NASA’s new mega-rocket, a towering booster designed for deep space missions, will be ready for its first test flight no later than November 2018, space agency officials announced Wednesday (Aug. 27).
It’s possible that the Space Launch System rocket test flight could launch as early as December 2017, but NASA officials have committed to having the rocket ready for flight be the end of 2018 to be safe. That extra wiggle room should let the space agency cope with scheduling and funding issues as they crop up in the future, NASA officials said in a teleconference with reporters.
The SLS will be the largest rocket ever constructed and it is designed to send humans deeper into space than ever before. The huge launcher — which will stand at 400-feet-tall (122 meters) in its final configuration — could deliver NASA astronauts to an asteroid and even Mars sometime in the future.
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Posted August 30, 2014 by markosun in Uncategorized
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is one of the largest pipeline systems in the world. It starts at Prudhoe Bay on the Alaskan North Slope and then winds it way south transecting the state for a distance of 1,287 km, until it arrives at the Marine Terminal at Valdez. The pipeline was built between 1974 and 1977 after the 1973 oil crisis caused a sharp rise in oil prices in the United States that made exploration of the Prudhoe Bay oil field economically feasible. To transport oil from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean to the ice-free port of Valdez on the Gulf of Alaska, the pipeline has to cross the Denali Fault, a major cause of earthquakes in North America and a source of great worry for the engineers who built it. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline is a vital lifeline that transports about 17% of the domestic oil supply for the United States. Breakage to this pipeline would cause damages worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
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To prevent such a disaster, some of the country’s top seismologists and geologists were brought together to study the Denali Fault. Those studies located the fault within a 1,900-foot corridor crossing the pipeline route and estimated that the pipeline could be subjected to a magnitude 8.5 earthquake in which the ground might slip 20 feet horizontally and 5 feet vertically. To accommodate the projected fault movement, a section of the pipeline where it crosses the Denali Fault was laid on sliders rather than on rigid pillar supports. The pipeline rests on Teflon shoes that are free to slide on long horizontal steel beams, such that the pipeline moves when the ground moves.
When the team of structural and geo-technical engineers came up with this design in the early 1970s, they didn’t expect it to be tested in their lifetimes. They were wrong.
On November 3, 2002, the Denali Fault ruptured over a distance of 336 km, producing the largest earthquake from a continental strike-slip fault in North America since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Measuring 7.9 in magnitude, the earthquake caused ground to shift beneath the pipeline 14 feet horizontally and 2.5 feet vertically. The violent shaking damaged a few of the pipeline’s supports near the fault, but the pipeline itself did not break. It was the first significant quake to test the pipeline’s mettle.
The survival of the pipeline in the Denali Fault earthquake was the result of careful engineering to meet stringent earthquake design specifications based on meticulous geologic studies. The studies when they were done in the 1970’s cost only about $3 million. Had the pipeline ruptured in the quake, the lost revenue and the cost of repair and environmental cleanup could have easily exceeded $100 million, perhaps many times more.
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Posted August 28, 2014 by markosun in Uncategorized
The Michael Brown case is very hard to make sense of. There are biases everywhere. Some witnesses say Brown had his hands up, others say he rushed Darren Wilson the police officer. Not a good idea to rush a police officer who has a gun pointed at you. Michael appeared to be in a bullish state of mind. He just robbed a convenience store of cigars roughing up the clerk in the process. So was he a very bad accident waiting to happen that day? He appears to be a very big man. Someone like that starts charging you and it could make a person panic.
So the Black community is in an uproar, as maybe it should be. But lets see if we can determine what really happened. Why would a police officer shoot an unarmed person with his hands in the air. It makes no sense, think about it. Does the cop want to ruin his career and life? Highly unlikely.
I realize African-Americans constantly get harassed by police. Many Blacks get pulled over for no discernible reason. There is racism, most definitely. But I’m not sure that is the case here, I think the cop was scared shitless and started blasting.
According to witness reports and Ferguson police, Wilson drove up to Brown and a friend, Dorian Johnson, and ordered them to move off the street and onto the sidewalk. An altercation then took place between Brown and Wilson through the window of the police car. A shot was fired from within the vehicle and Brown and Johnson began to flee. Wilson left his vehicle, fired his pistol at Brown and confronted him. Wilson then fired several shots at Brown, fatally wounding him. Witness reports greatly differ as to whether Brown was standing with his hands up or moving towards Wilson when Wilson shot him multiple times.
If the Black community doesn’t get what they perceive to be justice in this case, it could get very ugly out there. Very, very ugly!
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Posted August 25, 2014 by markosun in Uncategorized
Kern Hill Furniture is a Winnipeg business that has been around since the dinosaurs. They have over the top commercials that are funny. This time (Number One Son, as the now deceased Old Man used to call him) is helping out the Humane Society with Kitty Midnight Madness. Kern Hill has sales where they offer low prices up until midnight.
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Posted August 25, 2014 by markosun in Uncategorized
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