* Posts by Kevin Turvey

33 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Mar 2012

Successful launch readies Galileo satellites for test

Kevin Turvey

Why!!??

Why !!?? --To be independent from the Septics. I remember having an argument with a yank as to why we needed our own GNSS when the American system was perfecly good enough.

Can you imagine the fuss the yanks would make if they had to rely on a European system which we could switch off at will and would have great impact on their warfighting ability, why would they not want their own independent system, why would'nt we?

It's bad enough that we have bowed to pressure to alter the frequencies to please the yanks to allow the yanks to jam the signal without affecting their GPS signal IIRC.

As to the cost, is it better to push the money out to industry and potentially create hundreds of jobs as well as potentially safeguarding hundreds of jobs in the aerospace industry or leave it in a bank/banks to potentially be frittered away on smaller projects which could amount to much less overall. It (money) all just swirls around and around in the system anyway, it is never "lost".

US deploys robot submarine armada against Iranian mines

Kevin Turvey
Gimp

Re: Move along - nothing to see here

I find it most disagreeable when a load preparation H goes off under my arse!

Kevin Turvey
Headmaster

Re: So scared

"trying to ferment rebellion" - i think you mean "foment rebellion"

Christians get God-optimized 'Edifi' Android fondleslab

Kevin Turvey

Re: Will Jesus let me view porn on it?

Interesting bit about that episode in "The God Delusion", I'm just in the process of reading it again, probably for the 4th/5th time, I love that book!

Kevin Turvey
Gimp

Apps

Is this being targeted at any particular church? Catholic Church for example, if so does it come with a "Choirboy" app?

Gambling site's 'no strings attached' offer had strings attached

Kevin Turvey

Re: This, if nowt else

does anyone know the average profit a high street bookies makes? For example over a year for every £100 taken by the bookies how much on average do they have to pay out as winnings?

Maybe someone has the figures for these casinos on latenight tv too.

Asteroid miners to strap 'scopes to new Virgin Galactic rocket

Kevin Turvey
Thumb Up

Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

Hope you dont mean a middle eastern desert, they already have enough minerals and oil, maybe it could be dumped from orbit a little closer to home, maybe Milton Keynes or Slough?

Kevin Turvey
Alien

Re: Visions of...

I'd like to get my shiny headed alien intruder into her cargo hold!

She was hot in Ghostbusters too!

LOHAN fizzles forlornly in REHAB

Kevin Turvey

Silicon seal

Not sure a sacrificial silicon seal would be strong enough, it's gonna be seeing close to 14 pounds per square inch which will probably mean it'll just pop off before you get a chance to fire the motor. Maybe a weakened perspex disc bonded to the nozzle would be better but if it is too strong it could make the motor go bang rather than burn, bit of a balancing act getting it right.

LOHAN finally checks into REHAB

Kevin Turvey

Re: BOOM!

Actually I doubt anything very exciting is going to happen, I expect the motor will fire no problem and the rocket exhaust will make a mess of that nice shiny lump of perspex they have for a lid. Is it possible for you to stick a couple of sacrificial layers of clear stickyback plastic onto the perspex to prevent damage, that way you'd be able to re-use the perspex/chamber in other SPB projects.

Kevin Turvey
Thumb Down

Re: Not so

Actually not so again, the lid is secured by gravity at ambient pressure, at simulated altitude it is additionally held in place by the surrounding air pressure. If the motor burns long enough to bring the chamber pressure back to ambient and beyond and start to pressurise the chamber the lid will simply rattle in place like a saucepan lid, I doubt the motor will have enough "output" to pressurise the chamber quickly enough to blow the lid off and test the "brick retainment system"!!!

Europe's prang-phone-in-every-car to cost €5m per life saved

Kevin Turvey
FAIL

Re: neat

If you think a mobile fitted in a car is a tracking device most of us are already carrying one and tracking the person is probably a lot more useful to whoever than tracking the car. If you're carrying your mobile you can be tracked whether on foot or in a car.

