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The last known unidentified marking on the Saturn V S-IC
- dmix 8y agoI can imagine him trying to explain his excitement about finding this to his wife, then her patting him on the head and her saying "that's nice honey". Underscoring the amount of effort involved in such a seemingly trivial things that nerds enjoy digging into.
- xevb3k 8y agoI’m confused by this comment. Do you know this is specifically know that John Duncan has a wife and that this is how she’d react? Or does this mean something else?
- macinjosh 8y agoIt is a hypothetical that means there are very few people in the world that would share the unique obsessions of Saturn V model makers who care about every detail. So his hypothetical wife, who likely doesn't share the same obsessions, wants to be supportive but doesn't feel the same excitement that he does.
- xevb3k 8y agoIf this is correct, it doesn’t seem very healthy. While quite possibly statistically likely, it doesn’t seem very healthy to make these assumptions for the purposes of a joke. Might have been better to just say “a friend” rather than “wife” which makes a number of assumptions...
- tntn 8y agoMeh? Basically no one is as into the markings on the Saturn V first stage as this guy, so I don't see how assuming his wife (if he is married) wouldn't be super into it is offensive.
- xevb3k 8y agoIf you see a man on the Internet and think “this man must be married and his wife must not be interested in this because wives (women) are not interested in these things”... that’s pretty unhealthy. And making a joke about it, and it becoming a social norm is even more unhealthy. SV/the tech world at large clearly has issues with stereotypes and being inclusive. Why not avoid doing that and just say “friend” rather than making a lame stereotyped “my wife” type joke...
- dmix 8y agoThe joke was about imagining such an individual in a hypothetical scenario after the fact. It does not rely on having any direct accuracy to the individual in the article to get the point across, it's merely a character at that point.
- dmix 8y agoAlso if I had said 'partner' or 'friend' instead of 'wife' the comment would probably have been less humorous, as it plays on a cliche situation. I'd rather not live in a world where I'd have to neuter such a statement in the name of absolute correctness over common sense.
- xevb3k 8y agoThe cliche draws upon a stereotype. It’s not a great stereotype to perpetuate in my opinion. Better to just not make the joke than to perpetuate a stereotype.
- adrianN 8y agoHow healthy, in your opinion, is diagnosing the mental health of strangers on the Internet based on a single comment they made?
- xevb3k 8y agoMy intended meaning is that it leads to a unhealthy community... not that anybody has specific mental health issues.
- simonh 8y agoIMHO a healthy community is one where people can relax a little and post a mildly humorous comment, without it getting picked on and criticized in detail as though it was a serious social transgression and threat to the health of the community, leading to a wasteful thread arguing over a triviality.
- xevb3k 8y agoI didn’t think I was “picking” on anybody or making an overtly offensive comment. I’d honestly be interested in knowing why this joke is “ok” and why it wouldn’t be better not to make generic assumptions about someone’s sexuality, marital status, and the interests of their spouse... Yea, possibly doesn’t seem like a big issue to you. But if you’re a member of a minority the message it sends is “we just assume people are heterosexual, married, and wives/women are not interested in this stuff as a default”... If you really think this thread is wasteful arguing over a triviality then it’s probably better not to engage?
- simonh 8y agoIt wasn't making any assumptions, because it was a joke. It was clearly a fantasy, not to be taken seriously, and not representative of actual opinions or facts, but instead poking fun at and satirizing such stereotypes. That's why you're getting so many down votes. If someone satirizes a stereotype as being silly or ridiculous, it doesn't make sense to then accuse them of holding or promoting that stereotype.
- RobertRoberts 8y agoWhen my friend got his first rollover event (after much tribulation) show a different image on a website in the 90s he was ecstatic. His wife said "so what? I see that all the time" _sigh_ I think the op's comment is the same kind of thing...
- analogmemory 8y agoHah! Last week I was doing some research on a typeface I had found. I was getting visibly excited while looking at my screen. My partner looks up and asks what's got me worked up. I spent about 30 seconds explaining what I found and why I was nerd happy. The response? Cool [https://bit.ly/2sHXrH8 https://bit.ly/2sHXrH8]. Goes back to the book.
- xt00 8y agoI mean I’m pretty into space stuff and I read the article.. maybe it’s a bit niche for me.. :)
- Jaruzel 8y agoI'm into space stuff, and I could just feel his excitement in his words. It's always nice to see people really enjoying their hobby I think. If you have any level of OCD then this sort of article would appeal to you.
- thomasfedb 8y agoThis is not what OCD is. I wish people would use the term appropriately.
- Jaruzel 8y agoI wish people would use the terms Depression, Anxiety, and Suicidal appropriately, but they don't do that either. Apologies if I offended you/anyone with my use of the term OCD. If he can ignore it and move onto something else then it's clearly not OCD. However, the author is obsessed with finding out everything he can about Saturn V, to the extent he travels across the country to look at a sticker on one of parts that on display. Some people would call that an unhealthy level of obsession.
- thomasfedb 8y agoI'm not offended, I'm just perplexed why people (and not just you) use "OCD" when "obsessive" expresses their meaning better, and without involving a medical diagnosis that they're not actually referring to.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y agoI read the article and while the marking was not interesting to me, the passion and persistence of the author was quite heartening.
- 8y ago
- dingaling 8y ago> I posted some images in the Saturn Rocket History group on Facebook It saddens me that Facebook has become this big, opaque data hole in the Internet. Even searching for that group name only returns one reference back to it. All that accumulated recorded knowledge that exists only so long as Facebook determines that Groups have financial benefit. All that knowledge that can't be archived for the greater Internet.
- cma 8y agoDiscord is another big black hole of useful info. Lots of major programming IRC channels were at least logged in an indexable way.
