frag uni

Lippman was the man. An amazing dude really - the stuff he sorted out. The solar device I had in mind was the coelostat: a system of mechanically aligned mirrors that allow for solar (and astral) movement. Recently this has been used for utilizing sunlight to replace electric lighting indoors, and for solar power generation. This faceplantbook thing that is all the rage: it's just a bit strange. Am I the only one who thinks it's epigeeky? Go Casey. Again.
An abhorrence for the abomination raises in me an alarm,
my antipathy crushed by apprehension of this aversion,
awe drowns as a chiller consternation invested with detestation,
revels in disgust dislike any previous dismay or dread,
fright fades into hatred and loathing of this monstrosity,
panic battles with repugnance and revulsion steeped in terror,
and all that because an assignment is due next week.
(thesaurus.com just loves horror)

Duh-Oh

At last - first night in twelve that I'm not on-call. As Neil Diamond said: "the phone ain't gonna ring anymore, the moon ain't gonna rise in the skies..." It was a strange shift, a real Homer Duh-Oh type of evening.
Got an old biddie round to xray for a pre-op chest and the nurse escort asked her to stand up for the pic. She tried, but her broken right hip made it a little difficult.

Next patient was a wee three year old with the 'flu for a pointless cxr and as the accompanying Mum suggested she stay with the child, I asked if there was a chance she may be pregnant. Good looking sort she was: tall, slim, tanned, deep voice. Transvestite. She wasn't pregnant.

Was bored later in the shift and ended up having about four coffees to pass the time. Now I wonder why I aren't tired even though its 0100.

Lastly I was glancing back at the last post and realised that I had used the name Mavis instead of Mable in the Q. Double duh-oh. (quick edit...) Maybe if I keep it quiet number six will never notice!
Yes - Mable Estes was born (constructed) in the late fifties. That one was obviously too easy. So is this one probably.

Q: The Nobel laureate who died at sea the same year that Einstein received his Nobel award invented a useful solar telescope gadget. Name two modern uses for same.

clouds

Last night's lunar eclipse was cool, even if the clouds could just not help themselves. Would love to have taken some pics of my own but... maybe one day. The pic below is from 2003 on APOD. Lach and I managed to fit in a mop-chop before going 10pin bowling for the first time ever. It was fun and we might do it regularly - but we will try not to arrive at the same time as three school groups... Jennie found a cool lullaby based on Pachelbel's Canon which tells of all of our experience with kids...

Ferrari 755 (driven 1867), Ford 524 (driven 5489), Renault 402 (driven 1222). By 'done', I presume you mean actually got a start in. Wasn't in Wiki. The moon walker answer was spot on - I didn't acknowledge the answer because the logic was so impressive!

Q: Mable was very important in the history of modern model rocketry - who was she?

drizzle

The drizzle continues to drizzle. Our local water supply dam has risen 10% in the last fortnite to 65%. These days it supplies not just Lismore and it's villages, but also Byron Gay, Ballina, Alstonville, Kyogle and the rest of the Richmond valley. Nimbin isn't counted as their water is mixed 50/50 with oil of hashish, and Casino likewise isn't counted as nobody lives there since they cancelled beef week. It's now about lunchtime, with the family not back from church and myself having not been called back for ultrascounge so far today. Managed to make the kitchen produce sushi, a couple of vegetable pies and a pot of cob corn. All vegan except for the occasional ant driven in by the rain.
Saw this page buried deep somewhere in the Nasa site and had an instant mind block as to the reason for the differing lunar impact angles (from the horizontal) of the Saturn upper stage and the LMs. I think I have it sorted now. Standing on the moon and seeing Cernan's SIVB smack it the ground nearby at 2.55 km/s (over 9000 km/hr) would be cool, but seeing the golden LM - a work of art - coming in at 6000 km/hr only 5deg off a flat trajectory... make you cry. I don't think it would skip like a stone, even in 1/6th G; I reckon it would decompile into it's component parts in a great long smear.

grosse Brüste und sinnlos

I'm still throttled, so no downloading of anything interesting for awhile. As per usual whilst in this predicament I start searching the market for other ISPs. There are a number of better major provider plans that I will have to choose from next week. The losing email addresses thing is not really an issue as we mainly gmail anyway, and the others are chock full of spam. We were briefly shaped back to a true 64kbs (basically dial-up speed) and were amazed to see that it was still possible to run all three WoW accounts simultaneously. After some fiddling and a few whingy emails we got back to 512/128 but with only a tiny residual allowance before the end of bill period. I had to equip my recent uni assignment with a pack lunch to see it through the electronic transfer process. Frankfurter was not played by Michael J Fox.