CERN catches a glimpse of Higgs-like boson

Kevin Turvey
Thumb Up

LHC a powerful brownian motion generator? Seems awfully expensive just to do that, I had a powerful brownian motion earlier and all that took was several pints of the black stuff last night, took ages to flush!, might pop off and have a quick yellowian motion in a minute.

So, that vast IT disaster you may have caused? Come in, sit down

Kevin Turvey
Headmaster

Re: More replies from Dominic

a quiet word over a pint

Nigerian scams are hyper-efficient idiot finders

Kevin Turvey

Spam

I've always wondered what would happen if everyone replied to the spam. If for example one of those purportedly from your bank asking you to give your details so they could update their records, what if you gave a false name and account number etc. The spammers would have so much junk details to go through they'd have to give up. Or even just reply with a nice little letter that didnt include any information, they'd spend so much time looking through trying to find relevant information, spamming wouldn't be worth the effort.

If just 1% of all the billions of spam emails sent were replied to in this way the spammers would have so much junk that spamming wouldn't be worth the effort.

Russia looks to microsatellites for science and shipping

Kevin Turvey

Re: Launch vehicles

Yes but the ISS was not put up in a single launch was it?, 277t? It was a lot of smaller launches then assembled in space so it is not really comparable.

Most satellites are a single item/single launch, though most launches probably

carry more than one satellite these days.

CERN confirms neutrinos don't break light speed

Kevin Turvey

Re: Try that with mythology (aka Religion)

We should all have a massdebate and thrash it out in the open.

HDD oligopoly to keep post-flood prices high till 2014

Kevin Turvey

Re: Oligopoly is a great word

It's all Greek to me. Hoi oligoi - the few, Hoi poloi - the masses, dont say "The hoi poloi" cos then you'd be saying "the the masses".

Or something!

Bloke with spanners attacks LOHAN's dodgy plumbing

Kevin Turvey

Dodgy Gauge

Have you given your gauge a calibration "tap" with your finger? Analogue type gauges are quite inaccurate, they're not bad to begin with but the higher the reading (lower the pressure) the more inaccurate they get, in my experience they can "stick" and a calibration tap on the dial can get a completely different reading.

I've just done an experiment here at work, I have an altitude chamber with both an analogue and a digital gauge attached, I vacced it down as far as it would go, the digital gauge read 30mbar and the analogue read 120mbar. Giving the analogue gauge a tap on the glass brought this to 100mbar - better but still a long way from the digital gauge. I'd get a digital gauge if you can. Also is your gauge "barometrically compensated" if so that might be affecting the reading.

Our chamber has 11 different connections/joints along the way from the pump for various gauges, air admittance valves, joints etc and yet still gets down to 30mbar (equivalent to around 75000ft) yours apparently has 8, you could try smearing silicone bathroom sealant over the joints and letting it cure overnight, we have done this to our setup and it helps a lot.

Our normal test chamber only has 6 joints and we regularly test at a simulated altitude of 130000ft, but maybe we have a more powerful pump than you.

Mars rover Opportunity spots WALL-E in crater ramble

Kevin Turvey

Dramatic?

Hardly what I'd call dramatic! Interesting maybe, not dramatic.

@time on mars, they could still divide the 4000 earth hour long local day into 24 giving them local hours, it'd just mean a "local" hour would last 166 earth hours, it just would'nt be so accurate, though giving local minutes and seconds and maybe tenths/hundredths of a second would help narrow it down!

Insect vision a template for computer ‘sight’

Kevin Turvey

Re: Insect intelligence???

That's nothing to do with insect intelligence but different "programming". The fly has no interest in the halogen light whereas the moth tried to use it to navigate. For millions of years of moth evolution the brightest thing at night was the moon, the fact that moths have'nt had long enough to develope strategies to cope with artificial lights does'nt mean its intelligence is any less impressive than fly intelligence.

I was at a family meal once where the host brought out a very hot plate warmer and told a young child (4/5yrs?) "dont touch that, it's very hot!" what was the first thing she did when his back was turned? ........"Waaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!" yet she has quite a bit more intelligence than a fly!

