Subject:
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Re: FLL not allowing NQC; Mindscript is allowed
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Fri, 11 Mar 2005 17:44:16 GMT
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Original-From:
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Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net[StopSpammers]>
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Viewed:
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3575 times
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Ralph Hempel wrote:
> Which brings me back to the moon shot and popular culture.
> For me, the defining image of engineers in pop culture is
> in the film Apollo 13. The carbon monoxide scrubber filters
> for the command module don't fit into the canister in the
> LEM, and the astronauts are in danger of dying. We cut back
> to a room at Mission Control with all kinds of junk on a
> table, and an engineer picks up a round filter and a square
> canister and says:
The guys at NASA *are* undoubtedly very smart at working around
problems - but that's a REALLY poor example (and I know everyone
uses it). If you look at what they actually came up with, it
boils down to using some available plastic and cardboard to
duct-tape the square canister to a hose and the hose to the round
hole. I don't think I can imagine *ANYONE* who'd have trouble
solving that problem.
I'll give you a much better example though.
(I'll admit here that I don't have precise details - but this
is the gist of it)
On one of the planetary science probes heading out past Jupiter
and Saturn, they had a problem with a mis-aligned sensor. It
had been attached to a boom with some special adhesive that
is designed to retain integrity and to avoid out-gassing when
held in a vacuum. However, the sensor was slightly mis-aligned.
They did simulation of the crystalline structure of the adhesive
in a supercomputer and figured out a heating and cooling cycle
that would soften the adhesive. By rotating the sensor into the
sunlight and over-driving the electronics so that they started
overheating - they managed to soften the adhesive and apply a
sudden (but accurately calculated) jolt to the manouvering thrusters
to twist the spacecraft enough to apply just the right force to
realign the sensor - thereby repairing the probe.
Now *THAT* is rocket science.
Messing with duct tape and cardboard is what they teach in
Kindergarten - I want my kid to do rocket science.
(That's an analogy - he wants to do movie special effects).
---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjbaker1@airmail.net> WorkEmail: <sjbaker@link.com>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: FLL not allowing NQC; Mindscript is allowed
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| All, I've been folllowing this thread with a lot of interest, and as the author of pbForth - yet another Mindstorms programming language I'd like to weigh in on this subject. You have to remember that FLL is all about engineering and tinkering. I (...) (20 years ago, 11-Mar-05, to lugnet.robotics)
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