Theodore's World

Fantastic video Chrissie, I can only compare it to being offshore 30 miles in a 16ft. boat, makes you pretty humble and very insignificant in the larger scheme of things. That vacuum chamber is reminiscent of my days working around nuclear equipment inside an inert atmosphere of Argon or being inside the reactor containment vessel airlock. We live in such a narrow range of Oxygen that even a slight drop in the atmospheric percentage will knock you out, you go unconscious and you'll never know what bit you. It brought back a flood of memories about Gary Powers too. Awesome!!!!

This is what obama doesn't want to think about is the American ingenuity and innovation. In 1946, the Army needed a way to calculate Artillery Tables for different Weapons in all kinds of conditions, to improve accuracy. A computer was needed. Research on the first computer started during World War 2, in 1943 and was finally completed in 1946. That year they filed a patent for the ENIAC computer.

Eniac contained: 17,500 Vacuum Tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 12,000 relays, and 5,000 manual switches, it weighed 30 Tons, took up 1800 square feet, and consumed 160,000 watts of power. It was a single tasking computer and the fastest computer at the time. Ooops forgot one thing most important, 5 Million solder joints.

Reprogramming for another function took months using punch cards and a special typewriter to punch the cards, one mistake in a punch card and it wouldn't work.

That is why the U-2 and SR-71 were the last planes designed using a Slide Rule. Lockheed found that a roomful of Engineers with their 'Calculators' were more efficient than trying to reprogram ENIAC.

From that 30 ton computer we have laptops that are so fast the ENIAC would be comparable to a Corvette and a horse and buggy. In 1954 the first Transistor was invented speeding thing up and consuming a whole lot less power. This was all do to American Engineering.

Obama calls us arrogant and his people say the American system of free enterprise is a lie:

The Japanese came out with transistor radios, which when placed on the dash board of your car in the summer time changed stations all by itself, the Americans came out with Sound Systems, the Russians were the first to put a man into orbit around the World, The Americans put the first Man on the moon and safely back again. You're damned right we are arrogant ...WE EARNED IT.

Looking at this, we have got to fight to get our country back and keep it, safe and free from the commie, liberal, progressive bastards who are trying to destroy it. These people haven't a clue about what they are talking about and they are destroying the country in the process.

I enjoyed that video. Every bit of James May's awe at this flight would be exactly what I would feel. What America has accomplished in science is abslutely amazing.

Interesting comments Jack and Mark.

Those are great images and that's a real surenuff high.

Maybe I should qualify what I meant. Remember Payne Stewart? He perished from Hypoxia. Oxygen levels are 20.9% in normal atmospheres at sea level. A common misconception of the change in external environment with increased altitude is that there is decreased oxygen. This is not correct, as the concentration of oxygen at sea level is about 21% and stays relatively unchanged until over 50,000 feet, the pilot of the U2 so much as said that. What is really happening is that the atmospheric pressure is decreasing and subsequently the amount of oxygen available in a single breath of air is significantly less. At sea level the barometric pressure averages 760 mmHg while at 12,000 feet it is only 483 mmHg. This decrease in total atmospheric pressure means that there are about 40% (483/760=63.5%) fewer oxygen molecules per breath at this altitude compared to sea level. My experience was two very short episodes of unconsciousness from oxygen displacement in an inerted area. Working as two man teams roped together when entering a containment area, one man stays outside the zone to be entered while the other enters to verify conditions, sometimes you just drop and your buddy drags you out, having a big buddy helps when it's you down, not so when he is down:) We all carried MSA (Mine Safety Appliances) oxygen analyzers, as a heavy smoker my threshold at the time was just below 17% Oxygen and lights out, that's why the buddy system is used. Your buddy or you can save each other when you move into an unsecured area. It was no different in the gas field, I still carried an MSA meter for Methane, Propane and Hydrogen Sulfide. Innocuous things like nitrogen purging, transferring liquid nitrogen, carbon dioxide injection, even propane vapors will suffocate you.

Jack, I remember Gary Powers. Thanksk for
sharing about working around nuclear equipment.
Thanks too for the comment you did further down
about oxygen levels too.
I thought it was really interesting and also
what the pilot said in the video. I never knew
any of that before. Thank you Jack.

Mark, thanks for that about the U-2 and SR-71.
You are so right too, "This is what obama doesn't want to think about is the American ingenuity and innovation"....and like you said we have got
to take our country back.

Tom, I am glad you liked it.
I loved what he said at the end of his
flight. That feeling of awe and realizing
how precisous freedom is and the other
things he spoke of.

Ron, I agree, amazing to be at 70,000 ft.

A moment of perspective, That SR71 was on the drawing boards when they took the space program away from the Air Force and gave it to NASA. The plane first flew more than a yeat before Kennedy was killed. The biggest computer used in its design and manufacture would have problems handling the functions of a digital watch,
Before the next election that plane's design will be fluing for overForty-eight years. That plane is closer to the begining of WWI than it is to us.