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By Janet Evans
Saturday, Oct 4 2008, 04:21 PM
EVERYONE knows I’m a Lost fan. And Lost wouldn’t be lost if it weren’t for aviation. Why, one of the main characters, who has been rescued from the island that was his home for several months, spends his weekends flying in hopes of repeating the crash that made him “lost” in the first place!
But Lost isn’t the only movie or show that features aviation that’s been a hit with me. How about the original Tarzan The Ape Man? The plane crashing in the jungle…with an infant onboard, raised by apes. He grows up to fall in love with the beautiful Jane. Not trying to make “apes” the feature, but you can’t forget that King Kong, while on top of the Empire State building was attacked by a plane.
And then there’s Top Gun, with Tom Cruise, or Cliff Hanger with Sylvester Stallone. Or Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando, Memphis Belle or A Bridge Too Far.
Can’t forget Airplane!, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, or Home Alone.
I know, some of these movies have aviation touching them only for a short period of time, while others have them as the main focus. But it was important just the same. The movie wouldn’t have gotten where it was supposed to be without aviation. Just like we wouldn’t be where we are today without it.
Just think where we have come and how quickly since 1903 when the Wright Bros. had their first success.
Aviation.com recognizes that and has put together what they believe are the Great Innovations In Aviation....
Take a look…what do you think?
GREAT INNOVATIONS IN AVIATION
Also, check out the Famous Firsts in Aviation
View scenes from the movie Cliffhanger
HERE
Warning: Viewer discretion advised - language/violence.
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By Janet Evans
Thursday, Sep 25 2008, 06:40 AM
Can you say 340 trillion, trillion, trillion?
That's how many addresses the new system for web addresses will have when it is implemented.
You see, the current system is about ready to run out of addresses. Who would have thought the Internet Highway would run out of addresses? Why, the mighty inventor of the internet should have created enough in the first place, don't you think? And we all know who that is...
Oh no..I thought it was Al Gore!
He said he created the internet.
I guess it was really Vint Cerf the "father of the internet."
The world is about to run out of the internet addresses that allow computers to identify each other and communicate, the man who invented the system has told The Times.
Vint Cerf, the “father of the internet” and one of the world’s leading computer scientists, said that businesses and consumers needed to act now to switch to the next generation of net addresses. Unless preparations were made now, he said, some computers might not be able to go online and the connectivity of the internet might be damaged.
Mr Cerf said that internet service providers in particular needed to prepare and that time was running out for a smooth transition.
Every computer and online device is assigned a unique IP address, but the pool of unallocated numbers is about to dry up.
“This is like the internet running out of telephone numbers and with no new numbers, you can’t have more subscribers,” he said.
When Mr Cerf and others founded the internet system in 1977, he set in place "internet protocol version four" (IPv4) which provided 4.2 billion addresses. With the number of internet-enabled devices, particularly mobile phones, soaring, less than 14 per cent of those addresses remain vacant.
It is estimated that IPv4 addresses, each of which is a series of 32 binary digits, will run out in 2010 and possibly as early as next year. A new system, called IPv6, has been ready for implementation for more than a decade.
Continued HERE
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By Janet Evans
Monday, Jun 23 2008, 07:05 AM
A Basic Abacus
In Asia, the Chinese were becoming very involved in commerce with the Japanese, Indians, and Koreans. Businessmen needed a way to tally accounts and bills. Somehow, out of this need, the abacus was born. The abacus is the first true precursor to the adding machines and computers which would follow. It worked somewhat like this:The value assigned to each pebble (or bead, shell, or stick) is determined not by its shape but by its position: one pebble on a particular line or one bead on a particular wire has the value of 1; two together have the value of 2. A pebble on the next line, however, might have the value of 10, and a pebble on the third line would have the value of 100. Therefore, three properly placed pebbles--two with values of 1 and one with the value of 10--could signify 12, and the addition of a fourth pebble with the value of 100 could signify 112, using a place-value notational system with multiples of 10. Thus, the abacus works on the principle of place-value notation: the location of the bead determines its value. In this way, relatively few beads are required to depict large numbers. The beads are counted, or given numerical values, by shifting them in one direction. The values are erased (freeing the counters for reuse) by shifting the beads in the other direction. An abacus is really a memory aid for the user making mental calculations, as opposed to the true mechanical calculating machines which were still to come.
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In 1985, as a stay at home mom, I felt I was very fortunate. My daughter went to school at Country Dale Elementary School, in Franklin. Apple computers were the rage in the Franklin schools. I had never owned or used a computer before, but my daughter, who was in the Gifted and Talented Program (which, if I remember correctly had just been instituted in the school system) was very interested in computers. With me being a volunteer at school, I was also interested, and I wanted a computer at home for both of us to use.
