers a great deal of freedom to use the moons' gravity to shape the spacecraft's orbit. As I understand it, they did not just plan the current encounter to obtain the next encounter, but also the encounter after that.

The ability to use a moon to shape a spacecraft orbit depends on the ratio of the mass of the planet to the mass of the moon (for all practical purposes the spacecraft is massless.) Only Io, Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa are able to provide gravity assists at Jupiter, and only Titan at Saturn.

I spoke to Bob Mitchell, Cassini Project Manager, a few years ago and asked him about this specifically. He told me that while it was true that having to go back to Titan every time to change the orbit was a constraint, it also provided the freedom to send the spacecraft out of the "plane" where the moons orbited. At Jupiter it was necessary to stay in the plane to make multiple visits to all the moons, but since at Saturn you must visit the same moon to change the spacecraft's orbit every time (Titan) there is fewer reasons to stay in the plane. And, as you can see from the orbit diagrams, Cassini has traveled outside of the plane many times.

PRS-300 has two advantages: no WiFi and no touch screen.

Neither Sony nor anyone else can hack in and erase your ebooks.

A touchscreen is makes the characters less crisp, more muddy. I much prefer clear text to the minor advantages of a touchscreen.

And it works well with Linux. Now if Sony did not supply such lame software...