I bet you didnt know that

Capt'n Midnight

CalamariFritti wrote: »

I wasn't certain by how much actually, just remember this from the past. And I thought it was up to 1 metre originally. Tried to look it up briefly before I posted and there are claims its more than 2 metres. Which I find hard to believe myself.

I've heard the same for the Eiffel Tower, but in reality it's more like 6 inches.

Wibbs

Skylinehead wrote: »

Teleconferencing played a part too - not as big a need to travel for those CEOs.

Plus the accident rattled the public cages. Air France wanted out of them for a while before that as they were becoming hard to maintain because Airbus wasn't interested. The attack of 9/11 was also a factor as a fair number of their regular customers were killed.

After the accident the entire fleet in both France and the UK got updated with extra safety gear and interiors. The fuel tank protection was a biggie. It was that being punctured by a piece of metal that had fallen from another aircraft that caused the crash, rather than any inherent issue with the airframe itself. It was a remarkably safe aircraft and never had any major systems failures in its decades of daily use at mach 2+.

When a group of Concorde engineers visited NASA in the early 70's they were surprised to find the NASA guys had huge respect for them. Some even suggested that the Apollo missions while a technical tour de force, they considered Concorde just as impressive because it was a daily commercial aircraft. Many of them had worked on other similar projects like Boeings attempts, or supersonic fighters and bombers so knew how hard this was to pull off. The Rolls Royce Olympus engines were an incredible design and one of the most efficient engines ever made.

If they were delayed for more than a few minutes waiting to take off they had to return to take on more fuel. When they were first in service the ticket prices were low enough and BA was losing money. So one executive had the bright idea of getting his secretary to ring their most frequent fliers to ask what they thought a ticket cost. Knowing that most of them had their "people" book the flights, so likely didn't know the actual price, what they found was passengers thought the tickets cost more, so they raised the prices and started to make money.

But in the end the fully refitted at great expense Concorde drew its last breath as an aircraft and an era was over.

Wibbs

bnt wrote: »

And that's what structural engineers are for - to take an architect's drawing and try to make it stand up. I remember reading architect Rem Koolhaas's comments about the China Central Television Headquarters: he kept expecting the structural engineers to say "no" and was fairly shocked when they calculated that it could be built. It hasn't fallen down yet.

Architect Lloyd Wright's famous "Falling Water" house had all sorts of novel ideas in the structure and he was cock sure his calculations on stresses within the cantilevers were correct and got uppity if anyone suggested otherwise. When it was being restored a few years back the restorers discovered that the builder on the ground didn't trust some of the specs and added extra steel into the beams without telling Wright. Luckily he had as even with the extra steel some parts had started to sag.

Going even further back... When the Parthenon in Athens was built the builder had H shaped brackets let in like tenons between some of the blocks to secure them even more. These were iron, but the ancient Greeks knew iron would rust and expands as it does so, so they covered the brackets in lead. Many centuries later in the late 19th/early 20th century when restorations started they replicated the brackets but didn't think of the rust and because of that caused cracks and more damage as the iron corroded. The original builders/architects whose name escapes were overseen by a sculptor. Parthenon means House of Athena the goddess to which it was dedicated. The pillars are subtly angled inwards towards the top so to preserve the overall balance of the building from ground hieght(and help resist subsidence. It was also originally rich painted in bright colours and inside was a huge gold plated statue of the goddess. They have found the accounts of its construction and the biggest expense was transporting the marble to the site. Twice the price of the the rest of the final bill.

New Home

Wibbs wrote: »

They have found the accounts of its construction and the biggest expense was transporting the marble to the site. Twice the price of the the rest of the final bill.

Greek builder looks at project, shakes head, and says, "Ah now, that's a big job, it's gonna cost ya".

Greybottle

Wibbs wrote: »

Honda is the largest manufacturer of engines in the world, from chainsaws to cars to boats and now jets. And the only independent big name in bike and car production. And oddly one of the biggest transporters of soybeans of all things..

