Evan Burton

HMAS ALBATROSS (otherwise known as NAS NOWRA), home of the RAN Fleet Air Arm, is celebrating its 60th birthday with an Air Day Spectacular on Sunday 26 OCT 08. Static displays, flying displays, and tours around various facilities are scheduled. Details can be found at:

http://www.airdayspectacular.com.au/index.html

If any Forum members in Australia are planning to attend and would like a guided tour, just send me a PM.

HMAS ALBATROSS is located in southern New South Wales, about 2.5 hours south of Sydney's CBD.

HMAS ALBATROSS (otherwise known as NAS NOWRA), home of the RAN Fleet Air Arm, is celebrating its 60th birthday with an Air Day Spectacular on Sunday 26 OCT 08. Static displays, flying displays, and tours around various facilities are scheduled. Details can be found at:

http://www.airdayspectacular.com.au/index.html

If any Forum members in Australia are planning to attend and would like a guided tour, just send me a PM.

HMAS ALBATROSS is located in southern New South Wales, about 2.5 hours south of Sydney's CBD.

I have to laugh - their own members are breaking their own rules already! Amazing.

Terry,

A moderator has had to twice edit your posts because of use of a banned word. Additionally, your posts are becoming increasing insulting.

Please keep a more civil tone in your posts; you can strongly reject what another poster is saying - and even be heavy on a sarcastic tone - without being insulting. You are clearly an intelligent person and don't need this explained to you any further.

Additionally, final warning about use of a banned word. If you feel you need to make a specific statement, and that statement might contravene Forum rules, then clear it with a moderator first... before posting.

There is an old adage: "Tis easier to seek forgiveness than ask permission". On this Forum, it is not the case.

Thank you.

Apologies, Randy - I misunderstood. I'd like to see the Italian programme at some stage, although I hear it was pretty roundly panned.

I noticed that the YouTube parts did not show any cosmonaut. It also did not show any"conspiracy debunker". It also did not show any facts - just opinion.

Not worth the time, IMO.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I see lots of stories about it being taped and scheduled for broadcast, but no actual video.

Thanks for that Bill. It's amazing how we can be fooled into thinking something. Reminds me of this one:

Squares A and B are exactly the same colour - but simply looking at this we'd swear it was otherwise.

Bill,

I find it unremarkable that he was there. It could well have been a deliberate attempt to hurt / kill him, but a very stupid one if it was. The Zuni is unguided, so they'd have to rely the weapon being pointed exactly at his aircraft, and the weapon flying a perfectly straight course over a very short distance. Also, the resulting fire / damage would put everyone at risk. Much easier to simply knife him at some time, somewhere in the maze of passageways. With around 5000 people onboard, it would be difficult to pinpoint who did it. Probably like a Navy version of "fragging".

Bill,

I seriously doubt it. The FORRESTAL fire was another incident which had a chain of events. I'm going by memory here, so am quite open to correction.

The first event was was a safety device on the Zuni pod of the F-4. It was meant to prevent inadvertent firing, but could be improperly placed. IIRC, the aircraft was also spotted in a location on the aft section of the flight deck which made it more difficult to properly inspect.

The next event was the switching of the F-4 power from external cart to internal power. This caused a small electrical transient which led to the Zuni pod being triggered.

The rockets then flew across the flight deck and hit a loaded A-4. The rocket caused a drop tank of jet fuel on the A-4 to rupture and ignite. The ensuing fire and the bomb loads on the A-4s were the next event. The bombs on the A-4s (500 pounders IIRC) were old WWII vintage munitions which were being used from war stocks. The age of the weapons meant they were more unstable, and had a much shorter "cookoff" time than expected.

The last event was improper firefighting technique. Instead of dowsing the fire, the efforts actually helped spread it about the flight deck.

I believe the FORRESTAL fire led to a major review of weapons safety procedures, and firefighting techniques.

For some one venturing an opinion on the subject you should know what mercantilist means, this is not some obscure concept but rather something you were supposed to have learned a few times in junior high school and high school history.

FWIW, I have never heard of the term either. I don't claim to have a strong grasp of history, either.

