To Boldly Go Where No Mento Has Gone Before 143
rjwoodhead writes "This past weekend, my entire family learned what it's like to float in freefall aboard G-Force One (recently featured on the Mythbusters' Moon Hoax show). Being science-lovers, we wanted to do some kind of original experiment. So we decided to test whether the Diet Coke & Mentos reaction was affected by the lack of bubble convection in microgravity. At the link you can find the story of how the experiment evolved and how we talked Space Adventures into letting us fool around with sticky and corrosive cola and candy inside their nice clean airplane, as well as high-speed video of the results."
Sex would have been easier to clean up... (Score:5, Funny)
...and more fun too, or so I'm told.
Re:Sex would have been easier to clean up... (Score:5, Funny)
The experiment was conducted on an aircraft that provides zero gravity for periods of only 30 seconds at a time. That might not be a problem for you, but most people would be left unsatisfied.
Re:Sex would have been easier to clean up... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sex would have been easier to clean up... (Score:5, Funny)
The experiment was conducted on an aircraft that provides zero gravity for periods of only 30 seconds at a time. That might not be a problem for you, but most people would be left unsatisfied.
Are you kidding? Just _thinking_ about 0 G's gets me off.
No imagination (Score:1)
You have to get started before at least 4 minutes and 30 seconds you do the 30 seconds of gorasmic decent. No problem.
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Except that free-fall is the exact state that that the ISS is in and the ISS is definitely considered microgravity. See the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgravity [wikipedia.org]
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9.8m = 32ft.(approx.) Perhaps this poster works for NASA they have a history of confusion regarding the metric system.
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Some cultures discourage the act of having sex with your entire family.
Re:Sex would have been easier to clean up... (Score:5, Funny)
Some cultures discourage the act of having sex with your entire family.
How do they know who my entire family is? And why mine?
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Ask and ye shall receive. http://www.fugly.com/videos/1424/poontos.html [fugly.com]
Re:Sex would have been easier to clean up... (Score:4, Informative)
Funny, but NSFW. Please mark that, as it can get people who work Saturdays in trouble (not me, but others)
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Hmmmm.
The thread is about sex in zero gravity.
To be on topic, it's supposed to be NSFW, duh.
And you can tell from the URL that it's a video.
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Hey, my work IS sex, you insensitive clod!
P.S.: Now it's your turn to imagine, how's I'm getting out of this again... :D
Re:Sex would have been easier to clean up... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe not for your family.
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This is slashdot, I don't think 0 gravity is the problem...
the part about this comment that i found funniest is the fact that it was rated "insightful" and not "funny."
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I'm not sure if you have no imagination or no sexual experience but I'm certain it is both viable and a dream of mine to accomplish. Imagine, if you will, that you're not soaring through space in absolutely nothing but, rather, you're in a place that has hand holds as well as having the dexterity to hold onto one another... There are many possibilities.
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Or a loser. Do you really think he has any experience to compare it to?
Price (Score:3, Informative)
He says 4 grand in the blog - and over at the zero g site it says 5200 when taxes are included, so it looks like prices have been bumped up. I'm still going to start saving up for it though.
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Re:Price (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend is a private pilot and used to have access to a Cessna 150 Aerobat. He took me up and we went into a couple of zero-G arcs. It's astoundingly cool! And in a little Cessna it was far less than a hundred dollars an hour to play around in.
Of course, this does have its drawbacks compared to the Vomit Comet. Being a tiny(!) plane, there's no space for a passenger to actually float around the cabin. I unbuckled the seat belt so I was lifted off the seat for a while. A few objects in the cabin floated around a bit. But the little Cessna cannot achieve the speeds and altitudes required to follow a zero G parabola for more than about ten seconds at a time.
Even if it could, there's a bigger problem. Fuel intake is the limiting factor. Regular planes have a rigid fuel intake inside the gas tanks near the bottom, and the fuel sits on the bottom of the tank. The Aerobat uses "clunk tanks" similar to model planes - weighted flexible hoses in the gas tanks to ensure the fuel and intake hose are on the "bottom" of the tanks even when the plane is inverted. Both types of tanks rely on gravity to keep the fuel and the intake together. Without gravity, neither the fuel nor the intake hose are under any physical obligations to meet up with each other, and the engine can run dry. That's generally considered a "bad thing."
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I occasionally do zero-gee parabolas in a glider. While running out of altitude can be a downer (pun intended), I never have problems with fuel flow!
