mikegarrison
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Posts posted by mikegarrison
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IMO, these LLM that people have gotten all excited about seem to be excellent Wernicke's aphasia simulators. They are really good at sounding fluent but conveying no real meaning.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/statistics-versus-understanding-the
In that article, for instance, you see lots of pictures that AI generated when asked for an image of a person writing with their left hand. They all show right-handed people -- because the AI doesn't actually know what left and right is, and the images that they have been trained on overwhelmingly show people writing with their right hands.
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49 minutes ago, Minmus Taster said:
There is a painful shortage of RTG's right now
Side effect of reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles and testing. No ready source of plutonium.
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2 hours ago, darthgently said:
If we can track its position via radio direction finding we can possibly detect nearby unknown masses out there from how V1's orbit changes. Occlusions in its signal could detect bodies out there. Ya never know. We got it out there, learn from it being there is all I'm saying
That's not responding to what I said. Or perhaps I misunderstood you.
I am not disputing there is more information to be gained from Voyager 1. I was responding to the idea that it would be useful to learn new techniques for maintaining contact with 1970s probes. (The last part of the post I quoted.)
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On 2/8/2024 at 11:38 AM, farmerben said:
Other than the sonic boom breaking nearby windows I don't see what's so bad about going through air.
It makes no sense to travel at high speed along the ground in thick air, when it is much more efficient to travel at high speed through the much thinner air at high altitudes.
Power required for a ground vehicle is approximately related to the velocity^3, while power needed for an airplane is approximately related to just velocity. (This is because the faster a plane flies, the more drag it makes but also the more lift it makes, which means the power required due to drag is compensated by a reduction in power required to provide lift. That's not the case on the ground.)
At low speeds, the ground vehicles are more energy efficient, but at high speeds the airplanes flying at altitude are more energy efficient.
The vacuum-train idea (which existed long before "hyperloop") is an attempt to get that benefit of lower drag without having to accept the cost of flying to high altitude. But it has its own costs, such as the energy it takes to maintain a vacuum in a tube that is hundreds or thousands of kilometers long.
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11 hours ago, darthgently said:
Agreed. However, at this point, there is a unique value in taking advantage of the unique engineering and signal processing challenge of just keeping in contact with Voyager-1. If we can get useful data from the sensors or control it that would be a bonus. That said, the budget could be cut some if the sole goal is to maintain contact and learn new techniques for doing that
I don't really see how solving this problem of keeping 1970s hardware and software alive remotely is going to have any direct applicability to new missions.
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I guess that mission was delayed for weather? And now seems to be delayed again?
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6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:
By the way, the full 19 page NTSB report is present in this article at the bottom.
This is a preliminary report.
The protocol for reports like this comes from ICAO Annex 13, and requires a preliminary report within 30 days that includes all factual information known at that point. No recommendations are in the Preliminary Report.
A Final Report is due later, which includes all final conclusions and recommendations. The Final Report is to be issued within one year of the incident, if possible. If not complete, an Interim Report is due in a year (and another one every year after, until a Final Report is released).
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Rightly or wrongly (and I will remind you that in general the system works quite well), the normal situation would go like this:
1) Design is certified.
2) Problems are discovered in-service (namely in this case that operating the inlet anti-ice system when it is not needed can get the inlet too hot).
3) Warnings are sent out to the operators.
4) A fix is designed.
5) The fix is made available for retrofit. Depending on how serious the problem is, the fix may be mandated by the FAA or it may be just recommended.
Also what is normal is that derivatives of an already certified design can be themselves certified with the same design. Typically the workaround that was allowed to be used (in this case, a reminder to only use the anti-ice when it is needed) would just be extended to the derivative until an actual fix is completed.
However, in this case, Boeing and the FAA decided to play it safe(r) and not complete the certification of the new derivatives until the fix was finished.
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I'm not saying that I think discarding a few batteries is major problem. I'm just saying that the chart that shows a marine exclusion zone doesn't tell you where the batteries would fall (which was the claim when the chart was introduced into the discussion).
In general, I tend to think the "it all burns up in the atmosphere" thing is a (probably deliberate) oversimplification that just sweeps the debris issue under the rug. Stuff seems to survive re-entry from space fairly frequently. But mostly it just falls into the ocean or into some remote area on the land.
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21 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:
It’s right there on the second page, the maritime exclusion zone. That’s the only debris risk short of a failure.
I strongly doubt that zone applies to the second stage, and specifically the battery drop.
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2 hours ago, Shpaget said:
More from FAA
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-increasing-oversight-boeing-production-and-manufacturing
Hopefully this will lead to the abolishment of the practice of governments delegating health and safety oversight to the companies themselves. This is not a problem with just Boeing, or just aviation, nor is it endemic to USA. It's a widespread issue globally, that I find beyond absurd.
