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NASA

Remembering NASA Disasters With an Eye Toward the Future 273

Posted by timothy
from the those-categories-aren't-the-only-possibilities dept.
mattnyc99 writes "This next week marks the anniversary of three sad days in NASA's history: three astronauts died in a capsule fire testing for Apollo 1 exactly 42 years ago today, then the Challenger went down 23 years ago tomorrow, followed by the Columbia disaster six years ago this Super Bowl Sunday. Amidst all this sadness, though, too many average Americans take our space program for granted. Amidst reconsiderations of NASA priorities from the Obama camp as the Shuttle nears retirement, then, the brilliant writer Chris Jones offers a great first-hand account in the new issue of Esquire — an impassioned argument against the impending end of our manned space program. In which camp do you fall: mourner or rocketeer?"

Comment: Re:Tycho Brahe - Amazing (Score 3, Informative) 98

by Aliks (#26002713) Attached to: Light Echoes Solve Mystery of Tycho's Supernova

Well he had already done a lot of work on parallax measurements for astronomical objects. So when the supernova appeared, and showed no parallax against the moon . . . he was on pretty firm ground stating that the moon was closer to earth than the supernova.

More details in Wikipedia.

Comment: The Iron Laws of Software Sales (Score 1) 604

by Aliks (#25897417) Attached to: Rewriting a Software Product After Quitting a Job?

Ok so you can totally rewrite the software in a couple of months. Lets say you budget for 1 man year of coding.

Now you have software that works but you don't have a product you can sell. Expect to spend a further man year of effort "productising" the software. You need to make the thing bullet proof enough that someone who was not part of the development team can use the thing.

Now you have a piece of equipment that ordinary people can use, but you still won't sell much. Expect to spend a further 3 man years on the service side so that business folk can rely on your company and product.

Pretty much you can expect 6 times as much investment as you spend coding.

Oh and did I talk about timescales and cash flow?

These calculations are why early service/consultancy revenue is so important, and sadly why sales and marketing folk do what they do, and act like they do.

Biotech

Ice Agers Stopped Off at Beringia for 20,000 Years

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "Research analyzing DNA sequences from Native American, New World and Asian populations shows a gradual migration and expansion of people from Asia through Siberia and into Beringia, a once-habitable region that today lies submerged under the icy waters of the Bering Strait, starting about 40,000 years ago; a long waiting period in Beringia where the population size remained relatively stable; and finally a rapid expansion into North America through Alaska or Canada about 15,000 years ago. "If you think about it, these people didn't know they were going to a new world. They were moving out of Asia and finally reached a landmass that was exposed because of lower sea levels during the last glacial maximum, but two major glaciers blocked their progress into the New World. So they basically stayed put for about 20,000 years, says Connie Mulligan, Ph.D. "It wasn't paradise, but they survived. When the North American ice sheets started to melt and a passage into the New World opened, we think they left Beringia to go to a better place." Researchers believe that their synthesis of a large number of different approaches into a unified theory will create a platform for scientists to further analyze genomic and non-genetic data as they become available. The original paper is published open-access on PLOS."
It's funny. Laugh.

Poll: Favourite Slashdot Poll?

Submitted by SurturZ
SurturZ writes "I think you should have a poll "Best Slashdot Poll?" * What would you like the CIA to declassify? * Best Meme in Slashdot's First 10 Years * Favorite Sci-Fi Ship? * Favourite Poll involving CowboyNeal? etc etc I'm sure you could do a database search to work out the top five most voted for polls to put in the list"
Space

Hundreds of Black Holes Found->

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes "Hundreds of black holes that were thought to exist at the beginning of the universe have been found by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes. From the article, 'The findings are also the first direct evidence that most, if not all, massive galaxies in the distant universe spent their youths building monstrous black holes at their cores. For decades, a large population of active black holes has been considered missing. These highly energetic structures belong to a class of black holes called quasars. A quasar consists of a doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust that surrounds and feeds a budding supermassive black hole. As the gas and dust are devoured by the black hole, they heat up and shoot out X-rays. Those X-rays can be detected as a general glow in space, but often the quasars themselves can't be seen directly because dust and gas blocks them from our view.' This is pretty big, as it's empirical evidence proving the existence of objects that theoretically had to exist but could not be detected previously."
Link to Original Source
Classic Games (Games)

The Visible Pinball Machine->

Submitted by
Greg Maletic
Greg Maletic writes "Michael Schiess — proprietor of the legendary Lucky JuJu Pinball Arcade in Alameda, CA — has with the help of a few friends transformed a 1976 "Surf Champ" Gottlieb pinball machine piece by piece into a completely transparent pinball machine. The machine will be part of a science center exhibit he's developing around the science of pinball machines. This thing is beautiful, and you can read the story of its creation here. The machine will be on public display for the first time at this year's Pacific Pinball Expo."
Link to Original Source

You will be traveling and coming into a fortune.