We saved, and we purchased an computer. I also bought the same programs that my daughter was using at school. The cool thing was, the printer was dot matrix. Wow! The best thing, before we started using the internet for everything? Having an encyclopedia program. It was the greatest! Having that computer not only helped my children, but helped me with future employment. Could we have lived without it? Of course. But right now, it’s awfully hard to think of times without computers.
I do think back to my school days without them. We had manual typewriters and we did term papers that didn’t always look very nice, but they were a least typed. Teachers were making copies on actual mimeograph machines that used blue ink. I can still smell that ink, with the papers that were still damp when we got them. Calculators, if you were lucky enough to have one, were huge and clumsy.
There are many things in life that I wouldn’t mind giving up and just going back to the old fashioned way. But a computer is not one of them. Back in 1985 the computer was an amazing adventure for me, even though it was in a basic form. But now, a computer has pretty much opened up the world....Just think where a computer can take you.
Read about the history of computers: Computers From Past to Present ç here
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By Janet Evans
Tuesday, Jan 15 2008, 06:15 AM
News about US Air National Guard F-15C involved in accident on November 2, 2007.
An Air Force investigation of the crash last fall of an F-15C Eagle fighter jet concluded that a defective metal beam in the frame cracked, causing it to disintegrate during flight.
In a report released last week, Air Force investigators said they had found the sole reason for the accident was the faulty support beam, called a longeron, which failed to meet the manufacturer's specifications.
Gen. John Corley, the top officer at Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va., called the situation a "crisis" that would be best solved by an infusion of costly new aircraft rather than fixing jets that are 25 years old.
The mechanical troubles, most acute in the F-15 Eagles used to protect the United States, also have led to a patchwork approach to filling critical air missions at home and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With nearly a third of the F-15 fleet grounded due to a defective support beam in the aircraft's frame, other fighter aircraft, including F-16s and new F-22s, are being shifted from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It's a rob Peter to pay Paul," Corley said at a Pentagon news conference. "It's unprecedented to have an air superiority fleet that's on average 25 years old."
Read the article from Military.com
Air Force Fighter Fleet In Crisis ÷here
Produced by Boeing Phantom Works as part of the US Air Force accident investigation, this animation reconstructs the in-flight structural failure of a US Air National Guard F-15C on November 2, 2007. The breakup was caused by fatigue cracking of a forward fuselage longeron. IMPORTANT - this is slowed down to one-fifth the actual speed of the event!
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By Janet Evans
Thursday, Dec 13 2007, 06:30 AM
Forget e-mail....
How about space mail?
In an experiment combining elements of a package delivery service, the sport of kite surfing and a REALLY big fishing reel, Russian and European engineers sought to pioneer a technology that could be used in the future to retrieve cargo from space.
The experiment involving a 19-mile, super-strength tether hit a glitch, however, when the line failed to unwind fully, but Russian Mission Control said it hopes to salvage the test by recalculating the landing capsule's orbit.
"Even a fishing line could get stuck sometimes," Mission Control said spokesman Valery Lyndin.
The second Young Engineers Satellite, whose preparation involved nearly 500 university students from Europe, Japan, North America and Australia, was launched into orbit September 14 on a Russian-built Foton-M3 spacecraft, along with other European Space Agency experiments.
The goal of the YES2 experiment was to deliver Fotino -- a 12-pound reddish spherical capsule the size of a beach ball -- to Earth with the help of a long tether made of a substance the European Space Agency described as the world's strongest fiber.
In the experiment, the Fotino, held in a metal brace by straps, was to be shot out from the Foton-M3 spacecraft with springs as the tether gradually unwound, swinging the capsule forward into a lower orbit about 18 miles below.
About 2½ hours later, after gravity takes firm hold and the entire unit swings in a vertical position below the spacecraft, the Fotino is then released from its straps and glides through the atmosphere for about 20 minutes before a parachute deploys and the sphere bumps to a landing in the steppes of the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan.
The capsule has a thermal shield to protect it from the searing heat of re-entry through the Earth's atmosphere, while the tether and the holding clamps burn up.
The experiment went awry when only five miles of the tether were unwound from the spacecraft at about 190 miles above the Earth before the capsule was released.
The reason for the problem wasn't immediately clear, Lyndin said. "It could be that the tether got stuck," he added.
The Fotino is equipped with a radio beacon to allow experts to track it as it glides down through the atmosphere, and Mission Control will try to calculate its current orbit to determine when and where it will land, Lyndin said.
The Russian Space Agency sought to play down the problem, saying the experiment provided a "valuable information about the tether's dynamics in space flight."
"The results of the experiment could be considered partly successful," it said.
Roger Walker, the project manager for ESA's Education Office, also played down the glitch, saying on the agency's Web site that it was a "largely successful demonstration" and that the agency was proud of the students' work, even though full deployment was not reached.
The tether is .0196 inches thick and is made of Dyneema, which the ESA said is used by kite surfers.
Read an article from MSNBC.com
One Small Step Toward Deliveries From Outer Space ◄ here.
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