One can hope.
The FAA (or EASA either) does not have the budget or expertise to not rely on the manufacturers themselves to do most of the certification work.
I can only imagine how the SpaceX fans in this forum would be howling if that was the standard that applied to Starship.
I have personally worked with many designated engineering representatives (experts employed by the manufacturer who are also the first line of certification for the authorities), and they take their responsibilities very seriously. They swear an oath (with heavy legal penalties) to represent the certification authorities and not the company when they are doing that work. Managers face serious legal penalties if they try to influence the certification work.
And in pretty much all cases, the regulators have the final say. The engineers delegated to work for them on certification are only allowed to approve things that the regulators have already ruled on. Anything unexpected or novel has to be presented to the government-employed regulators for a ruling.
Air travel is amazing safe -- far safer than riding in a car. The system you are fretting about works *very* well. Of course nothing is perfect, and if there are improvements to be made, then we should keep making them. But I assure you, taking the engineering experts that work for the manufacturers out of the certification loop would *not* be a safety improvement.
And you know, we all fly on these airplanes too. So do our families and friends.
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12 minutes ago, tater said:
To be fair, the date was likely an internal sales pitch from Bridenstine, who I think was an unambiguously good NASA Admin. His goal being to create urgency so the program would survive—which worked.
When you are pitching to your boss, it's not great to lead with "We'll be going back to the moon! After you are out of office."
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No real surprise here.
In case people didn't notice, the Dec 2024 announced schedule was timed so that it would take place during the (presumed) second term of the President who announced it. Presidents usually aren't interested in funding PR opportunities for their successors.
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When I was a kid, my dad had all kinds of funny-looking nuts and bolts in the garage. It was only years later that I realized these were aerospace fasteners.
When he was getting through college, he worked at Boeing as a machinist. (He became a civil engineer, working for the Seattle Water Department.) Anyway, on his last day there, after he had gotten hired as an engineer, he had to take his toolbox home. While he was away from it, his co-workers thought it would be funny to fill it up with random fasteners and drill bits and such, as if he was trying to smuggle them out of the plant. He rolled it out to the gate, and the guard asked him what was going on. He explained he had gotten a job as an engineer, so he was taking his machinist tools home with him. The guard let him drive his truck in and helped him load it into the bed. Neither one of them knew it full of smuggled fasteners.
I bet he *still* has some of those fasteners.
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8 minutes ago, tater said:
Maybe a dumb question that someone knows the answer to, but what's the nominal door latching mechanism look like? Clearly not locked nuts... Why not have the door-plug otherwise more door-like, and have the latch only on the inside, and nonetheless covered by the interior trim panel. It can then be removed (opened) easily for maintenance, and the only care required is to lock the door. All the functional doors have latches, after all, and they certainly take intent to unlatch.
The video you posted explained this. This option is the only one that, from the point of view of the cabin, makes it like the door isn't there at all. It lets them use a 3-abreast seat and has a full-sized window. The other options all take up space in the cabin and require 2-abreast seating in that row.
3 minutes ago, tater said:Given they found the door, but no bolts, I wonder how they move forward? Look for indications of how a bolt failed in the parts the bolts pass through?
Looking for indications that a bolt was even there in the first place.
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35 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:
Castellated nuts are used all over the place in aircraft. This isn't a case of some sort of incompetence. They're typically not used in strucural joints, but they are everywhere on an aircraft. Smaller strucural joints are typically done with Hi-Loks and big structral joints will use suitably torqued conventional bolted joints. The joint in question isn't a structural joint because the bolts just hold the plug in place relative to the stops. The stops carry the structural (pressurization) loads, not the bolts.
When I first joined Boeing, they had a program where engineers spent about four weeks at a voc-tech school, where we had to build various airplane parts following blueprints. This was supposed to teach us to make better blueprints.
I spent my entire career in Airplane Performance (later called Flight Sciences) doing Noise and Emissions engineering. Never made a single blueprint.
Anyway, it was a fun class. I still have the part I built (part of a 727 PSU) in my garage.
I guess the point, if there was one, was that Hi-Locs were one of my favorite fasteners. Fun to use.
Anyway I agree that, to the extent I understand the design, the bolts in question are not highly loaded and probably it made sense (or seemed to make sense) to use a castle nut just to retain the bolt, not to ensure some level of torque on the nut. Castle nuts should only be used in low-torque applications.
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57 minutes ago, magnemoe said:
Remember seeing an F-16 jet engine a very long time ago. It had wires connecting the nuts or bolts on the engine, I assume it was holes they went trough and believe they was looped around the wire again before on to the next so if one break the line the rest would still be rigid. Probably makes inspection easier
That's called lockwire.