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I work for a well known government agency and have flown in the C9 vomit comet (for free no less...well at least free to me). And I agree that it is definitely worth a good hunk of money. Personally I wouldn't pay it (I'm too cheap) and it's kind of annoying that ZG only does 15 parabolas (most C9 tests do 50+) but they wanted to choose a number that made it worth it to the consumer but didn't make them sick (i.e., wanting more and positive word of mouth).
I'm supposed to fly the ZG 727 sometime later this
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I realize it's not exactly the same thing, but....
For five grand you could pay for all the training you need to get an actual pilot's license, and then you could go up and do as many zero-gee parabolas as you want. They won't last thirty seconds, and you don't get a big chamber to float around in doing weird experiments. But on the other hand you'll have a pilot's license to do all sorts of other fun things with, and your cumulative zero-gee time could be vastly higher!
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I live in the US. $5,000 is pretty doable, although that's probably not going to be possible if you live in a big city, or if you're a slow learner. $120/hour is about right for training here, much more than that and you're probably going to the wrong place.
You can further cut costs by joining a flying club rather than flying with a commercial operation, and still further by learning to fly gliders rather than regular planes. (Gliders are more fun as well as being cheaper, so why not!) I didn't count it exp
yes, but . . . (Score:1)
Mento (Score:1, Informative)
I'm pretty sure the singular of Mentos is still Mentos.
Re:Mento (Score:5, Funny)
If "Mentos" is "the freshmaker" and not "the freshmakers" then yes, the singular form is "Mentos". I suppose that the plural would then me "Mentot".
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Mentot the MintTaker
World's lamest supervillain?
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Worse than Shado the Brain Theif, anyhow.
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It's a brand name anyway, so the singular form would be Mentos mint, or Mentos dragée as the labeling puts it. On a similar note, it deeply bothers me when people say "Hand me a Kleenex" as if Kleenex were a word. These people also use Kleenex as the plural, as though that somehow made sense. Just call them tissues, dammit.
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Aspirin has been a legally genericized trademark in the US since 1923. And yes, I say acetaminophen instead of Tylenol because there has never been a situation where I needed that specific brand and also because Tylenol makes other products besides those just containing acetaminophen. As for adhesive bandages I just say small bandages.
However, there are brand names that I use generically, such as Velcro and Bubble Wrap, neither of which I would normally capitalize.
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IMO, language is a natural outgrowth of culture. it should be allowed to change and evolve organically however a society sees fit to use it, without regards to legal trademarks. i think it's futile and unethical for companies to demand that the public stop using their trademarked name as a generic noun or verb. no one individual or organization has the right to impede the natural course of linguistic evolution. it's something everyone contributes to. if the general population decides that "kleenex" is synon
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well, i see your point there. i get pretty annoyed when people use "coke" to refer to all sodas as well. but perhaps that's just because "coke" hasn't really been adopted as a proprietary eponym for soda/soft-drink by the general population.
i think the important thing is that people recognize when they're using a genericized trademark. and i think that's the case with Tylenol/aspirin. of course, if you're in the pharmaceutical professional it may not be appropriate to use Tylenol to refer to APAP for the re
Slow news day? (Score:1)
In summary, they had great difficulty getting a classic mentos/diet coke reaction. From problems with the camera to issues getting a mento and coke together. Add in some residual gravity, and it was a complete failure. No explosions, not even any cool looking video.
A very poor result from such a promising premise.
Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was experimentation - not a failure. The blog says they're working on improving the design for next time - this is exactly what scientific experimentation should show. Initial postulate, experimentation, refinement based on results.
Far from a failure, and I certainly enjoyed reading about it and watching the videos.
Cheers,
Ian
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Or a tiny scrap of plastic wrapped around the coke, which they could unwind and then add the mentos using their stick.
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I still don't understand why, after their failure, they didn't just stick the mint-on-a-stick straight into the open bottle? If it had reacted violently, they could have just removed it.
Or was it that they only wanted to see a blob of free-floating diet Coke explode suddenly with a mint stuck in it?
What's with the TSA apologist BS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Whatever you may think about the rules that the TSA enforces (and I agree with Bruce Schneier in that regard), the fact of the matter is that the frontline staff that you deal with have little or no freedom to apply common-sense discretion, and are often placed in situations where they don't have the time, or the background knowledge, to make an informed decision, which means that the default answer is "no". When you couple that with the fact that anyone can be having a horrible day, and some small percentage of people are jerks to begin with (a smaller percentage than most people assume), and multiply by hundreds of thousands of people going through security a day, it's a recipe for horror stories.