- sgtmas2006 8y agoAre people not logging Discord servers as well? If you can read message history you can use a fake client to export a couple hundred thousand messages in 5 minutes. This is how I got old messages. Now I just run it daily. CSV output.
- Faaak 8y agoIt would be interesting to publicly share these messages so that useful conversations are backed up and shared/indexed
- sgtmas2006 8y agoIt would, I wanted to do emotion analysis on them but the way my friends and I speak within discord is representative of a conversation, with convenience and spelling variances to declare the dialect something is supposed to be read in so it didn't really work out. [5:35 PM] zsh: sopranos in a bit? [5:38 PM] Adam: probably [5:57 PM] zsh: when [6:00 PM] zsh: ? [6:04 PM] Adam: whenever tuhe f8uclo i FEDEL LIKE [6:04 PM] zsh: im ready [6:04 PM] zsh: whenever [6:04 PM] Adam: ye thats cool [6:04 PM] zsh: im actually going to kill u [6:04 PM] Adam: gimme 5 i guess [6:04 PM] Adam: idk i just dont feel that hyped to watch it rn [6:05 PM] zsh: we can play bf1 idc [6:05 PM] Adam: ye i think play bf1 for a bit [7:45 PM] zsh: too much effort to get up [7:45 PM] zsh: no [7:56 PM] Adam: fucking mullinyan kids [8:24 PM] zsh: varsity athlete won [8:24 PM] Adam: rip bobby [8:26 PM] zsh: the bacala man stands true [8:27 PM] Adam: bacala vs a gun [8:27 PM] Adam: [8:38 PM] zsh: yes [8:45 PM] zsh: my estimation of John sacrimoni as a man had plummeted [8:45 PM] Adam: what sort of don gets cancer [8:46 PM] zsh: the same one that cries these are surprisingly common examples, being of lesser extremes. Varying capitalization and new lines are used as ways of carrying on a dialogue, instead of writing entire bubbles of text at once, producing the feeling of a conversation instead of reading e-mails. The second being an example of 'soprano-posting,' in which you use references to The Sopranos in an ironic manner. The first being a common conversation. Looking into the idea of trying to extract emotion from this accurately seems... impossible. Most of our writings are extremely foreign to those that aren't 'in the know' and seem almost hostile to one another, while in reality they aren't. I'm curious if there has been analysis on this type of writing in general. It feels so much more efficient than 'traditional' writing styles.
- mysterypie 8y agoIt looks like a metal ruler glued or welded to the surface of the rocket. After all that build up in his story, I wish he explained what it was, and a bit more about what it does, even if it seems obvious to him.
- Yetanfou 8y agoIt is referred to as an 'alignment mark', the print on it being in reverse because the instruments used to check said alignment might have an odd number of mirrors which would cause the image to be non-reversed. I'd say the purpose of the strip to be to align the stage either in relation to the other stages or to the launching platform.
- WalterBright 8y agoI watched a history of the Saturn V on Amazon last night. Unfortunately, frustratingly little of it was about the technical details of it, which is mostly what interests me. The only good bit was an explanation of the pogoing problem, the rest was just the usual stuff seen on every "failure is not an option" Apollo documentary. Reminds me of the locomotive buffs who are interested in every detail of markings on the locomotives, their routes, schedules, and paint colors. Whereas there's very little about the engineering evolution of those locomotives. Sigh. For example, I'm interested in the transition between trial-and-error seat of the pants engineering and mathematically based engineering.
- keithpeter 8y agohttps://www.iris.sssup.it/retrieve/handle/11382/303321/901/MakingFinal.pdf https://www.iris.sssup.it/retrieve/handle/11382/303321/901/M... Thesis covers an earlier time frame than you want (up to 1800), but is this the kind of analysis you are after? Would pull in development of precision machining, and various improvements in steel making I imagine. The paper below has a time line and details of 'start ups' involved in UK. https://www.iris.sssup.it/retrieve/handle/11382/304403/988/GloriousTimesBER.pdf https://www.iris.sssup.it/retrieve/handle/11382/304403/988/G... In twentieth century various people tried to adapt the steam turbine to rail use with varying success. Marine turbines dominated ship engines then for larger ships. I think a carefully worded question on a UK railway forum might yield some results. I can just about remember steam locomotives clinging on in the early 60s (my mother hated them - put your washing out and watch the soot land...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine_locomotive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine_locomotive Has a time line of the companies involved in some of that.
- WalterBright 8y agoThank you! Saved for later reading.
- Gravityloss 8y agoPeople who tend to have such interests I guess don't end up making or producing documentaries. I've found oral histories the best, when some old people have been interviewed with the interviewer getting out of the way so to speak. Don't have the list here so might misremember the names but Robert Brulle, Stanley Hooker and Doron Aurbach for example have interesting life stories.
- Mister_X 8y agoThat... was a tough read, nay, more of a plod, it never came to a solid conclusion after a laborious build up, BAH! And I'm a space/tech geek too, with an appreciation of the arcane, but it needs to be easy to read for those who may not have all the details the author clearly does. My father worked on the A-12 (OXCART), several space probes, Mariner, Pioneer, etc., Project Gemini and Project Apollo. He used to bring me green Anole Lizards that he'd find on the Pad at the Cape and he shot 8mm family movies most times he went down for a launch. Sadly, no cameras allowed in the block house, so I never saw the inside and no home movies of the launches, because he was busy in the block house with the launch. The Saturn 5 on the crawler slowly headed for the Pad was always my fave movie reel, but also the rain storm inside the assembly building when it's clear outside, that was a trip.
- howard941 8y ago> My father worked on the A-12 (OXCART) The most beautiful airplane ever built.
- iammiles 8y agoThank you. I always appreciate reading the tales of those who are so deeply passionate about an extremely niche hobby.