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Comment Re:PHB's strike again (Score 1) 207

Regarding Challenger, they KNEW that the seals were partially failing since the second launch. The "partial" failure was deemed not bad enough to warrant a fix, although they did redesign then connections between SRB sections before the Challenger explosion.

What I found most amusing about the Challenger was that after he got home from work that day, my father (an aeronautical engineer) said to me "You cannot properly structurally analyze rubber. There are just too many variables. I bet they will find that the seal failed because it was too cold and it got rigid." Sure enough, that's what they found.

Comment Re:PHB's strike again (Score 1) 207

I expect that they would have used Columbia as the go-to stand-by shuttle and not had it fly any normal missions. This would have allowed them to turn over the other ships faster for missions. I also think that the idea of commercial spaceflight would have gotten off the ground earlier had one of the ISS capable shuttles been destroyed instead of Columbia.

Comment Re:They saw this coming for ages... (Score 1) 235

Exactly Zero. $535 million doesn't even pay for the body of the satellite, not to mention the payload. And while we are on the subject of satellite expenditures, the GOES-R project (the next generation of GOES satellites) is still going on (at a reported cost of around 7.6 Billion).

Plus, GOES-14 has been activated and notices have gone out for all receivers to re-train their dishes to it's location and GOES-15 is picking up the slack that 14 is missing. The GOES network of satellites was built to be slightly redundant in the case of craft failure.

Submission + - Boeing Engineers Begin Vote On Strike This Week (manufacturing.net)

juicegg writes: 23,000 Boeing engineers, members of SPEEA, have until February 19th to decide if they want to go on strike.

The strike would slow down fixing the 787, but it has wider implications: white collar, professional workers are rarely union members and are not known for striking so Boeing engineers set precedent for other professionals. Also, in an unusual move for any union, the SPEEA engineers are rejecting a new contract offer that would guarantee pension benefits for current employees at the expense of new hires (who would receive a 401k instead of a pension). SPEEA is thinking ahead since tiered contracts are known to corrode unity and ultimately weaken the union. Grounding of 787 has given Boeing engineers additional leverage to demand that Boeing extends their original contract.

The union believes a strike would shut down Boeing production lines in Everett, Wash., where its big planes are made, as well as Renton, Wash., where it cranks out more than one of its widely-used 737s every day. A strike would also shut down Boeing's new, non-union plant in North Charleston, S.C., which makes 787s in addition to those assembled in Everett.

Politics

Submission + - First city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution (aljazeera.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Charlottesville, Virginia is the first city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution. The writing of the resolution coincides with a leaked memo outlining the legal case for drone strikes on US citizens and a Federal Aviation Administration plan to allow the deployment of some 30,000 domestic drones.

Comment Re:Cloud computing is the easy way (Score 1) 306

It's not a question of systems of servers going down, it's a question of overloading the targets data transmission capability. If the attacker can push move data down the line than the target can handle, then even if none of the targets systems go down, you've still disrupted their ability to do business. Even if they only are able to send 50% to 75% of a targets capacity, they have still reduced the overall effectiveness of the target and have disrupted their ability to conduct business as usual.

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