...and then he describes how they were pre-briefed and OK with everything...except some clay. Yeah, you heard that right. They were briefed ahead of time, there was no terrorist risk, and these asshats objected to clay because it looked like plastic explosive.
This has nothing to do with the people going through security, and it's only partly the rules. It is absolutely not okay for a TSA agent to "have a bad day" and do anything except apply TSA policies in a humane but consistent manner. If they can't do so on a "bad day", they need to find a different job.
TSA screeners and management absolutely LOVE the fact that despite being badly paid, undereducated, and almost always minorities- being a TSA agent places them at the top of the food-chain in an airport. Their words and decisions are that of god, and with a word they can transform anyone's business trip or vacation into sheer hell. Like the case where TSA screeners forced a new mother to drink her own breastmilk to prove it wasn't an explosive or poison.
They're also, in many cases, dumber than fenceposts. The guy whose Audi key was confiscated because it was a "switchblade", the Macbook Air fiasco...I'm sure there are thousands of similar incidents we never hear about.
For chrissakes, these people banned NAIL CLIPPERS and thought liquid binary explosives were possible to deploy on a plane because they'd seen in the movies that the baddies had these scary devices that mixed different colored liquids...
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The Road To Idiocracy starts with one step.
With the TSA being the first downhill grade to help speed things up.
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and thought liquid binary explosives were possible to deploy on a plane because they'd seen in the movies that the baddies had these scary devices that mixed different colored liquids...
As John Carmack points out [slashdot.org], it is not only possible to have explosives like this, it's not very difficult.
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The problem is not whether such an explosive can exist. The problem is whether such an explosive could be mixed in an airplane bathroom without anyone noticing and remain unexploded long enough for Our Villain to get it out of the bathroom and up next to the skin where it might do some serious damage.
Everything I've heard about such binary explosives indicates that the outcome is an explosion while mixing the stuff in the bathroom, one badly injured terrorist, and one trashed airplane lavatory.
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The problem is whether such an explosive could be mixed in an airplane bathroom without anyone noticing and remain unexploded long enough for Our Villain to get it out of the bathroom and up next to the skin where it might do some serious damage.
Who is watching what someone does in the bathroom? And if the goal is to take the plain out, the bathroom next to the skin is a perfectly fine place to detonate a bomb.
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Nobody watches you, but somebody is going to get suspicious when you're in there for half an hour straight trying to use the place as a chemistry lab.
As for the bathroom being a perfectly fine place to detonate a bomb, I'm doubtful that the bathroom is a critical area. Unless the bomb is truly enormous, you need to do more than just place it against the skin. That will just make a big hole, kill the attacker, and annoy and frighten everyone else. You need to get it to an area where it can cut hydraulics, sc
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Nobody watches you, but somebody is going to get suspicious when you're in there for half an hour straight trying to use the place as a chemistry lab.
Chemistry lab? What chemistry lab? Did you read Carmack's post? It's literally pour fuel into peroxide, gently stir, and Presto! You have an impact grenade. I personally would carry it out and throw it where the wing connects to the plane, but if you blow a big enough hole in the bathroom, that could do a lot of damage.
Anyway, we could keep debating logistic
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Did you read Carmack's post? It's literally pour fuel into peroxide, gently stir, and Presto!
I read that it's "not very challenging" from somebody who builds large rockets for fun in his spare time.
Mixing such a shock-sensitive mixture in an airliner bathroom without setting it off prematurely is going to be tough. I don't know about this specific case (he doesn't say what fuels work) but a lot of these things are significantly exothermic as well, even when they're just dissolving, which makes it even harder.
And as an aside, throwing it where the wing connects to the plane is probably the worst (fr
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As John Carmack points out [slashdot.org], it is not only possible to have explosives like this, it's not very difficult.
Some people disagree [theregister.co.uk]
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Some people disagree
Note that article was limited to a discussion of Peroxide and acid, which is not what Carmack was talking about. I tend to trust the guy who has actually done the experiments, rather than a pseudo-journalist from The Register.
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Really, I have nothing to add here except a link to the most honest election year poster I've seen:
http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/1957 [dieselsweeties.com]
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Don't do it... just remember, the Democrats have fallen just as far... they are beating the same old dead horse of all the stupid, failed politics of the mid 20th century and calling it "change".