M16 google image search: Score - guns 14, astropics 4

I was showing off my astro pics (below) to a few dudes at work and was amused to see that the image of the eagle nebula (messier object no. 16) had been blocked by the hospital's big brother antipornography antiterrorism antivulgarity anticommonsense firewall. The image was named M16.jpg, and obviously looking at pictures of military weapons is bad. Just bad. I piked out and renamed the file messier16.jpg. Jennie worked in emergency the same weekend and had occasion to search for any contraindications to the administration of a certain medication for a recently post partum women with particular reference to lactation. The marvelous hospital super-firewall blocked most of the results because they contained the word breast.

no, I haven't watched BLINK yet, but I will

Where have all the Italians gone? Long time passing. Casey murdered them, blitzed them, creamed them, rode faster than them as well. This decade has been typified by two point sometime average of Italians on the MotoGP rostrum any given week.

Gordon: Disgraceful!
James: Disgusting!
Henry: Despicable!

Not this year. Kawasaki getting Hopkins next year WILL be big boost for the green machines, and Suzuki won't be riderless with Capirossi and Vermuelen, not by a long shot.

[Thomas careens down the track with a jet engine propelling him from behind. Up ahead at the crossing gates waits Bertie]
Bertie: Want a race Thomas?
[Thomas, in a flash, speeds by]
Bertie: Never mind.

Braves new house looks cool - a bit more controlled with a six foot fence to keep Buffy the wonder climbing dog in, and less bush to produce black snakes, brown snakes, redback spiders, taipans, carpet snakes, funnel-web spiders, and those deadly koalas. More lawn to mow though: number six may be interested to know that Briswegia is getting some REAL rain this week. Ta-dah!, I can't decide if I have ever heard of the sister scissors.

Gordon: Duck called me a galloping sausage!
James: Rusty red scrap iron!
Henry: I'm old square-wheels!
Sir Topham Hatt: Well, Duck?
Duck: I only wish, sir, that I'd thought of those names myself. If the dome fits...

The kids have all just been to the dentist this a.m. - seven fillings for the twins, none for Lach and one for Taff. The latter celebrated by leaving her ipod on the ground in the car park in the pouring rain. So what's floated to the top of my (dry) pod?

After Forever: Remagine
Within Temptation: The Silent Force
Edenbridge: The Grand Design
Turisas: The Varangian Way
Avantasia: The Metal Opera
Sonata Arctica: Unia
Stratovarius: The Chosen Ones
The Proclaimers: Best of

I'm orn me wey, Uh-hah, uh-hah.

Which mission is the pic from? (embedded ID has been removed from top corner). I would kill for a new moon english night: preferably warm(ish), with clear skies and even just a good pair of binocs. I would be completely visually lost of course - maybe one day. Yes, Mr Roentgen was the dude I had in mind... Hope your first day on the new job was cool.

more mutterings

After three weeks of holidays it's time to both return to work (am going on-call at 2200 tonight) and admit that it's week four of semester and an assignment is due on friday. As luck would have it - I can submit it electronically, so I won't have to start until thursday night :-)
So I went to work last night and trawled the archives for the necessary number of case studies showing suitable spinal trauma and/or pathology so I could at least have a look today. Following a hard night in Azeroth (dinged 44 NE Pr, 14 BE Hu, 13 Tau Dr - got the Horde T-Shirt last week) I arose to find my PC had a HDD failure. Four hours later it was back online just in time to get lunch for Jennie and then take T&G shopping. What assignment? Bugger it, I'm going back to Azeroth.
Tonight's MotoGP in Brno has Casey Stoner on pole with Rossi 0.8 done in sixth. It's starts about the same time that emergency is going to ring for a pointless erect and supine abdo. It has been raining all day which is nice for the dam but has left the little girls with way too much energy. For WoW posterity: Lach - Tau Dr 12, BE Mag 11, NE Hu 44; Taff - NE Dr 68.75 and flighty, Gn War 61, BE Mag 26; Roozie - Dw Hu 50, NE Dr 44 and retired for the semester (as I SHOULD be).

last ones

The last of the showable pics of the several score snapped during the icy hours in Magellan Observatory at Lake Bathurst. The first two are my favorite binocular targets.

