Posts Made By: Jason Glass

Hi Robert,

If you go with a concrete pad with a flanged steel tube bolted on, your options for using different types of scopes in the future remain open. If you pour a concrete pier up to the full height, you are locked into an SCT, MCT, or refractor setup. When aperture fever regains you in its grip, the bolted pier could later be swapped to a shorter one for a Newtonian rig, or even a tracking dob on an EQ platform could be placed directly on the pad or a short riser.

Just my $.02

Best wishes,
Jason Glass

Hi Serge,

Sorry, but you're wrong about that one. O.B.O. means "Or Best Offer", as it has for decades in newspaper classifieds here in USA.

Best Wishes,
Jason Glass

TO THOSE WHO WOULD RETIRE THE SPACE SHUTTLE FLEET
(continued...)

To those who cite the retired NASA engineer who wrote a letter to the president last year, begging him to ground the fleet and upgrade hardware, consider the following. Would you stop driving your car to work tomorrow because an ex- automotive engineer made broad, sweeping generalizations that your top-of-the-line vehicle is too old to drive to work safely without rebuilding it from the ground up, even though you've changed its oil every 3000 miles, performed regular tune-ups, and it seems to be running fine? How about if your car cost billions of dollars to build, hundreds of millions to repair, tens of millions to operate, and your boss demands that you be at work on time or the whole company will fail and you'll be responsible for putting thousands of good people out of work? I'll bet you'd turn that key in the morning.

Those who lack the vision and desire to explore and discover, and those who won't accept reasonable risks of life and limb for those concepts, should consider the unique abilities of the STS to deploy, retrieve, and service crucial on-orbit military hardware, which is a national necessity. The intelligence gathering satellites alone have spared countless American lives that would be lost on battlefields around the globe, by allowing precision troop movements and weapons system deployments and by allowing our leaders to avoid conflicts caused by misinformation altogether. Should we retire our aircraft carrier fleet because several dozen Naval aircrewmen are killed per year during routine peacetime duty? I think not. We mourn their loss but know the cause is worth the price. Think about our millions of sons and daughters in uniform before you cry out that the fleet must be retired because we can't afford to let another seven souls bravely put their lives on the line to experience their dreams, and ours, while serving us all.

Lots of folks here in America have adopted the attitude that spaceflight is a routine, mundane part of modern life. They fail to understand that space travel is and always will be the most dangerous of endeavors, executed by the most brilliant minds, who understand and accept the inherent risks of their calling. It does and always will yield rewards for all of humanity, tenfold the lives lost by accident.

If NASA deemed the next shuttle ready for flight tomorrow and invited me aboard, I would gleefully don a pressure suit and strap in for the ride of my life. If it were to carry me to my doom, I would fly to the angels singing praise that the Lord gifted humanity with the ability to create those magnificent machines that lift His finest people beyond the wild blue.

Sincerely,
Jason G. Glass

Hi Erik,

What you've described sounds similar to what these guys are doing for top $$:

http://www.pacific-works.com/wavegroup/wavegroup.htm

If you're going to do it, you'd might as well use carbon fiber cloth or honeycomb. It would have a lower modulus of flexure, be lighter, and amount to the same labor.

You'd end up with a kicka$$ tube and huge pride!

Best wishes,
Jason Glass

In the auction world, this is called a "shill" bid. It is most definitely unethical, because it allows the seller to control the minimum selling price, while not paying the auctioneer an appropriate fee for setting a reserve. It also robs legitimate bidders of winning the auction at a bargain price. The seller, in this case, upped the bidding almost $100. The whole scheme defeats the purpose of an auction, from the buyer's point of view.

Best wishes,
Jason Glass