4 ms·

One of my favorite anecdotes is from an old episode of Car Talk. A woman called in to ask if the following was ok (I'm paraphrasing from memory): "So my neighb

by M_Grey 10y ago

One of my favorite anecdotes is from an old episode of Car Talk. A woman called in to ask if the following was ok (I'm paraphrasing from memory): "So my neighbor, who's from a former Soviet Bloc country is a great guy who helps me out when my car breaks down. One time my battery is dead, so he offers to jump start my car. While I look on baffled, then shocked, he unscrews his car's battery from the mounting, then flips it over and presses the contacts directly to my car's battery. It started though! So is that safe?" To further paraphrase the guys' responses... "Oh god no!!!" They further went on to point out though, that at some point when your life is dangerous and hard as a kind of background state, the little things stop even grabbing your notice. The degree of black marketeering in the USSR was just... staggering. Systemic. Understood to be "how the system works". Sometimes though you get tragedies like Vladimir Komarov. The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes — though no one knows this — won't work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, "cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship." http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/co...

MegaButts 10y ago
I recently watched a documentary about the space race, which mostly focused on von Braun and Korolev. As I was watching it, it seemed like the Soviets had a huge advantage of secrecy. The Americans never knew what they were doing. But perhaps the constant media attention for the US held them accountable. Going further off-topic, the fact that Korolev died because he spent years in a work camp due to the dumbest of political spitefulness is just depressing. From what I can tell, Korolev could have single-handedly won the space race for the Soviet Union - too bad they killed him.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  One may wonder that one should be worried that the more the media profess their political independence, the less likely it is to be true.
  - MegaButts 10y ago
    I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.
- chadgeidel 10y ago
  Could be a "retcon" but I always heard we (the US) opened up the media on our space program as a sort of "marketing program" to show how awesome we were (on the world stage generally and specifically to the Soviets).
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    I'm pretty confident there's some truth to this. The core reasons may have had less to do with marketing than practicality, but at a minimum the government saw an opportunity and grabbed hold. As for the lack of initial secrecy, that may have just been a practical consequence of why we won. NASA and JPL opened subcomponent development to private industry. At least in propellant development, this meant both research contracts and a general understanding that someone coming up with particularly good products could expect a massive government payout. It produced great results and even got private investors to foot a large research bill. It also had the consequence that the work was rather less secret than it might have been - especially the failures, which were generally shopped around to other buyers if they had any interesting properties. But it worked out pretty well overall: even with Russia getting info about US efforts, the rate of new research was still impressive enough to be thoroughly competitive. Anyone looking for an internal account of the (propellant) story might enjoy Ignition. It's free here, though Chrome can't handle the pdf: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    Space programs had immense propaganda value in those days. In the US, we rewired our whole primary education system in response to Sputnik. Then we structured our lunar exploration program as an unsustainable "race" for the sake of showmanship rather than science. This is one of the handier arguments to use against moon-landing deniers. If the Russians had the slightest reason to believe that we weren't doing exactly what we said we were doing, they'd still be laughing at us.
    - vkou 10y ago
      > Then we structured our lunar exploration program as an unsustainable "race" for the sake of showmanship rather than science. The entire Soviet space program was an unsustainable exercise in political showmanship, and 'Me first!' moments. Consider the visiting cosmonaut program, the first woman in space (Who was also the... last woman in space, for the subsequent two decades.) Consider the secrecy surrounding launches (To avoid getting egg on your face, if the mission fails/is aborted...) Fortunately (Or unfortunately), if it weren't for political showmanship, neither country would have had a space program.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
If the battery turned upside down was sealed would it be okay to do this? I've only ever bought "maintenance free" sealed lead-acid car batteries. Presumably it would be okay to use one of these upside down for a brief couple of minutes. I've bought two gel-acid sealed batteries that claimed they could be mounted and used upside down.
- MertsA 10y ago
  You don't want sparks near the terminals of a bad battery, it can cause a small explosion that showers you in battery acid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93acid_battery#Risk_of_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93acid_battery#Risk...
manarth 10y ago
he unscrews his car's battery from the mounting, then flips it over and presses the contacts directly to my car's battery. is that safe? Electrically, it's not all that different from using jump leads - there's the same risk of sparks, the same voltage and load involved. There is a risk of battery acid leakage from flipping the source battery, but that depends on the type of battery - a sealed unit is unlikely to leak. There's also a risk of injury from being so close to the engine bay when it's started - say, if your hand came into contact with a moving part like a belt or a fan - but again, that's dependent on the layout of the engine bay, and those risks are generally clearly visible and obvious. It's certainly not "normal" practice for the western world, but there isn't really all that much risk in it. And it turns out Americans do it too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcYjJcEZuOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcYjJcEZuOA
- scrumper 10y ago
  Also there's some potential for damage to electronic components like the ECU by connecting terminals in the wrong order (i.e. not +ves first). And sparking. Lots of chance of that, more than jump leads which (unless you're incompetent) aren't going to be making and breaking contact several times while you wiggle the battery around trying to make it fit.
  - MertsA 10y ago
    The order in which you connect the terminals has nothing to do with preventing electrical damage. The reason why you're supposed to connect jumper cables in a particular order is for safety. When you connect just the positive, it doesn't matter if you accidentally brush the other end of the cable against the body or ground of the other car. Then the only thing left to connect is ground and if you accidentally brush the ground lead up against the body then it isn't going to matter as you're trying to connect that lead to ground. Also, the reason why you connect the last lead to a well grounded part of the engine away from the battery on the god car is because that's the only connection that creates sparks. Sparks around a bad battery are a bad idea. Batteries regularly create some Hydrogen and Oxygen gas, normally it doesn't produce that much at all and it gets vented out of the battery but with a bad battery it might have very little electrolyte left and it might have multiple cells filled with a bit of acid and a lot of explosive gas. If that spark ignites any explosive gases in the battery it will probably crack apart the plastic casing and shower you with battery acid.