Did you listen to Obama's speech? With certain (admittedly important) exceptions, he sounded more Republican than the Republicans. He called for lower taxes, more personal responsibility, cutting spending, taking care of veterans, on and on.
Another thing I liked is that he's calling for the elimination of oil impo
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and also read how centrist Obama really is
How centrist he is between now and Election Day you mean. I'm sorry, but the 20+ years leading up to his nomination tell a radically different story, the story of someone I can't imagine any sane person would consider putting in the Oval Office. He has more criminal, racist and/or terrorist friends and associates than the average Supervillian. His mentors were Communists and America-haters. His so-called Christian pastor of 20 years has more in common with radic
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He has more criminal, racist and/or terrorist friends and associates than the average Supervillian. His mentors were Communists and America-haters. His so-called Christian pastor of 20 years has more in common with radical Islam than any Christianity I'm familiar with. Why would anyone believe anything he says when it contradicts everything he's been and done for his entire life?
Eh, I dunno. What politician with any lifelong connections at all wouldn't have shady friends? Ronald Reagan notoriously had a l
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I'm also *very* concerned by Republicans who go to radical Christian churches that preach discrimination, if not outright hatred, of homosexuals and bible fundamentalism where every word is to be taken literally, which gives them an anti-science agenda. Which is worse? Both are pretty damn bad.
Again, preaching hatred and practicing deliberate ignorance is much more in line with the Islamists who are strapping bombs to themselves (to quote Dennis Miller) if so much as the pizza toppings are wrong. The real
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[Slavery] But in today's political climate weren't they simply religious types trying to impose their morals on the rest of the country?
There's a difference between imposing morality that can be argued from reason, and imposing morality that is entirely arbitrary and whose *only* reason is because the Bible "says so". For example, an atheist can just as easily argue that slavery, murder, etc is wrong based on human equality of rights. Abolition of slavery had nothing to do with Christianity or religion (i
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On the other hand, prohibition of gay marriage has absolutely no reasonable, non-religious basis. It is the business of the consenting adults -- also based on equality of human rights.
The institution of marriage is the civil codification of the family, which is a mother, father and zero or more children. It is more than the business of consenting adults because of the children. No one's rights are being violated because any available man is free to marry any available woman. Is it a violation of civil ri
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The institution of marriage is the civil codification of the family, which is a mother, father and zero or more children. It is more than the business of consenting adults because of the children.
Why you strip away all the extraneous fluff, a marriage is a legal contract, no more and no less.
As you say, it provides legal rights to families, both with children, and without. There are plenty of important legal rights that have nothing to do with children, such as hospital care rights, inheritance, etc.
And e
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That's like arguing against interracial marriage by saying that no one's rights are being violated because any available *white* man is free to marry any available *white* woman. It's *exactly* the same.
Hardly. That's a clear violation of the equal protection clause.
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I hate to pull a Godwin but Hindenburg thought the same thing and look how that turned out. Not that I assume Obama will do anything like that but thinking that democracy is a panacea against tyranny can be a fatal mistake.
I'm not an expert on all the machinations of how Hitler came to power, but I think their constitution gave the president a lot more power over the legislature. I think the biggest obstacle to a Mad Leader coming to power in the U.S. would be the lack of military support. I don't see how
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The TSA has policies just like every other company out there. The front line people have no decision making power aside from the ability to apply those policies.
How many policies has your company used that you thought were stupid? I am sure a lot.
The TSA people are tested each and every day. You give them flack over what they do in order to keep people safe... But if something were to happen again who would be the first people you
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No, we get upset at the TSA for doing their job badly.
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If their job was to kick you square in the nuts every time you went through the security gate, would you still think that they shouldn't be criticized for "doing their job"?
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So you're saying that if TSA's policy was to kick you square in the nuts as you go past, you would "attack the policy", but be perfectly fine with the guy who's actually putting his foot in your crotch?
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Well, at least you're consistent. Personally, I am going to loudly criticize anyone who willingly carries out a policy of kicking me square in the nuts. And, if they should ever try to carry it out on me, that criticism will extend to pressing charges for assault and battery.
"Policy" isn't some magical word that makes everything OK. If someone is doing something bad to me then it is their fault. It may also be other people's fault, but that just extends the blame, it doesn't reduce it.
