There's a great documentary on a teacher who faced the same challenges and found innovating ways to overcome them. He needed to give his students some projects that would have real-world results that could be measured. In the end, he helped a classroom of very talented kids construct some world-class devices that made breakthroughs in the areas of lasers, inertial guidance, optics, and more.

Very inspiration stuff, I highly recommend watching. Professor J. Hathaway should be commended for his innovative approach to this exact situation. More information on the documentary can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/

Of possible interest, the Soviet Union had a number of military space stations. The Almaz project culminated in a Salyut analogue that actually had a 20mm cannon that was test fired in orbit.

In the 1980s, they built the Polyus Space Battlestation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)) which was to be equipped with nuclear mines, a boron field generator, frickin' laser beams, cannons, etc. As part of a last gasp effort to regain relevancy by showing command of the sky, a test battlestation was launched on one of the two Energia boosters that flew. A funny thing happened on the way to orbit, though...

Because of CG issues, the battlestation (about as big as a US space shuttle) was mounted upside down on the booster. Once it separated from the Energia, it was designed to fire a thruster that would turn it 180 degrees, stop rotation, then the final stage would boost this Cyrillic emblazoned death star into orbit.

The Energia booster completed it's cycle, the explosive bolts detonated, and the Polyus slowly pulled away. A thruster at the bottom fired, and the ponderous bulk began to rotate. With steady precision, it rotated 90 degrees, 135 degrees, then finally 180 degrees.... ....and kept rotating. As it completed a _complete_ rotation, the rocket fired again and smartly placed it back in the exact same angle it had been when it started.

The rocket fired as scheduled, but unfortunately for this military menace, the effect was the opposite intended. With typical maniacal mechanical thoroughness, the rocket ran, slowing the station and neatly dropping it into the Indian ocean.

I've heard rumors (for what that's worth) that one of the US Nuclear subs equipped for deep sea salvage just happened to be in the area at the time. If true, that's the goddamndest thing...

Nonetheless, it's interesting to speculate about what might have happened in the end-stages of the Cold War if the Soviets had gained control of the high ground in this fashion.

An aside, a great site for learning more about the military efforts in space during the 60s and 70s is Cold Orbits: http://www.deepcold.com/

Very selective use of facts. Four people have died in flight in Soyuz spacecraft, while fourteen have died in flight on US shuttles.

14>4

In addition, one of the Soyuz deaths was Komarov's Soyuz One which was the very first flying craft. A failure like that 'demon machine' (which is what he called it while he fell to his death) in the very first is understandable, but the 14 who died on the shuttle did so at roughly the 25 & 100 flight milestone.

Which is more damning, a data corrupting bug that you encounter during the Alpha phase of testing, or one that shows up after the product has shipped to your customers?

The Rift by Peter David
http://startrek.wikia.com/wiki/The_Rift

I'm a nerd.

What exactly _is_ the emoticon for 'cut off limb X'?

Who do you trust? People who come in from all over the place with their "security experience" who build antivirus software that can protect against exploitation of all the security holes in Microsoft products, or the people who develop the Microsoft products that have those holes in them?

I say stay with the people who know the holes best, and who knows a child better than its parent? Microsoft!

No silly, it's about watches.

Quis custodiet ipsos chronos?

You seem to have watched /
the wrong trailer.
How awkward.

> And why have a Korean play a Japanese character (Sulu)? WTF?

I know! And I heard that the guy who's playing Spock isn't even a real alien!

The new Enterprise looks neat, but the fanboy in me wishes the change to the secondary hull hadn't been so pronounced, because the part of my brain that can explain away the differences ("Obviously, they did another refit between when this was shot and when Pike was captain, yeah, that's it!") would have trouble understanding why the entire shape of that secondary hull is so different.

But then again, I don't want to be one of those sad Battlestar Galactica fans who still hate the new series because they DARED to change things from the original one.

Blast! Different nerds are fighting it out in my head, and the only constant is the martial trek 'fight music' that's playing right now.