by M_Grey 10y ago

MegaButts 10y ago

I recently watched a documentary about the space race, which mostly focused on von Braun and Korolev. As I was watching it, it seemed like the Soviets had a huge advantage of secrecy. The Americans never knew what they were doing. But perhaps the constant media attention for the US held them accountable. Going further off-topic, the fact that Korolev died because he spent years in a work camp due to the dumbest of political spitefulness is just depressing. From what I can tell, Korolev could have single-handedly won the space race for the Soviet Union - too bad they killed him.

digi_owl 10y ago
One may wonder that one should be worried that the more the media profess their political independence, the less likely it is to be true.
- MegaButts 10y ago
  I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.
chadgeidel 10y ago
Could be a "retcon" but I always heard we (the US) opened up the media on our space program as a sort of "marketing program" to show how awesome we were (on the world stage generally and specifically to the Soviets).
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I'm pretty confident there's some truth to this. The core reasons may have had less to do with marketing than practicality, but at a minimum the government saw an opportunity and grabbed hold. As for the lack of initial secrecy, that may have just been a practical consequence of why we won. NASA and JPL opened subcomponent development to private industry. At least in propellant development, this meant both research contracts and a general understanding that someone coming up with particularly good products could expect a massive government payout. It produced great results and even got private investors to foot a large research bill. It also had the consequence that the work was rather less secret than it might have been - especially the failures, which were generally shopped around to other buyers if they had any interesting properties. But it worked out pretty well overall: even with Russia getting info about US efforts, the rate of new research was still impressive enough to be thoroughly competitive. Anyone looking for an internal account of the (propellant) story might enjoy Ignition. It's free here, though Chrome can't handle the pdf: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Space programs had immense propaganda value in those days. In the US, we rewired our whole primary education system in response to Sputnik. Then we structured our lunar exploration program as an unsustainable "race" for the sake of showmanship rather than science. This is one of the handier arguments to use against moon-landing deniers. If the Russians had the slightest reason to believe that we weren't doing exactly what we said we were doing, they'd still be laughing at us.
  - vkou 10y ago
    > Then we structured our lunar exploration program as an unsustainable "race" for the sake of showmanship rather than science. The entire Soviet space program was an unsustainable exercise in political showmanship, and 'Me first!' moments. Consider the visiting cosmonaut program, the first woman in space (Who was also the... last woman in space, for the subsequent two decades.) Consider the secrecy surrounding launches (To avoid getting egg on your face, if the mission fails/is aborted...) Fortunately (Or unfortunately), if it weren't for political showmanship, neither country would have had a space program.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

If the battery turned upside down was sealed would it be okay to do this? I've only ever bought "maintenance free" sealed lead-acid car batteries. Presumably it would be okay to use one of these upside down for a brief couple of minutes. I've bought two gel-acid sealed batteries that claimed they could be mounted and used upside down.

MertsA 10y ago
You don't want sparks near the terminals of a bad battery, it can cause a small explosion that showers you in battery acid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93acid_battery#Risk_of_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93acid_battery#Risk...

manarth 10y ago

he unscrews his car's battery from the mounting, then flips it over and presses the contacts directly to my car's battery. is that safe? Electrically, it's not all that different from using jump leads - there's the same risk of sparks, the same voltage and load involved. There is a risk of battery acid leakage from flipping the source battery, but that depends on the type of battery - a sealed unit is unlikely to leak. There's also a risk of injury from being so close to the engine bay when it's started - say, if your hand came into contact with a moving part like a belt or a fan - but again, that's dependent on the layout of the engine bay, and those risks are generally clearly visible and obvious. It's certainly not "normal" practice for the western world, but there isn't really all that much risk in it. And it turns out Americans do it too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcYjJcEZuOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcYjJcEZuOA

scrumper 10y ago
Also there's some potential for damage to electronic components like the ECU by connecting terminals in the wrong order (i.e. not +ves first). And sparking. Lots of chance of that, more than jump leads which (unless you're incompetent) aren't going to be making and breaking contact several times while you wiggle the battery around trying to make it fit.
- MertsA 10y ago
  The order in which you connect the terminals has nothing to do with preventing electrical damage. The reason why you're supposed to connect jumper cables in a particular order is for safety. When you connect just the positive, it doesn't matter if you accidentally brush the other end of the cable against the body or ground of the other car. Then the only thing left to connect is ground and if you accidentally brush the ground lead up against the body then it isn't going to matter as you're trying to connect that lead to ground. Also, the reason why you connect the last lead to a well grounded part of the engine away from the battery on the god car is because that's the only connection that creates sparks. Sparks around a bad battery are a bad idea. Batteries regularly create some Hydrogen and Oxygen gas, normally it doesn't produce that much at all and it gets vented out of the battery but with a bad battery it might have very little electrolyte left and it might have multiple cells filled with a bit of acid and a lot of explosive gas. If that spark ignites any explosive gases in the battery it will probably crack apart the plastic casing and shower you with battery acid.