Just looked up "abort mode IA" in the Saturn V Flight Manual (I am pretty proud to possess a paper copy of that one, it has a prominent place in my library). Time between drogue opening and parachute opening was 12 to 16 seconds, dependent upon altitude on abort. The manual is not very explicit on aborting on the pad or close to the pad, but something can be gleaned from the conditions under which the mission could be aborted; all of these presuppose ignition of all five engines of Stage I to have succeeded. I.e., before that event, it seems the crew would 've been fucked. After that, the abort propulsion rockets would 've given them at least a fighting chance.

The order is: Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter, Cooper, Shirra, Borman, Lovell.... (source: "The Parliament of Poets", by Frederick Glaysher)

...seems to show one of its many upsides. This may spur SpaceX to do at least as well, or better. Forget about Boeing et al.. These are small, agile (in the dictionary sense, not in the software engineering sense) companies that can move, react and even pivot in a way Boeing et al. could not even begin to dream of. Great job, Blue Origin! Now it's SpaceX's move.

Why not MS Nano on MS Windows Server on Slack on Cygwin on Win 95 on Bash on Ubuntu on Windows ? I mean - all these CPU cycles and all that unused RAM has to go somewhere, right ? Why not Rocco Sifredi on Kim Kardashin on Sylvester Stallone on Meryl Streep on Chuck Norris ? What say you ?

There is nothing fucking cool about Giant Corp. "offering" you around 1.000 eBooks in order to vendor-lock you in. Rather, you be glad to be in Canada. I'm in Austria and visit physical book stores, getting to hold physical books and helping physical people to make a living. Which is way closer to my definition of "cool".

I stand corrected. Of course you're right. Thanks!

1. The Boeing that, indeed, did build the Saturn V first stage was not nowadays Boeing. The former was much smaller, more agile ("agile" not in the software engineering sense, but in the common dictionary sense).

2. Boeing is indeed heavily involved in the SLS program. That program's pace, however, is set by NASA, whereas Musk's SpaceX, being a virtual start-up, sets its own and dramatically different pace.

This is not to say that Boeing could not or should not be involved in what might became a "race toward Mars". I am, however, calling bullshit on the Saturn V and SLS arguments.

For anyone interested, ESA broadcasts a livestream of the event here.

You, Sir, are a moron and a drunk parrot.

Agreed. I'll keep my Passport until it dies - if not, they'll have to pry it from cold, dead fingers. Blackberry Hub is making my corporate life sooooo much simpler !

Replying to myself, alas. I see that the trolls and AC Putin/Trump supporters have taken over this thread. This is most unfortunate and wholly unintended.

can unintentionally do the right things: kick Microsoft's, SAP's et al.'s ass.

You are right. I am so burning curious, however, to get a look at this stuff, that even the few days needed for arXiv to publish this, mean a win for me. (In my current project, a critical subsystem is a prime generator that might benefit from this).

The address is hhelfgo at uni-math.gwdg dot de

See my post below. Prof. Helgott did a presentation at the Buenos Aires conference, he's working on putting up a preprint. Stop whining.