I think BMW would stake a claim to being a major producer of both bikes and cars. Over 2.25 million cars and 150,000 motorbikes produced in 2015.



My Concorde contribution:
My aunt worked for BA and lived in Hounslow, directly under the flight path for Concorde. Planes flew very low over the house during landing, but you could always chat in the garden or watch TV with the patio doors open when they flew over...except for Concorde. It came over at around 18.10-18.20 every day. She had a cabinet with porcellan figures and glass shelves in it. Every 2 weeks they had to be pushed back a few centimetres as the vibrations from Concorde would move them forward.

She flew on it once; on a test flight around the Bay of Biscay after having a major renovation done to it. They needed a full load of people so they got around 100 BA employees who volunteered to fly in it. Not a bad days work.

I've seen 6 of them parked together at the servicing hanger in Heathrow. And have been in Concorde and the Tupolev TU-144 in the museum in Sinsheim. There's also an excellent documentary in German on how they transported the plane to Sinsheim. By flying it, by barge and by truck.

New Home

Peugeot makes/used to make bikes, too.

Are Am Eye

New Home wrote: »

Peugeot makes/used to make bikes, too.

And tennis rackets.

VW 1

My uncle lives in Surrey and was an aircraft engineer working for BA on concorde for over 20 years after a career in the RAF. Pictures of my parents in the cockpit of concorde and on the wing. There's some glassware and cutlery somewhere in the attic from concorde as well IIRC.

Capt'n Midnight

New Home wrote: »

Greek builder looks at project, shakes head, and says, "Ah now, that's a big job, it's gonna cost ya".

What's worse is that none of the columns are even, they are all warped.

New Home

Great. Cowboys!

Capt'n Midnight

New Home wrote: »

Peugeot makes/used to make bikes, too.

There are some crazy cyclists out there.

Éric Barone went 227.720 Kmph on a bicycle. 141.498 mph without an engine and no slipstreaming behind someone.

On snow.



Not sure if they still do but Peugeot used to be big into downhill records like the above.

New Home

How on Earth is that even possible?! I hope he wore a helmet, anyway.

Greybottle

New Home wrote: »

How on Earth is that even possible?! I hope he wore a helmet, anyway.

You mean "Where on earth is that even possible?" Answer is Vars in France.

Was he wearing a helmet? Yes. But not a Hi-Viz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpAKB75c0xU

Peregrine

New Home wrote: »

How on Earth is that even possible?! I hope he wore a helmet, anyway.

Haven't looked into it properly but he was accelerated by gravity on a low friction surface using very aerodynamically efficient equipment. It's possible.

Snotty

New Home wrote: »

How on Earth is that even possible?! I hope he wore a helmet, anyway.

At that speed, the helmets wareing you for protection.

IvyTheTerrible

The 1936 Olympic medal winner Jesse Owens' name was not actually Jesse, but James Cleveland.
His family moved from Alabama in the 20's as part of the Great Migration (where 6 million black Americans moved from the Southern states to the Northern ones between WW1 and the 70's). When he went to school in Cleveland for the first time, the teacher asked him his name, he replied "J.C.", but because his accent was so strong, the teacher didn't understand, and Jesse stuck.

fergiesfolly

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

The 1936 Olympic medal winner Jesse Owens' name was not actually Jesse, but James Cleveland.
His family moved from Alabama in the 20's as part of the Great Migration (where 6 million black Americans moved from the Southern states to the Northern ones between WW1 and the 70's). When he went to school in Cleveland for the first time, the teacher asked him his name, he replied "J.C.", but because his accent was so strong, the teacher didn't understand, and Jesse stuck.

Ok. But how did he lose the Cleveland?

quickbeam

Cleveland wasn't his surname, it was his middle name.

So James Cleveland Owens became JC Owens became Jesse Owens.

(Just going from Wiki, tbh).

IvyTheTerrible

quickbeam wrote: »

Cleveland wasn't his surname, it was his middle name.