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The "I was only following orders" defense was rejected long ago. If somebody is doing something bad, it doesn't matter whether it's "policy" or not. "Policy" is not some magic get-out-of-jail-free card. The people kicking you in the nuts certainly should be held accountable, policy or no.
And you're right that we're fortunate not to see such an extreme policy today. But the difference is only in degree. TSA employees are behaving very badly, and they should be held accountable for this, even though their bad
Umm, can you define the TSA job for me? (Score:4, Informative)
As a nice, bright and shiny illustration of just how safe you are with these people being given free reign is illustrated by the story of how the TSA grounded 9 planes [aero-news.net]. My favorite quote: "TSA agents are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk".
I am yet to be convinced there is a measurable return on investment for the money wasted on TSA, investment in HUMINT would have been a better use of the budget. and THAT annoys me most when those morons do their usual.
I guess the use of room temperature IQs is essential to stop anyone from thinking about what they're doing, but the result is that they give the impression of being people rejected for writing parking tickets because they were too stupid.
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It is a price for security.
That's a funny use of the word "price". Normally when you pay the price for something, you get that something in return. I see no evidence that the price we pay constantly to the TSA results in getting security in return.
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Yes, it's possible. On the other hand there is no evidence for it. The simpler explanation is that they are what they appear to be: a bunch of incompetent idiots.
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No, we don't give them flak over what they do in order to keep people safe. We give them flak over what they do in order to trick some people into thinking they're safe. It's all theater, and the laws of nature don't care about appearance.
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"You give them flack over what they do in order to keep people safe... "
Perhaps as a doctor I should remove all your autonomy, force you to comply to my directives and ensure that you live your entire life out according to my standards, because after all my goal is to "keep you safe" and free from disease.
It's not about the actual individuals working for the TSA. It's the whole damned paternalistic concept. Please. If my goal is to kill someone on an aircraft I ca
Selective quoting (Score:1)
You left off parts of what he said. They might not support your rant so well, but I think they provide a more complete picture.
And I'd also like to thank the TSA screeners, who arrived on site already totally up to speed on what we wanted to do (they'd even seen my test videos).
But in our case, since the screeners had been pre-briefed, it was easy to demonstrate that everything we wanted to use was well within the TSA rules. The only thing that didn't fly was a tiny ball of modelling clay that we were going to use to mount the mento onto a ziptie with, and the screeners helped brainstorm an acceptable (and better!) mounting method.
You summarized part of the bottom quote, but not all of it.
In an earlier blog he points out that as a commercial flight, the TSA rules must be obeyed and he still had to be screened by the TSA (yes, that's silly), but he wasn't talking about the regular line at an airport.
More on where they boarded the plane. (Score:1)
For anyone who is curious about it, the blog says that they flew out of Las Vegas. Zero G's FAQ [gozerog.com] says that they use the Signature Air Terminal at the main airport there. Signature Air Services [signatureflight.com] is basically a chain of Fixed Based Operators (FBOs). They serve business and private pilots mostly. They use the same runways, but different buildings compared to the airlines.
Science-lovers? (Score:1)
Am I the only one, who finds the expression — especially, when used in reference to oneself — rather pretentious?
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Am I the only one, who finds the expression - especially, when used in reference to oneself - rather pretentious?
Yes, I'm pretty sure you probably are the only one... what's pretentious about it? If they'd said something like, "Being science-experts, we wanted...", THAT would perhaps be pretentious, but there's nothing pretentious about claiming you love something, is there?
I don't see any qualitative difference to the sentence, "Being cat lovers, we decided to spend the weekend at the cat show that was in town.".
Diet Coke sticky? corrosive? (Score:3, Interesting)
I always thought the people take diet coke instead of normal coke precisely because it is not sticky, because it does not contain sugar. And I also used to believe that most of the corrosive behaviour of coke also comes from the sugar. But that's just me.
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There may not be any sugar in diet coke, but it's still kinda messy. Still, mix it with the sugar in a Mentos, and you can bet it's gonna get real sticky. Also, the corrosive nature of coke originates not in the sugar, but in the Phosphoric acid (H3PO4) [bu.edu] it contains.
(To be fair, that MSDS is for an 85% solution - about 1500 times stronger than coke)
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It should be noted that with high concentrations of various chemicals, just because the % concentration is 1500 times higher does not mean the "strength" is 1500 times higher. 85% phosphoric acid is incredibly dangerous, vastly moreso than accidentally spilling 1500 times the volume of coke on your skin (1mL versus 1.5L.) Though 1mL of 85% phosphoric acid wouldn't kill you, it'll do a lot more damage than 1.5L of coke.
