NASA Spends $325 Million On 'Bug Hitting Semi Windshield' Test To 'Save Earth'

Congrats to NASA - they successfully carried out anexpetiment in which they hit a football stadium-sized asteroid traveling 14,000 mph with a vending machine-sized spacecraft 'in the ‘world’s first planetary defense test.’

It was pretty much like a bug hitting a semi truck's windshield.

NASA will spend the next few weeks trying to determine if the impact caused any shift in the asteroids trajectory.

(When a bug hits the windshield of a semi, does the bug alter the truck's trajectory / heading? THIS observation cost nothing - NASA's cost us, in the middle of massive inflation - $325 million.)

:popcorn:



Catch me rooting for the asteroid at this point....
 
I say we let Harry and the boys take care of this.

Hell, they saved us last time...

armageddon-crew.jpg
 
That's total BS.

Hardware store bolts are soft grade 2 to 5.

Automotive bolts are hardened grade 6 to 8.

Commercial airline bolts are grade 8+, drilled for SS safety wires to secure them, stamped certified & also cost a hundred + dollars each & they are private companies.

Nasa rocket bolts are pushed beyond aircraft bolts to their extreme limits on launch & extreme cold of space. Every piece of the rocket must be designed as light & strong as possible because the best we can achieve is 4% payload to rocket weight ratio. So they must be tested & certified to those extreme limits. Do you want to see a $325 million rocket fail because of a cheap bolt?

I never saw an aircraft bolt at a hardware store!
View attachment 702098

So you're right but the guy who worked at a factory making the bolts is wrong. Gotcha.
 
Not quite. Those 300 dollar bolts have also gone through rigorous testing and documentation to ensure a higher success rate, what they call sigma quality. QC for something like a space mission must approach 100% quality control to all but eliminate failures due to material quality because if something goes wrong, there is no getting out there to fix it.

And that's where all the money goes, pushing paperwork and testing for something they know quite well is going to work.
 
trump added 7 trillion to the debt...more than half of that BEFORE covid hit.

And that was with a GOP Congress.

Just stop
 
So you're right but the guy who worked at a factory making the bolts is wrong. Gotcha.
My family works on aircraft & rockets. I know you're full of shit.

96% of the rocket's max take-off weight is fuel, structure & engines. There is absolutely no room for overbuilding any part to excess tolerance. They must be made of the strongest materials to weight ratio that exist. Because just 4% of max weight is available for crew & cargo, or it will never reach orbit.

There ain't no margin room for heavy weak hardware store bolts on a rocket.

Even trucks & passenger vehicles don't use soft, weak, low grade hardware store bolts. Semi-Trucks have a lot of payload margin up to 200% of their empty weight & can get by with grade 5 bolts. Maybe grade 3 hardware store bolts on some trucks plastic & rubber items.

Grade 2 & 3 hardware store bolts are only suitable for fastening wood, plastic & rubber on homes, barns, fences, decks, etc.
 
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My family works on aircraft & rockets. I know you're full of shit.

96% of the rocket's max take-off weight is fuel, structure & engines. There is absolutely no room for overbuilding any part to excess tolerance. They must be made of the strongest materials to weight ratio that exist. Because just 4% of max weight is available for crew & cargo, or it will never reach orbit.

There ain't no margin room for heavy weak hardware store bolts on a rocket.

Even trucks & passenger vehicles don't use soft, weak, low grade hardware store bolts. Semi-Trucks have a lot of payload margin up to 200% of their empty weight & can get by with grade 5 bolts. Maybe grade 3 hardware store bolts on some trucks plastic & rubber items.

Grade 2 & 3 hardware store bolts are only suitable for homes, barns, fences, decks, etc.
Ray is a complete idiot.
He makes up stories like this all the time....

Unbelievable that anyone would think Loews hardware is used in aircraft or rockets
 
IF the asteroid's trajectory was altered, it was changed by inches at most.
If impacted far enough away (Dimorphos was 6.8 million miles away) that is all that's needed to move an asteroid out of a collision course with Earth.
 
If impacted far enough away (Dimorphos was 6.8 million miles away) that is all that's needed to move an asteroid out of a collision course with Earth.
This is the right answer. The scales here are hard for people to comprehend.
 
My family works on aircraft & rockets. I know you're full of shit.

96% of the rocket's max take-off weight is fuel, structure & engines. There is absolutely no room for overbuilding any part to excess tolerance. They must be made of the strongest materials to weight ratio that exist. Because just 4% of max weight is available for crew & cargo, or it will never reach orbit.

There ain't no margin room for heavy weak hardware store bolts on a rocket.

Even trucks & passenger vehicles don't use soft, weak, low grade hardware store bolts. Semi-Trucks have a lot of payload margin up to 200% of their empty weight & can get by with grade 5 bolts. Maybe grade 3 hardware store bolts on some trucks plastic & rubber items.

