Quote:
Originally posted by geodeticman:
To this day the Atlas is still in use, being tailored for missions by Lockheed Martin here in Colorado
|
Quote:
Also originally posted by geodeticman:
Is he in Aeronautical Engineering or relared ?
|
Great Steve you reminded me of a subject that I think I have espoused here before concerning the strange choice of 4 foot 8 and a half inches as the "standard gauge" (distance between the rails) of most of the worlds railway/railroad tracks.
for a good giggle you have to visit:-
http://www.seiyaku.com/reference/shuttle.html
this report concludes with an observation on the space shuttle
"You may have noticed there are two huge ancillary rockets on the sides of the main fuel tank. These are known as 'reusable solid rocket boosters' and are made by a killing-machine firm called ATK Thiokol in Utah. The assembly plant for these boosters is located on western side of the Rocky Mountains and to transport them to the Kennedy Space Center, rail is the cheapest and quickest method. The line from the factory runs through a tunnel so the booster rockets have to be made smaller than the tunnel. This tunnel is only a bit wider than the track, and therefore the rocket design had to take this into consideration.So there we have it. Today's space travellers owe the design of the Shuttle's rocket motor to Ancient Roman test-pilots."
this "explanation" appears on many web sites.and I like the expression you can find on for example:-
http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html
"So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a horse's ass!"
I have a feeling that the tunnel referred to here is in Colo(u)rado
And I just remembered another "brush" with another obvious, to me at least, famous person.
There is a section on my website devoted to one of my favo(u)rite authors, my late namesake see:-
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/johnfowles/
to my lasting chagrin, since he passed away last year,I never actually met him.
But I once spent much time walking around Lyme Regis,Dorset where he lived and used for the setting of his most famous novel "the French Left-tenants Woman"
which became a great film starring Jeremy Irons (himself an old boy of the "publc" (i.e.private) Sherborne School) and Meryl Streep
I was trying to find his house whose address I knew but failed.
Soon after he revised his superb novel "The Magus", which is a very rare thing for a novelist to do,and i felt emboldened to write to him about it. To my considerable surprise he replied:-
JohnFowles BSc Aeronautical Engineering (now the Web Author)
[ June 09, 2006, 09:39: Message edited by: johnfowles ]