So James Cleveland Owens became JC Owens became Jesse Owens.

(Just going from Wiki, tbh).

I was talking about his first names, James and Cleveland. He said his name was J.C. (standing for James Cleveland) and the teacher heard Jesse.

quickbeam

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

I was talking about his first names, James and Cleveland. He said his name was J.C. (standing for James Cleveland) and the teacher heard Jesse.

Yeah, so Cleveland didn't go anywhere. It became the "sse" of "Jesse".

tayto lover

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

There are some crazy cyclists out there.

Éric Barone went 227.720 Kmph on a bicycle. 141.498 mph without an engine and no slipstreaming behind someone.

On snow.



Not sure if they still do but Peugeot used to be big into downhill records like the above.

Did he cycle out of an airplane?

server down

Jessie Owens of course refused to condemn Nazi Germany after the olympics because he felt he was treated better by Germans (admittedly on their best behaviour) than he was at home. In fact he was mobbed by teenage fans when arrived. Hitler didn’t snub him either, in day 1 he shook hands publically with all German athletes but no others, and was told by the IOC it was all or none, so he chose none.

Jesse Owens in fact maintained that Hitler shook his hand privately.

He did believe he was snubbed on racial grounds by a world leader - the US president. He got no telegram during the event while others did (but Owens was the most successful athlete in the most prestigious track events), nor was there any invitation to the White House.

Later on there was a parade in his honour in New York which FDR attended.

After the long parade where he was feted by vast crowds throwing ticker tape Owens was due to meet the president at the Waldorf; but couldn’t, at the end of the parade, enter via the main entrance of the hotel - blacks were barred.

He took the side entrance and the service elevator.

New Home

During their expedition Lewis and Clark brought packs of "thunderclappers," ridiculously strong laxatives made of 60 percent mercury. Due to the strength of the laxatives and the longevity of mercury, scientists can track the route of the expedition by following deposits.

Source.

New Home

The official definition of 1 second is based on a quantum mechanical phenomenon, namely "the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Caesium 133 atom's outermost electron".

Esel

Wibbs wrote: »

More like 5 - 10 inches in old money, not over 6 feet. Still impressive though. One trick the flight engineer would do would be to shove the flight manuals between the control panel and the bulkhead in flight and as the aircraft shrunk back down on descent they would be solidly held in place.

How would they get the manuals out?

nice_guy80

I've been in a concorde

The ISS is the most expensive structure ever created, at a cost of over $100 billion over the last three decades. It's been paid for by the big players, mostly Russia, the USA and the European Space Agency. It's the ninth space station to orbit Earth and the largest thus far. The best known space stations prior to ISS were the Mir and SkyLab, both of which were much smaller than ISS, which is a collection of modules that add up to about the size of an American football field.

The ISS also suffers from orbital decay due to the gravitational pull of the Earth - ie, it's passage gets slightly closer with each orbit and so decays by about 2km a month. It's not surprising it wanders a little since it moves at an average of 27 thousand kph!

New Home

I remember that, when the first few modules of Mir were launched, they used to advertise these plastic rings that were moulded from a single lump of smooth, shiny, semi-transparent plastic; they looked a bit like galaxies and they were also called Mir, which can mean both "world" and "peace".

Peregrine

Candie wrote: »

The ISS also suffers from orbital decay due to the gravitational pull of the Earth - ie, it's passage gets slightly closer with each orbit and so decays by about 2km a month. It's not surprising it wanders a little since it moves at an average of 27 thousand kph!

Not because of the gravitational pull. The ISS is in low earth orbit so the largest effect is the Earth's atmosphere. Any gravitational effect on orbital decay would be relativistic and negligible for planets and satellites.

Anyway, the ISS's mean orbit height (mean because the orbit is slightly elliptic) changes a lot. It's often boosted back up to higher otbits. See the graph of its mean orbital height over 2014--2015. You can clearly see it falling undisturbed for a large period.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

All of this concorde info is fascinating, I've been reading and watching videos about it for the past few days.