I work in software for running business processes. We sometimes use the phrase, “Pace over Perfection.” That approach works for some applications. It emphatically does NOT work for applications where human lives hang in the balance.

I understand the argument that an MCAS failure should be handled the same as a runaway trim event. But, the design that was reliant on non-redundant AoA sensors and which relentlessly drove the trim to extremes without stopping if there was an AoA sensor failure was incompetent in the extreme. Especially for a systems…

I’m always a bit bothered by the “investment” argument. Unless you get struck by lightning and buy something like a Ferrari GTO before its massive runup, most cars, even collector cars, go up far slower than the market. As an investment, even very collectible cars will (usually) make you less money than just putting…

For the older folks (not that I’m too old for Ren and Stimpy):

I can’t speak for SailGP, but with America’s Cup yachts, the power for controlling sails and hydraulics for the foils comes from a bunch of bicyclists (sorry, CYCLORS!), making them nominally and at least theoretically human powered, and the electronics are just a transmission means.

I rode in a rearward facing seat in a Ford Country Squire station wagon. I died in an accident 45 years ago. #therestofthestory

Billions of milligrams. 

Same people who test Tesla FSD by putting their own kids in front of it and seeing if it doesn’t run them over.

In some sense we are replacing Hubble with a spy sat. Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, a “sort of” Hubble replacement, uses an optical system donated by the National Reconnaissance Office, probably a leftover of their abandoned Future Imagery Architecture program. Same aperture as Hubble (and therefore resolution), but…

hese also appear on military aircraft.

Here’s the bicycle one. https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/721258

Interestingly, the faster you go, the less winglets benefit you. Generally speaking, aircraft drag can be placed in two components - viscous, or parasitic, and induced. Parasitic is the general drag from moving a shape through a fluid. Induced drag is a natural byproduct of lift. As an aircraft goes faster, and its…

This man circulation theories of lift.

It DID have winglets when it began its takeoff roll. The wings drooped so much under the weight of the fuel that the tips abraded, and the winglets were barely attached. It nearly ended the attempt. Dick Rutan used the rudder to sideslip the aircraft and put enough sideload on the winglets so they broke off, and they…

Sort of an LMH from a Tim Burton universe.

Let me read that for you: “Tesla warns against using the manual mechanism, citing that it should only be used when the car has no power.”

It’s not just Democrats

Yeah, I’ll take a few minutes of spaceship porn from the guy who made 2001: A Space Odyssey a film ahead of its time visually.

If you find the Mission Log podcast with the second interview of David Gerold, he talks quite a bit about the early TNG portion of his career and Roddenberry kinda going off the rails. He holds special ire for Leonard Maizlish, Roddenberry’s attorney and the eminence gris behind the troubles of the early TNG seasons.

According to the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, the only benefit of higher sample rates than 44.1k/sec is to replicate frequencies that are over 22 kHz, far above audibility for most adults. And 16 bits already covers 96 dB of audio range, and you’re rarely going to have an environment that is so quiet that 96dB…