Russian satellite beams home 121-megapixel pics of Earth

Kevin Turvey

North America

Nice to have a shot of the world not centred on North America for a change!

Look back in Ascii: Computing in the 1980s

Kevin Turvey

Re: UK hobby computing started in earnest in 1977...

"Started in the 70`s" Pah!! I remember playing Asteroids in late 68 when I was 3 and all I had was some graph paper an abacus and a set of Napiers Bones. Took me all week to plot one frame and then me kid brother would come in and use his crayons on it so I'd have to start again!! Happy days !!!

Turing's rapid Nazi Enigma code-breaking secret revealed

Kevin Turvey

Re: Unbreakable

Maybe lazy was the wrong word though I remember something about an operator having to re-send a long message and he didnt bother to change the rotor settings or something which helped Bletchley Park decrypt the message, also they always started with a station weather report which had a limited number of variables which aided decrypting, and another bored operator who simply pressed the same letter many times for some reason which also aided Bletchley Park to work out the rotor settings, my memory is a bit fuzzy about the details, mostly it seemed to be human error compounded by the official method/system of using Enigma not being the most secure.

Kevin Turvey

Re: Unbreakable

I agree it was'nt perfect, probably nothing manmade (personmade?) is, but I've read somewhere that if it was used correctly it would still be unbreakable, but I'm not an expert in this, so maybe I'm wrong.

Kevin Turvey

Unbreakable

If Enigma had been used properly it would have been unbreakable (even today), in most cases it was the lazyness of the operators that allowed us to "crack the code".

Battlefield Earth ruled worst film EVER

Kevin Turvey
Thumb Down

Going Overboard

All of these films while not good are surely a long way from being the worst. The worst I have seen is Adam Sandlers "Going Overboard" the first film he made I think, that was so bad I didnt even watch it all I had to turn it off.

Most of the films in the list are there because maybe it's "cool" to knock them, try watching Going Overboard !!

Cameron 'to change his mind' on the one thing he got right in Defence

Kevin Turvey

Dogfight?

I'd say it doesn't matter as aircraft don't dogfight anymore, stopping in midair (viffing?) is probably not a lot of use against an air to air missile released from 30whatever miles away.

Kevin Turvey
Thumb Up

Re: Missing the point entirely

Actually it's the Ministry of Defence but I agree completely. What are we defending against?, and what are we trying to prove? We are no longer a super-power, why do we always tag along and try to match up to the US in whatever wars it likes to get involved in, if they want to get involved thats up to them. If we refuse to play ball they'll simply put slightly more troops or whatever in to cover what we would have done. We are in the EU, in most cases anyone who is going to attack us is going to have to come thousands of miles across the EU before they get to us, we can back-up our EU neighbours if they are attacked and we can back them up if they are but mostly I think we should stop trying to be something we're not and start spending on more important things.

LOHAN checks into REHAB chamber

Kevin Turvey
Thumb Up

Slightly over-engineered

Looks like a nice set-up if slightly over-engineered for a simple test to see if the motor will ignite at cold and altitude, a piece of plastic piping and good dollops of epoxy resin would have done the job but it would'nt have been reusable.

Also not having gone with my suggestion of routing the leads under the lid over the seal is probably a good idea looking at the puny pump you are using, it has happened to me several times at work in our test chamber and it has vacc'd down no problem, but we are using a nice Edwards Model E1M8 vac pump which laughs in the face of your puny equipment!

Looking forward to seeing the results.

Plastic that SELF-REPAIRS using light unleashed by prof

Kevin Turvey

Re: Glass ceiling needed.

Super!

Actively cooled rocket primed for easy re-entry

Kevin Turvey
Headmaster

Re: Explain?

Technically as the Shuttle had landed and was merely trundling along the runway, I would have thought it is no longer descending / in descent.

Man FLIES with Android-powered homemade bird wings

Kevin Turvey

Re: Gullable?

LOL,

There's always one !