Is it something related specifically to US history?

I'm a little amazed that the $AUS is down to 70c to the $US; when I came back from the US in June it was 98c and they were talking parity by Xmas. I wish I had put the US$1300 I brought back aside; it would be worth a lot more now!

Still, I'm confused as to why it is happening. All reports say that Australia is best prepared to weather this financial storm. Then again, I have no idea about these things.

Doug,

He's not alone with such a record. Indeed, at that time, it was almost expected that a pilot would engage in a little 'flathatting'.

Had he not been assassinated we would have had a manned Mars mission sometime during the 1980's.

Though I respect JFK enormously for his bold commitment towards the US manned space programme, I am not necessarily convinced this would be true. There are indications that his support of the space programme was purely political expediency, and he actually considered shutting it down.

If we want to talk more about this, may I suggest I take the NASA related posts and put them in a new thread? Would anyone object to this?

Oh, okay - I misunderstood. Wiki is probably fairly accurate in this case, though.

You are quite correct - NASA came from NACA. it was a logical choice, considering that NACA was the premier aeronautical research establishment in the US. They even had a rocket division... though they didn't call it that because "...it sounded too Buck Rogers..." and not like the serious research image of NACA. They called it the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division, or PARD.

David,

Sorry, but I don't understand. Why aren't they a reliable source?

LBJ was a great supporter of the US manned space programme, but he also wanted his 'Great Society' to succeed and there was of course Vietnam. He reduced funding, but still ensured that the lunar landing programme had the money to succeed. The major portion - research and development - had already been done. Still, his (and Nixon's) cuts caused a massive change. The last three lunar landing flights were canceled. A planned lunar base was canceled. The Mars programme was pushed to "long term goals". The orbital laboratory plans were scaled down. The shuttle nearly was canceled itself; instead it needed DoD funding and had to be radically redesigned to meet DoD and budgetary requirements.

simple history Evan, NASA (the creation of; my interest in this thread) did not appear out of thin air. Its predecessor, NACA, was created in 1915 (some of NACA's facilities are still in existence and used by NASA today). NASA was NOT the brilliant stroke of genius of any one president. NASA became a necessity (space race), albeit, a mother of modern invention -- the final off-shoot of NACA. So why go to Wikipedia for the who, what, when, where and why info? Why not the source?

So why on Earth did he choose him? Was it some type of compromise deal?

David,

Sorry, but I don't understand. Why aren't they a reliable source?

LBJ was a great supporter of the US manned space programme, but he also wanted his 'Great Society' to succeed and there was of course Vietnam. He reduced funding, but still ensured that the lunar landing programme had the money to succeed. The major portion - research and development - had already been done. Still, his (and Nixon's) cuts caused a massive change. The last three lunar landing flights were canceled. A planned lunar base was canceled. The Mars programme was pushed to "long term goals". The orbital laboratory plans were scaled down. The shuttle nearly was canceled itself; instead it needed DoD funding and had to be radically redesigned to meet DoD and budgetary requirements.

Bush. Worst. Evah.

As I've said on many occasions, I'm a financial numpty. It seems silly to stop the "free market" from acting appropriately. On the other hand, many people would be adversely affected by a collapse (job losses, loss of assets, etc), so it may be better to "help them over a rough patch".

What are the pros and cons of just letting these institutions fail?

Didn't work here, either:

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The requested URL /_palin_family_shockers_what_sarahs_really_hiding/celebrity/65407 was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Perhaps it is something to do with people outside the US?

Sure teach creationism, as part of religious studies where it belongs...

Exactly. Creationism because it is based in faith, and evolution because it is based in science. Individuals - or parents - can say that in this respect, they accept faith over science, and that is perfectly okay. Just don't confuse creationism belonging in a science class.

Not to mention Scientology? Why? I watched that doco "Scientology & Me" and wonder if this isn't a demonstration that what the presenter of the doco said was absolutely correct.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?!

One of the all time greatest novels? Why did she want it banned? I am aghast!

Bill, Len - thank you for providing a most interesting thread!