You went to that? A friend of mine and I, while taking a month-long trip about the western portion of the country, stopped in there. I decided it wasn't worth $10 (in 2001; it might have even been more) to see a big pothole, so I stayed in the car and read and listened to the radio.
How much is it now, if you don't mind my asking?
And here you thought Ron White was just being funny about Flagstaff?
Okay, but is there a funny bit on WHY Flagstaff sucks? Never having been west a' da Missasip', I have no idea.
Flagstaff - kind of Arizona's answer to San Francisco...
So they have cable cars and homos?
Well the damn thing wasn't built to sit on display in the middle of the desert, Nate.
So they have cable cars and homos?
Hippies and poor mexicans pissing everywhere.
Cable cars would actually spruce the place up I think...
Don't waste your breath Astro. Nate will never let go of his conspiracy theories as long as there is breath in his body.
Think of him on this subject as the crazy uncle at holiday dinner.
ITS RUSTED ASTRO!!! RUSTED!!!!
" Well the damn thing wasn't built to sit on display in the middle of the desert, Nate.
Astrosmith | Homepage | 07.12.09 - 4:00 pm"
No, it was built to "protect" astronauts as they traversed the near VACUUM of space while being bombarded by the RADIATION from the sun plus the extremes of temperature running into the hundreds of degrees fahrenheit. With not even the magnetic field of the earth to protect them much less the atmosphere and it's ozone layer.
Just to spell it out, it was built to stand up to something much more harsh than some sun and wind in the protective cocoon of earth.
Rivets and caulking. What the f$&%.
Pardon me while I doubt the ability of caulking to hold a breathable atmosphere for any significant length of time while in space. Please remember the extremes of temperature I mentioned above. That's some special caulking, I tell you what.
Rivets, what is it about the absolute porous nature of a riveted seam that some people apparently fail to understand?
It also makes me wonder how much weight was wasted on all the riveted seams. Weight that could have been saved by having a welded seam.
Please, explain away all these things, I beg you.
As to other rocket museums, there's another one just outside Alamgordo, New Mexico. White Sands National Monument is right down the road from there too. White Sands is at least worth a side trip. Freakiest sand I've ever seen. It's gypsum, not a silicate.
Yep, lousy rivets are ancient technology. No self-respectin' space-farin' nation uses 'em on their spacecraft nowadays.
Why, them rivets on the Space Shuttle totally suck so bad, the damn thing can't even go up into space and back without fallin' apart.*
Mebbe all them shuttle flights were faked, too? I forget...anyway, you fellas go ahead and don't let the facts get in yer way.
*Just so's ya know, the two shuttle disasters weren't caused by failed rivets.
*Just so's ya know, the two shuttle disasters weren't caused by failed rivets.
Nope, just the equivalent to a bad washer and some foam...
...nonetheless, we'll be hearing no more nonsense about rivets, right?
Uh-huh.
AP: "Please, explain away all these things, I beg you."
Well, to begin with, the thing sitting out there in the desert isn't a real CM -- it's a boilerplate model that was used in flotation tests, and not built to the rigid specs of the full model. It's no surprise it's falling apart after 40+ years. And caulk? To keep out water while floating in the ocean? Who'da thunk it?
Next, the real CMs were welded in constructing the interior skin, to keep in the pressurized atmosphere. It was the outer skin that was riveted on. Conflating one with the other is like saying, "How can a car possibly hold together at highway speeds when the only thing holding it together is that thin metal skin?"
Caulk? The sealant only had to hold less then 1 atmosphere of pressure.
Nate, do you believe that our Navy has submarines? They see a far greater pressure differential than a spacecraft and are riveted together and sealed with 'caulk'.
Welding is cheap, but not only is it prone to cracking through the entire weldment, most materials lose strength in the heat affected zone.
Riveted assemblies defeat cracks and suffer no loss in mechanical properties due to heat.
and are heavy as hell... and are porous.
As for space shuttle rivets.. I never said the thing wasn't a phenomenal piece of shit as well. It clearly is. But do you really want to start comparing the structural integrity of the shuttles to this apollo junk?
Oh...and Waterboy... it was for drop testing and it was built to the exact same specs as the one they used. Said so right on the stupid little sign.
Oh, how you do amuse me about this topic, my friend.
One thing: I'll be amazed if the current Orion program ever gets off the ground, much less the moon, given what I've been reading about that cluster f.
I may be right about the moon landings, but you're the one who can afford to take your family on an RV trip around the country...something I would dearly love to be able to afford. But I had to be a damn engineer instead of an anesthesiologist.
Nate, your original assertion was that it couldn't have made the trip merely because it used rivets in its construction.
Not that those specific rivets were of inferior quality, or that they were improperly employed by being spaced too far apart, or that magical space fairies with a taste for rivets would eat them all up during the journey.
You implied that rivets simply couldn't handle the job. And the Space Shuttle example proves otherwise.
If you wish to modify your assertion to something more specific, like the rivets used were from inferior quality material and therefore would've failed under the stress, feel free; after all, weak rivets are what some engineers think contributed to the sinking of the Titanic.
But a baseless general assertion that rivets couldn't stand up in space is pure nonsense.
Flagstaff is actually a very nice town if you know where to look. In the summertime it has a bit of a transient problem because they all hitchhike up from Phoenix to escape summer heat. The outdoor opportunities and scenic beauty in and near Flagstaff are pretty much unparalleled. My biggest bitch about the place are the trains that incessantly run through the middle of town which completely paralyze traffic. That and the pain in the ass college students.
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