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As I understand it, part of coke's corrosive behaviors are from the acids 2 other posters mentioned (carbonic & phosphoric), but one they left out was that the sugar provides an amazingly good food source for bacteria in your mouth. They form a biofilm on your teeth (scrape your tooth after not having brushed for a while, that smoothness you feel is the biofilm). As the bacteria metabolize the sugars, they excrete waste compounds which are a corrosive acid(s?). Because there's a biofilm there which p
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Why is this news?
1) This is entertainment..slashdot.org
2) You must be new here.
3) It's better than the slashvertisement three stories back, though to be fair there was some M$ bashing two stories back.
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Hypothesis, test, rethink loop.
Re:What's the music please? (Score:5, Informative)
I really, really should know this but...what's the music in the video?
In the comments of TFA it links to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carnival_of_the_Animals [wikipedia.org]
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More specifically it's the 7th movement (Aquarium) of The Carnival of the Animals.
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As in, the Harry Potter movies ripped it off from Camille Saint-Saens.
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Or does it? They are putting diet coke on the mentos, not mentos in the diet coke. I imagine drizzling a small amount of diet coke on a mento back here on terra firma is a comparable non-event.
Re:G-Force-One does not simulate zero-G environmen (Score:2)
But.. becuase the ISS is in-orbit around the planet, it is still inside the event horizon of Earth's gravity well, making it's primary gravitational influence the Earth.
Holy crap! Nobody told me that the earth is actually a black hole... We're all DOOMED!
Re:G-Force-One does not simulate zero-G environmen (Score:2)
That is some bad trolling there.
If you are in a sealed container, with no way to measure outside the container, being in G-Force-One when it is in the free fall part of its flight is indistinguishable from being on the ISS, as far as gravity goes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgravity [wikipedia.org]
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When the plane goes into a dive, it matches the speed of an object in free-fall. This causes the environment around the people to "fall" at the same speed the people are falling, so they stay in the same space within the environment.
And how, pray tell, does that differ from the orbiting space shuttle, or the ISS?
IIRC, the shuttle's trajectory traces out an ellipse. The zero-G airplane traces out a parabola. But, its parabola is just an aborted ellipse; aborted because you crash into the thing you were attempting to orbit (because your parabola wasn't wide enough to miss the edge of the thing you were trying to orbit.)
(So once again, we learn that Douglas Adams was right: the key to flying is to throw yourself at the ground, and mi
Re:G-Force-One does not simulate zero-G environmen (Score:2)
The "equal gravitational pull" location is L1 (Lagrange Point 1) between the Earth and its moon. There is another between the Earth and Sol. Objects in L1s are susceptible to small forces however. L4s and L5s are much more stable, but are still orbits, so not clear of the primary's (Earth, Sol, ...) significant gravity well.
Re:G-Force-One does not simulate zero-G environmen (Score:5, Informative)
Your point may be technically accurate, but it's misleading. The only difference between a parabolic flight and an elliptical orbit is that one intersects the Earth, and one does not. Of course, that whole hitting the Earth part kinda sucks, so that's why the airplane pulls out of its dive.
In orbit, the acceleration due to gravity is still substantial. The only difference is, the velocity tangent to that vector is sufficient that you're always falling towards Earth, but you always miss hitting it. You're falling over the horizon.
"(Note that "in orbit" is still inside the event horizon of Earth's gravitational well.) "
Event horizon has a specific meaning, and none whatsoever when not talking about black holes. There is no "event horizon" of Earth's gravitational well. It simply gets arbitrarily small with increasing distance.
"Where experiments would become fascinating is in a satellite in an orbit above Earth that matches the angle and period of the moon's, at a distance that would cause an equal gravitational pull from both Earth and the Moon, and see what happens with two equal but opposite gravity sources effecting the experiment!"
That's not really an orbit, that's a Lagrange point. The effects will be indistinguishable from orbit. Inertial frames of reference are indistinguishable.
Mod parent -1 Utterly Clueless (Score:2)
'Nuff said.
Re: (Score:1)
G-Force-One does not simulate a lack of gravity. It creates a SENSORY ILLUSION of weightlessness.
[Subsequent explanation of how G-Force-One does not create a lack of gravity, but does indeed simulate a lack of gravity deleted.]
Re:Parent translation (Score:5, Funny)