M6 in Scorpius
NGC 6405 (M6, Butterfly Cluster) has about 80 cluster members spread over a region about 54 arc minutes in diameter. The main portion of the cluster fills a field of about 25' angular diameter and it's distance is estimated to be about 1600 light-years. Giovanni Batista Hodierna discovered it sometime before 1654; but Hodierna's records did not become generally known before the 1980s. Philippe Loys de Chéseaux independently rediscovered it in 1745-46, and was the first to recognize it as "a very fine star cluster." Lacaille included it in his catalog of 1751-52 as Lac III.12, and Charles Messier eventually cataloged it on May 23, 1764.



M7 in Scorpius
NGC 6475 (Ptolemy's Cluster, The Scorpion's Tail, M7) is an open cluster first described by Ptolemy around 130 AD as the "nebula following the sting of Scorpius." M7 was observed by Hodierna before 1654, who counted 30 stars. Edmond Halley listed it as No. 29 in his catalog of southern stars of 1678, and Abbe Lacaille added it to his catalog of southern objects as Lac II.14. Charles Messier included it as No. 7 in his catalog on May 23, 1764. M7 consists of about 80 stars brighter mag 10 in a field of about 1.3 degrees apparent diameter which at its distance of perhaps 800 light years corresponds to a linear extension of 18 or 20 light years.


Carina Nebula
NGC 3372, the Eta Carinae Nebula, in a diffuse nebula discovered by Lacaille (Lac III.6) in 1751-52 during his 2-year journey to the Cape of Good Hope. This giant nebula is one of the largest H II regions (composed of ionized hydrogen gas) in our galaxy. This star forming nebula has produced the very conspicuous peculiar star Eta Carinae, which is among the most massive and luminous stars in our Milky Way, and perhaps in the universe.

proper pics repeat.

My first astro pic entry had the pics cut down a little too much: so here they are again with descriptions (it's number 6's fault for encouraging me).


Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius
NGC 6523 (M8, Lagoon Nebula),one of the finest and brightest star-forming regions in the sky, was discovered by Giovanni Battista Hodierna before 1654 who classified it as "nebulosa," i.e. of intermediate brightness; in his catalog as No. II.6. It has a visual brightness of about 6 mag, apparent dimension of 90x40 arc minutes, lies approx 5.2 kly away and contains the open cluster NGC 6530.


Trifid Nebula in Saggitarius
NGC 6514 (M20, Trifid Nebula) is an emission and reflection nebula with an open star cluster in Sagittarius. Charles Messier discovered this object on June 5, 1764, and described it as a cluster of stars of 8th to 9th magnitude, enveloped in nebulosity. This red emission nebula with its young star cluster near its center is surrounded by a blue reflection nebula which is particularly conspicuous to the northern end. The nebula's distance is approx 5,200 light years, is about 28 arc minutes in apparent dimension and has a visual brightness of 9.0 mag. It lies about 2 degrees northwest of M8.



Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo
NGC 4594 (M105, Sombrero Galaxy) was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781. M104 is numerically the first object of the catalog which was not included in Messier's originally published catalog. However, Charles Messier added it by hand to his personal copy on May 11, 1781, and described it as a "very faint nebula." It was Camille Flammarion who found that its position coincided with Herschel's H I.43, which is the Sombrero Galaxy (NGC 4594), and added it to the official Messier list in 1921. This object is also mentioned by Pierre Méchain as his discovery in his letter of May 6, 1783. William Herschel found this object independently on May 9, 1784. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero Galaxy because of its appearance. According to de Vaucouleurs, we view it from just 6 degrees south of its equatorial plane, which is outlined by a rather thick dark rim of obscuring dust. This dust lane was probably the first discovered, by William Herschel in his great reflector. This galaxy is of type Sa-Sb, with both a big bright core, and as one can see in shorter exposures, also well-defined spiral arms. It also has an unusually pronounced bulge with an extended and richly populated globular cluster system - several hundred can be counted in long exposures from big telescopes. It has a visual brightness of about 8 mag, apparent dimension of 9x4 arc minutes and lies approx 50 mly away.
Just down the road really.

vir prudens non contra ventum mingit

Two post sabbatical for the format. Mr Numerus Six - you got the job! Coolness. Except for the commute - mind you, if you had to drive a Honda Jazz without an mp3 player, then you would have major grounds for complaint. A dig rad apps dude eh? Anything to get out of actually taking x-rays I see :-) Q: Name a famous dude born at Lennep in the Lower Rhine Province of Germany (hint: wasn't a member of the Adams Family).