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1 hour ago, PakledHostage said:
Please help me out here @mikegarrison!? They don't seem to be understanding what I am saying...
Yes, two different boxes that record two different things.
The CVRs are something of a compromise because pilots don't want everything they say being recorded but also understand that being able to access the CVR ultimately can help keep them safer.
Many years ago, I actually used the cockpit ambient mic from a CVR to estimate the amount of hail an airplane flew through before both engines flamed out. It was of course an extremely rough estimate, but I was able to show that the plane very likely did fly through more hail than the engines were certified to be able to ingest.
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15 hours ago, tater said:
Odd that they would not plug these doors from the inside with an internal flange that is larger than the opening. Then it could not possibly do this.
They do. Sort of. Like any door, there has to be a way for it to open.
For the main cabin doors, that means pulling it in a little, and then translating it a little until it fits through its own opening.
With this door it works a little differently, but if it is in place then it is a plug that can't fit through its own frame. Apparently this one was not properly held in place. But that's just an assumption. There will be a final report.
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1 minute ago, sevenperforce said:
I'll even go one step further and point out that the development of the Saturn V actually deviated significantly from prior US launch vehicle development by doing an all-up test on the first actual launch. Prior to the Apollo program, virtually all rockets were tested one stage at a time. The first stage would be ground-tested, then test-launched with a dummy upper stage and payload. The second stage would then be ground-tested, and only after all of this would it be stacked onto the first stage with a dummy payload for an integrated flight test. For three-stage rockets, this would proceed even slower (first stage with two dummy stages, then first two stages with one dummy stage, then an all-up test with a dummy payload, then a true integrated test launch).
The Apollo program deviated dramatically from this approach by doing an integrated flight test of all three stages AND a functional CSM on Apollo 4. They focused on validating all of the systems independently (and in parallel) so that they would be able to put everything together on the first go. And of course the Apollo program was wildly successful.
So if there is a "lesson learned" from Apollo, perhaps it is the lesson that deviating from past practices can be a really good idea if you have a consistent vision and the resources to make it work.
But they had already flown the Saturn I, which used the third stage of the Saturn V as its second stage.
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I actually sold my directly-owned Boeing stock after I retired, but still have some in my 401K. There. Now you know. So did that change anyone's lives?
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18 hours ago, Hotel26 said:
Of course, what is crossing my mind right now, regarding this ongoing discussion, is that it may be time for full disclosure by all parties engaged, about stock holdings IRL.
Just, you know... to know. Yeah?
I don't know what you are talking about here. SpaceX is a private company, not a public one, so they don't have public shareholders they have to make disclosures to.
If you are alluding to some sort of self-dealing or other financial games, that can still be an issue with private companies.
If you mean that the mostly anonymous posters on this board need to reveal if they have a financial interest in the companies being discussed, that's ridiculous. I mean, so what if they do? This isn't journalism; this is a forum for a computer game.
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2 hours ago, Meecrob said:
I imagine ECM's have come a long way in the 50 odd years since Apollo though. I'd imagine modern digital flight control can handle a mid 60's problem.
It's actually very difficult to tame coupled resonances like that, and mostly control systems just make sure that the engines transit through the danger zones rather than dwell there long enough for the resonance to set up.
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15 hours ago, tater said:
F-1 had a lot of combustion instability issues and a bunch of engine explosions in testing for a couple years, but I don't think they had any catastrophic failures once on a vehicle stage (even in testing).
F-1 did have a serious issue on one of the unmanned Apollo missions. They had recurring issues with "pogo" instability of the middle engine getting into resonance with the vibrational mode of the rocket structure. The fuel would slosh in the feed lines, driving a thrust instability. This would resonate with the structure that supported the middle engine. This was as much a structural issue as an engine issue. It got really bad on one mission (Apollo 6, IIRC), and would have done mission-critical damage if that had been an actual lunar attempt. They solved it for the first stage by injecting helium into the fuel system that damped the slosh.
Then on Apollo 13 they had a second-stage early engine shutdown for the same reason ("pogo" of the middle engine), and they had to fix that for later missions too.
Overview of all AI, not just LLMs
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted · Edited by mikegarrison
The point is that the whole method is fundamentally flawed. Not only is faking intelligence not intelligence, but it's not even close to intelligence. It's like if you studied an entire dictionary and learned exactly how every word is related to every other word, but still had no clue that any of them actually refer to a real world outside the dictionary.
They don't exhibit "emergent capabilities". We *see* emergent capabilities in them, just like we see patterns in tea leaves and shapes in clouds and the face of Jesus on a tortilla. We interpret their babbling as meaningful, but the "emergent capabilities" being demonstrated are all on our side of the fence.