No, you're not going to answer because you're an absolute idiot. Log in and post that dumb azz crap. Not to mention you had to see the dozens of other a$$ hats who posted the same stupid thing, but no you had to anonymously post exactly the same crap because....??? Fail. Go back to playing your PS2, and mom should have dinner ready in a few minutes. Try not to complain about the free food in your free house.

I did hold on to them just in case. However, I've pitched every PC. I could pop my most recent HD extrnal drive (old primary HD for the MBP laptop) and swap it in, to see if Lion will read it. I'll have to try that sometime when "little fingers" aren't nearby :)

Sounds to like me about 5-6 years ago. Realized my PC cratering crash, and unreadable backups had just digitally lost most pics of the first 3 years of my son's life. Been on Mac's ever since, with sequential and full backups performed almost too often.

Agree. I don't see how you do 2 months of constant firing and then not impact a 14 year design life. Usually there's no crossover between a apogee kick system, and smaller stationkeeping thrusters. So it's not like you can "divert the fuel." I am about 80% sure it's a different thruster system anyway (meaning, apogee motor is NOT hydrazine), but I could easily be wrong. The AF article had several obvious mistakes that any satellite flyer would catch.

On a $2B satellite there are tons of $1,000 tests. If they've always been negative or someone incorrectly assumes another test overlaps...

You have to be joking or you've forgotten what we're talking about. This is an apogee kick motor (to use GPS parlance) to take a 2 ton space vehicle to a circular 22,000 mile orbit. GPS, having half the orbit and half the weight, has an AKM which is not small. It's huge. It has to be due to the amount of firing it's intended to do. I tried Googling an image to show my point, but unfortunately, the AKM is on the "non-sexy" side of the SV and, hence, no photos. We're not talking about .5 pound stationkeeping thrusters.

That said, yes I believe the author was undermined by a bad source, or at least the Air Force Magazine article I read which is cited. He is quoted as saying it was a surprise that hydrazine had a warm-up period, and made it sound as if the 50th was flying this bird alongside operable satellites. We've known for over 40 years hydrazine is more consistent when pre-warmed. This is why GPS fires up pre-heaters before every stationkeeping maneuver. Pre-heating gives more reliable, and predictable vectors.

Because it's hydrazine. Really nasty stuff no one wants to be shooting off on the ground. I read the link and I think whoever wrote the Air Force Magazine article either took liberties or talked to the only knucklehead around Space Command. For example, "We found things we hadn't seen before, such as a warm up period." Really? This is why every GPS satellite ever launched has pre-heaters for it's hydrazine thrusters? (They're called "cat bed heaters" if you're looking at Reaction Control System telemetry). He then quotes him to say, "The 50th SW sucked up the workload while doing normal operations," which was then contradicted by the finished statements, "Upon completion, it will be turned over to the 50th." (I'm paraphrasing.) LEO, or Launch and Early Orbit is normally not done by the same crews as on orbit ops. The 4 SOPS get's SCO, or Satellite Command Authority, after it's handed off by the group responsible for LEO has put it into operational orbit, and performed basic check-out to ensure it's mission capable. The 4 SOPS also has the unique situation of being augmented by a National Guard unit, the 148 SOPS, which also performs MILSTAR operations 24/7/365. So, the 50th has a "little" help :) when it comes to Milstar.

Yes and no. We were deeply into isolationism and trying desperately to ignore Germany. If you read "Beast in the Garden" you'll see our only interest was for them to pay back reparations. When our ambassador tried raising the flag on Hitler's "Final Solution," most thought the stories were made up, the Jews probably created the situation, etc. We "apologized" for any stories neg about Germany and then again, tried to get reassurances we'd get paid back.

I think any Russian General older than 60 would disagree that invading Germany was easy and low cost, compared to a nuke. Seeing as we had to completely strip a bomber to it's bare minimum, and fly it off a deck not meant for that platform, I would challenge the premise, "We were ready to invade." We would have had no air superiority, against a Kamikze ready force, which had to go huge distances via boat to arrive. This is just begging to things to go wrong.

If anyone reads this and decides to try it, be very careful. I'm somewhat certain grounding a speaker wire will do very bad things depending on the Class of Amp you're using for your home stereo. In other words, I would not try this under most circumstances and with 100% knowledge you might "let the ghost out" of your amps IC board.