Jewel Box
NGC 4755, aka Kappa Crucis cluster and Jewel Box, this open cluster is composed of over a hundred stars, about fifty of which are a mixture of colourful supergiants: reds and blues intermingled with yellows and whites in a profusion of sparkling light. The cluster is just a baby, perhaps no older than ten million years. Many of the stars have very high luminosities, approaching 100,000 Suns. The central star is kappa Crucis, a blue sixth-magnitude supergiant. The cluster is considered to be from 6800 to 7800 light years away.


Eagle Nebula (M16)
NGC 6611, aka Eagle Nebula, Messier 16. This conspicuous region of active star formation, situated in Serpens Cauda is an emission nebula (IC 4703) within which is an open star cluster (NGC 6611). The discoverer, Philippe Loys de Chéseaux, describes only the cluster when recording his 1745-1746 discovery. Charles Messier, on his independent rediscovery of June 3, 1764, mentions that these stars appeared "enmeshed in a faint glow", probably suggestions of the nebula. It lies some 7,000 light years distant in the constellation Serpens, close to the borders to Scutum and Sagittarius, and in the next inner spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.


M5
NGC 5904 (M5) is a globular cluster first seen by Gottfried Kirch and his wife Maria Margarethe on May 5, 1702, when they observed a comet, and described as a "nebulous star". Charles Messier found it independently on May 23, 1764, and described it as a round nebula which "doesn't contain any stars". William Herschel was the first to resolve this cluster into stars; he counted 200 of them with his 40-foot (48 inch aperture) reflector in 1791, "although the middle is so compressed that it is impossible to distinguish the components." M5 is thought to be one of the oldest globular clusters, with a computed age of 13 billion years. Its diameter is about 165 light years, making it one of the larger globular clusters. At its distance of 24,500 light years, this diameter is about 23 minutes of arc.


Galaxy Cluster in Virgo
This rather poor image (taken too close to dusk due to my lack of patience...) is part of the giant agglomeration of galaxies, the nearest big cluster of galaxies that are the largest proven structure in our intergalactic neighborhood, and the most remote cosmic objects with a physical connection to our own small group of galaxies, the Local Group, including our Milky Way galaxy. This structure is another discovery by Charles Messier, who noted behind his entry for M91:
"The constellation Virgo and especially the northern wing is one of the constellations which encloses the most nebulae. This catalog contains 13 which have been determined, viz. Nos. 49, 58, 59, 60, 61, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 and 91. All these nebulae appear to be without stars and can be seen only in a good sky and near meridian passage. Most of these nebulae have been pointed out to me by M. Méchain."
Like nebula - only different.

mea culpa

Rules wouldn't exist if one couldn't break them. The never altered blurb pic blurb format of the last 0.2k posts will have a one post sabbatical. I won't get back a decent astro photo rig again until late next year, so in response to that depressive thought, here are a few more images taken last weekend. The Venera 3 was originally claimed to have survived it's initial impact on Venus, but as it was only pressure rated to 25 atmospheres and the actual surface pressure is now estimated to be around 90 - it wouldn't have functioned anyway. The Americans claimed at the time that Venera 3 failed before descent - a few years on the Soviets agreed.

47 Tuc
NGC 104, better known as 47 Tucanae, is the second largest and second brightest globular cluster in the skies, outshone only by another southern globular NGC 5139. First cataloged as a deep sky object in 1751 by Abbe Lacaille as Lac I.1, the stars of 47 Tucanae are spread over a volume nearly 120 light years across. At their distance of 13,400 light years, they still cover an area of the sky of about the same apparent diameter as the full moon, about 30 minutes of arc. Globular cluster 47 Tucanae is approaching us at roughly 19 km/s.


Omega Centauri
NGC 5139 (Lacaille I.5, Omega Centauri) - was discovered by Edmond Halley in 1677. This is the biggest of all globular clusters in our galaxy. With its about 5 million solar masses, it is about 10 times as massive as other big globulars, and has about the same mass as the smallest whole galaxies. It is also the most luminous Milky Way globular, and the brightest globular cluster in the sky.


Dumbbell Nebula
NGC 6853 - The Dumbbell Nebula M27 was the first planetary nebula ever discovered. On July 12, 1764, Charles Messier discovered this new and fascinating class of objects, and describes this one as an oval nebula without stars. The name "Dumb-bell" goes back to the description by John Herschel, who also compared it to a "double-headed shot." As for a lot of planetary nebulae, the high energy (mostly non visible) radiation produced by the central star is released by excitation in visible light emitted in one spectral line only- here at 5007 Angstrom.