Grade 2 & 3 hardware store bolts are only suitable for fastening wood, plastic & rubber on homes, barns, fences, decks, etc.

So it's a different hardening process. Not a big deal. And trust me, I've taken many loads of bolts to heat treating places. In fact we have dozens of heat treating places in our area, but they all do different kinds of treating. One company that supplies many of the bolts to auto and truck manufacturing sends their bolts out all the way to Dayton Ohio which is the other end of the state because they're the only heat treating place in Ohio that meets their grade quality.
 
And that's where all the money goes, pushing paperwork and testing for something they know quite well is going to work.
Wrong! The money goes to lawyers, insurance & politicians. The paperwork shows who gets blamed & pays for a project failure.

Take commercial airlines, they demand mechanics allow parts go beyond design specs all the way to failure, cheap & fast repairs. The FAA rates airlines for on-time performance, not safety. To cover their corporate profits the FAA & airlines made their mechanics mandated safety inspectors & protected whistle blowers. So if that plane falls out of the sky killing everyone, all the paperwork leads back to the mechanic who signed off on the paperwork.

If a mechanic is called to the cockpit to change a lightbulb of a plane preparing to load passengers & sees a dozen problems beyond airworthy specs & his comfort zone on his way there and decides to hold or ground the flight to repair, all hell will break loose & he will be fired! Not all the other mechanics who signed off or had blinders on walking past the aircraft for months.

I have heard a crew chief who initiated the firing of a mechanic, complain under oath in court "if the mechanic did not trip over a wing that fell off the plane on his way to change the lightbulb, then he shouldn't have looked at the bald tires, leaking fluids or loose rivets on his way there" or grounded the flight harming their on-time rating. There were 12 glaring issues with the aircraft & the mechanic was correct on 11 of them being beyond airworthy specs as he walked by the aircraft, yet he is still fired.
 
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Wrong! The money goes to lawyers, insurance & politicians. The paperwork shows who gets blamed & pays for a project failure.

Take commercial airlines, they demand mechanics allow parts go beyond design specs all the way to failure, cheap & fast repairs. The FAA rates airlines for on-time performance, not safety. To cover their corporate profits the FAA & airlines made their mechanics mandated safety inspectors & protected whistle blowers. So if that plane falls out of the sky killing everyone, all the paperwork leads back to the mechanic who signed off on the paperwork.

If a mechanic is called to the cockpit to change a lightbulb of a plane preparing to load passengers & sees a dozen problems beyond airworthy specs & his comfort zone on his way there and decides to hold or ground the flight to repair, all hell will break loose & he will be fired! Not all the other mechanics who signed off or had blinders on walking past the aircraft for months.

I have heard a crew chief who initiated the firing of a mechanic, complain under oath in court "if the mechanic did not trip over a wing that fell off the plane on his way to change the lightbulb, then he shouldn't have looked at the bald tires, leaking fluids or loose rivets on his way there or grounded the flight harming their on-time rating. There were 12 glaring issues with the aircraft & the mechanic was correct on 11 of them being beyond airworthy specs as he walked by the aircraft, yet he is still fired.



No, he won't. I have many friends who work for airlines, hell a good friend owns an airliner servicing company. If a mechanic DOESN'T report an airworthiness issue he WILL get fired.

Period.

Where do you come up with this bullshit.
 
Congrats to NASA - they successfully carried out anexpetiment in which they hit a football stadium-sized asteroid traveling 14,000 mph with a vending machine-sized spacecraft 'in the ‘world’s first planetary defense test.’

It was pretty much like a bug hitting a semi truck's windshield.

NASA will spend the next few weeks trying to determine if the impact caused any shift in the asteroids trajectory.

(When a bug hits the windshield of a semi, does the bug alter the truck's trajectory / heading? THIS observation cost nothing - NASA's cost us, in the middle of massive inflation - $325 million.)

:popcorn:


That was a complete joke. Disgusting waste of our tax dollars.
 
My point is that hardening isn't where all the money goes since hardening them to a higher quality isn't that much more expensive than your standard hardening. You don't need super hard bolts or screws for a the microwave oven in the thing or to hold cabinet doors on. Like that guy told me it's unnecessary testing and paperwork where all the money is at.
Your point was bullshit.

You were claiming that a bolt bought in Lowes was no different than that used in aircraft or NASA
 
Gee if only were were to take a tractor trailer traveling with no course correction, accelerate it up to 14,000 miles per hour then hit the windshield with a bb size pellet from 7 million miles away and then monitor it while it travels to see if there were any minute change in speed or direction.

We can do that here on Earth without wasting time and money sending spacecraft to the asteroid belt.

WW
 

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