champu

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Everything posted by champu

  1. champu
    Hmm, maybe if I put the thread back through the sieve again...
  2. champu
    I feel like your argument is slowly morphing into, "The real money is in being dishonest." Sadly, and I hate to say it but recent history will prove it correct, but yes. The real money is legally taking blood from a stone. Not in building or expanding or creating. You don't have to hate saying it. The only reason I mention it is because whether or not people do illegal and/or socially destructive things and are able to make a lot of money doing so has little bearing on whether or not there are good reasons to become an engineer.
  3. champu
    I feel like your argument is slowly morphing into, "The real money is in being dishonest."
  4. champu
    1/10. (I would have given it 0/10 for going overboard, but apparently some people are still biting on this.)
  5. champu
    Hey cool, I put this thread through a sieve and I found this...
  6. champu
    One thing I'll add to Calvin's posts, in case it wasn't clear from reading them, is that you want to keep the canopy flying in the direction you want to go. When you encounter wind shear or turbulance it will change the way the canopy responds to control inputs. Sometimes only a little, sometimes a great deal. But it will still respond to control inputs, so it's on the pilot to make sure he or she improves the situation rather than letting it get or actively making it worse. Instead of thinking, "I have to go to quarter breaks" or something of that nature I think, "keep flying, you totally got this."
  7. champu
    I don't take issue with the population estimates as long as the far right column is understood correctly when making comparisons. For example, you can conclude from these data that making a skydive is less likely to result in death than being a runner. As usual, you don't end up with apples to apples. These studies are never targeted at skydivers to make us feel better about what we do or to demonstrate an understanding of the safety considerations and risks in our sport. They're meant to make runners and swimmers and cyclists think again about their safety by comparing their activity to "omgz plane jumping!"
  8. champu
    Just stumbled upon this. It's video shot from TMA-20 when they left a few weeks ago showing Endeavour docked with the ISS. The station/shuttle/ATV stack did kinda a funky half-rodeo so it could be viewed from different angles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYFu3UNENyI Photos here: http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts134/soyuz/
  9. champu
    What, in your opinion, would constitute a minimum western presence to ensure the fight stayed "over there"? (not using quotes to mock, just acknowledging the geographic boundaries of said fight are, and would likely continue to be, somewhat loosely defined.) I suddenly got this image of a joint western "embassy" in the form of a single forward airbase where we consolidate all the forces in a defensive posture and do nothing but kill anyone who comes within mortar range and launch airstrikes / drone strikes on logistics sites of anyone we don't like. Sure we'd never get out of Afghanistan but I think that'd give the Islamists something to focus on and it'd be cheaper, both in terms of lives and dollars, than what we're doing now.
  10. champu
    Happy Birthday! Hey, anyone remember this? (last modified six years ago)
  11. champu
    I picture a team of people in biohazard suits storming the dropzone, quarantining it, and not letting anyone leave until they've been checked with fancy noise-making electronic equipment and they've been decontaminated if they've had this taught to them.
  12. champu
    All ties, no. But I live in SoCal, my siblings and parents live in the Midwest and East Coast, my half-aunts and step-sister live in England, South Africa, and Australia, and I don't have a facebook page. So really there wouldn't be a whole lot to cut off besides seeing each other one or two times a year and chatting on the phone every couple months. I get along well with my sisters, their husbands, and my parents, but all of them at the same time can be a bit much.
  13. champu
    What? It depends on when you do it and the specifc route taken but getting to LEO takes about 8-10 km/s and going from LEO to a lunar orbit takes another 3-5 km/s; it's definitely not trivial. It's also not getting to the Moon or Mars that necessarily requires (or strongly favors) a blunt capsule design like Gemini, Apollo, Dragon, etc. but rather getting back because you have to dump all that extra velocity into the atmosphere. Solid fuel motors can produce higher thrusts, but they aren't as efficient as liquid fuel engines and neither are as efficient as some of the more exotic thruster technologies. Fuel economy is a big deal for interplanetary travel.
  14. champu
    Yeah, sorry if it wasn't clear to anyone, my "In other news..." comment was making fun of the article. I think my posting record makes clear my opinion of the media and their apparent inability to report anything accurately.
  15. champu
    Indeed, try this one... http://centralstockton.news10.net/news/community/dept-education-breaks-down-stockton-mans-door/72578 Edited to add: In other news, the Dept of Education can issue search warrants?
  16. champu
    Haha, can't be unseen now...
  17. champu
    No one actually LOOKED at the ground and said, Um we're going a bit slower than we should be for 10 knots? "Yeah, and on top of that, the ground is going by in the wrong direction."
  18. champu
    I'm not crippled. Crippled implies uselessness, disposable, trashed, finished. I'm far from crippled. I don't expect you to understand, and given your general disdain for anyone who's not you, I certainly don't expect you to care, but the word crippled pisses me off. It also pisses a lot of other people off. If you want to keep using it, be my guest, but I wouldn't walk up to a wounded warrior and ask him how it feels to be a cripple. You might get to experience the feeling yourself. Well, in fairness, I wouldn't walk up to anyone and ask them, "How does it feel to be " unless they just won something and it was congratulatory.
  19. champu
    1) Too much cheese 2) Too many ingredients There are a few ingredient combinations that work fairly well but all too often compromise and being too hungry when ordering a pizza results in a complete abomination. Ideal pizza: A little cheese, plenty of tomato sauce, maybe sausage if I'm particularly hungry.
  20. champu
    BAH, ever see the DC-3 have to pull up to go over the packing hanger @ SD Arizona? No... of course not. The pilots are all too responsible to do such a thing as swoop the packing hanger. >_>
  21. champu
    It's a non-monotonic function of to whom they're attached.
  22. champu
    Are you on the ISS payload processing side of things or are you on the shuttle SE&I / LSI side of things?
  23. champu
    You need at least a B license to compete in intermediate/advanced 4-way/8-way FS, 10-way FS, 16-way FS, 2-way CReW, or intermediate artistic events at nationals. You need a C license or better to compete in anything else. That's kind of annoying. I did my water training and first night jumps when I had five or six hundred jumps. I wanted to go straight to D, but the powers that be at the dropzone made me fax in my B application before they'd let me jump at night. So I have A, B, and D licenses, the latter two issued in close succession. (I should have just written the credit card number wrong on the form, haha)
  24. champu
    Well, kind of. The fact that you can often hit what you jump off and must have very quick and correct reactions is one of the biggest factors. base jumpers often jump into areas that make most skydivers pee their pants is another real reason. Jumping with one parachute concerns me very little, it's where I jump and how technical of a jump I choose to do that concerns me the most. That was kinda what I was getting at. I think people get too hung up on the one parachute thing. Looking at the list, people are generally not getting killed by malfunctions that a second canopy and the altitude/airspace to use it would help any more than just that same extra altitude/airspace.
  25. champu
    I'd say it's more like comparing jumping with one parachute to jumping with two parachutes. Yeah. Or subtract - like one of the parachutes. Yes, and one of those several factors is jumping a single parachute with no reserve. Say what one may about causal factors in reported incident statistics, that factor does exist. It should be acknowledged for what it is. BTW: In the interest of disclosure, I'm "No, but I'd like to try it"; i.e., probably a Bridge Day jump one of these days. The fact that you are jumping / deploying so low that you only have time for one parachute is a lot more important than the fact that you only have one parachute in terms of why BASE is more dangerous than skydiving.