Omega Nebula
NGC 6618 (aka Omega Nebula, M17, Swan Nebula, Horseshoe Nebula) was discovered and cataloged by Philippe Loys de Chéseaux before 1745 but wasn't well known until Charles Messier independently rediscovered it and cataloged it in 1764. The mass of the gas in the Omega nebula has been estimated to amount about 800 times that of the Sun, enough for forming a conspicuous cluster, and a good deal more than that of the Orion nebula M42. While the bright nebula seems to be roughly 15 light years in extension, the total gaseous cloud, including low-luminosity material, seems to extend to at least 40 light years. Distance estimates are spread over a wide range, but modern values are between 5,000 and 6,000 light years- a little less than that of its apparent neighbor the Eagle nebula (M16) - apparently, these two star forming regions are indeed close together, in the same spiral arm (the Sagittarius or Sagittarius-Carina arm) of the Milky Way galaxy.

under pressure

A lunch gathering of the large variety occurred today at Andy's in-laws. We were able to catch up with Antoinette,who is in her third year of medicine at Newcastle Uni and still looks quite sane. From memory, Jennie had gone completely mad by mid second year :-) We spent most of the afternoon watching Top Gear clips on Youtube with Paul who is in his final semester of an aerodynamics and aviation design degree at Sydney Uni. He's still wishing that some of the lecturers spoke english. A bit.

Actinopterygii Beloniformes Exocoetidae

Similar to any other wartime incident, there is still heaps of conjecture, bollocks, conspiracy theory, and propaganda flotsaming about the ghost of the HMS Sheffield, a full quarter of a century later. The AM.39 Exocet cruise missile fired by an Argentine naval Super Étendard is unique as it was the first airborne anti-ship missile of it's type used in combat. The fact that it may or may not have exploded just makes it fairly typical for an Exocet I think. I'm not aware of any other uniquities about it but that's not surprising for me - was it a funny colour? It was travelling at about 1000kmph? The Sheffield radar was off due to routine radio traffic? The conjecture about the distance it was launched from Sheffield (5 to 40 miles)? The height above the water line that it struck the Sheffield? The fact that it was french and it still worked?

What was the first man made object to impact another planet's surface and how much had it's designers underestimated the prospective atmospheric pressure by?

my first ever astro pics

The last time we went to the Magellan Observatory at Lake Bathurst (about an hour north of Canberra) was two years ago and was the subject of my first ever notblog. It snowed on us then and we swore we would return to stargaze in a warmer season. We didn't. We spent last friday night swinging through the southern skies with a 24 inch f3.7 truss dob newt. Jupiter was straight up, both red spots were easily visible, and Io entered occultation then later exited Jupiter's shadowing eclipse. Andrew froze solid after two hours and Lachy shortly after even though he had climbed up and down the step ladder to reach the eyepiece about a hundred times. So they bailed out and I followed sometime around midnight. Sat nite was a little milder (i.e. above zero) and Jen, Keryn and Taffy were given a sky tour by Zane on the 24" whilst I learnt my way around a 10" photo rig newt on a german eq mount . It had a modded dig slr on it which worked well with exposures of 2-3 minutes for messier objects, and needed sub second exposures for jupiter.

M8 (Lagoon Nebula), M20 (Trifid Nebula) and M104 (Sombrero Galaxy)

Sunday night Zane left me to my own mischief as I alternated between the photo rig and a 12" SCT. Both had GPS GoTo systems with surprisingly intuitive controls. After a short time I found it quite quick to skip around through dark neb, planetary neb, messier, IC, NGC, and cluster catalogs. I got about thirty pics of objects from my wish list before the clouds closed in about 2300. I kept forgetting to put my gloves back on and lost feeling completely in my fingers several times. Half a dozen pints of vitamin G helped. or maybe hindered.

miles and miles

About thirty km north of Canberra is Lake George. It measures 25km long and 10km wide and holds 500 million cubic metres of water when full. We had never seen it contain anything except cattle, but yesterday it held water! Must have been nearly one half of one percent full. I visited the Australian War Memorial for the first time since 1981 and again found it fascinating and very moving. Above the memorial pool containing the eternal flame are the two cloisters containing 102000 rankless names. There were thousands of poppies shoved into the cracks between the name plaques as has become the custom. One poppie within the great war section had a small crimson piece of paper attached, gently stirring in the cold Canberra wind. Written in a fine hand was: Stay dead, damn you. I guess some memories just won't die.

Australian War Memorial, Canberra

"Houston, while you're looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand as the handle for the contingency sample return; it just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I'll drop it down. Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can't do this with two hands, but I'm going to try a little sand-trap shot here."

Which of the following are not true of the XLR99 rocket engine:
A: generated 57k pounds of thrust at 100% throttle at sea level
B: used liquid oygen and anhydrous ammonia for propellant
C: had a rated operating life of 30 minutes before overhaul
D: engine feed turbine pumps could deliver 12k pounds per min
E: had a basic engine weight of 910 pounds
F: thrust could be throttled from about 50 to 100%

get bach

I'm back, after five days of visiting southern central NSW, normal transmission has resumed. Our time at the astro observatory was awesome, but that in a later post. We spent two days in Canberra and visited the National War Memorial twice, the National Art Gallery, National Zoo and Aquarium, and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. The latter was about 30km south west of the city and was utterly brilliant. I admit a leaning towards radio telescopes such as the Parkes Observatory rather than just comm centers but the visitors center at CSSCC captured me utterly. A 26m (85ft), two 35m (115ft), and the 70m (230ft) antennas dominate the bush skyline and the display of rocket and space electronics evolution was really cool. There was even a bit of rock picked up by Buzz Lightminute Aldrin on longterm loan from NASA to CSSCC.
My copy of book of The Right Stuff is out on loan at present, but from memory the pivotal moment for Mr Pete Conrad was the Barium Enema examination aftermath which involved his commanding officers desktop. I did find a reference to an abstract conception test where he implied that a blank card was being held upside down. But the Net is like that.
There were more than 500 young guns listed by NASA for consideration for the Mercury program. 110 were test pilots with the required 1500 hrs flight time and specialty in jet aircraft. 32 young dudes made it into phase two at Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico.

Secondary question: Someone went astray. Who was he?

The main question: the physiologic data collected from the 31 Mercury candidates at Lovelace may be compared to the subset of the 7 selected astronauts. Which of the only single following categories did the selected 7 astronauts score lower in than the total mean candidate group? Height, Weight, Body surface area, Lean body mass, Total body potasium, Total body water, Total body blood volume, Nitrogen clearance, and Exercise oxygen uptake.
(don't look at this hint unless you admit defeat)

cloudy

If Dr James May drove out of the Tardis (and found a Veyron suitable test track) before 220233 then he would have briefly snatched the WLSR off Sir Malcolm. I bet the Veyron had a better stereo than the Rolls-Royce Railton Blue Bird though. Found the episode of Radio Active where Paul Yuk's song "...that's my hatstand" featured. It wasn't as good as I remembered - I much prefer the Hee Bee Gee Bees!
Am slightly peeved about the long range cloud cover forecast, what with the astrophotography sessions already booked and payed for.

The question: is the lunar equatorial escape velocity (in m/sec) greater or less than the year number in which Janeway was made an Admiral?

sluggish

It is interesting that Mr M Campbell died of natural causes, whereas Mr H Segrave had a sea grave (figuratively speaking)- a fate far more likely for speed daredevils of his time. One thing I didn't know about Mr Campbell was that he won the French Grand Prix twice driving a Bugatti T39A. When not gazing starwards, the young Werhner von Braun was also interested in land speed records, but being very a bright youngster tended to make them unmanned toy wagons propelled by attached fireworks. He later drove more sensible cars. The Doctor is torrenting.

Dr. Wernher von Braun with his Mercedes-Benz Type W180 220S coupé

The military recruitment of German scientists to the early American Space Program at the end of World War II was called?
A. Operation Rocket Men
B. Operation Pin Pusher
C. Operation Brain Bunker
D. Operation Paperclip

damn lies and statistics

Damn that number 6, he's too sharp. A quiz with an answer I didn't think was in wiki and he got it. Went past a highway road sign of the scary informative nature that our local council excels in that said: One Third of All Road Fatalities are Locals. So what constitutes a local? What is the relative proportion of local vs non-local drivers on the road? Do the numbers include the local wildlife? It is certain that prior knowledge of pothole locations would decrease mortality - except at night after half a dozen guinesses when the potholes actually move about a bit. It's just lucky the locals never drink and drive.

I am starting to wonder how much Toyota are paying Jeremy to do obscene things to a Hilux. The performance of the vehicle on the trek to the north mag pole was just amazing though.

When in Australia in 1983, John Taylor was in a car accident on Sydney Harbor Bridge when his car went out of control. What kind of car was he driving?
A. Aston Martin
B. Mercedes Benz
C. BMW
D. Porsche