Yeah, realizing that they need all of that water just to prevent the noise generated by a rocket launch from destroying the spacecraft itself gives one a sense of perspective.

The old system, in use during the shuttle era, was less visually impressive.

That is to say, I'm sure it was impressive if you happened to be standing on the launch platform as these folks were, but it's not as impressive to look at from a distance as a system that generates a column of water almost as large in both height and width as Hustler's *****.






This is how much of a nerd I am: my favorite part of watching a launch is seeing all of those service gantries retract from the rocket in perfect synchronization at the exact instant that vertical acceleration occurs.

 

I've been on some of those launch pads with a customer of mine when he was doing some remediation. These slopes around the pad itself are covered in giant concrete slabs. The work he was doing was putting anchors down into the ground and tying the slabs down because the launches were blowing the concrete slabs away. It's been a few years but I will see if I can find the pictures.

 

Is that salt water or fresh water?

 

They use fresh water taken from the municipal supply. Dumping large quantities of salt water onto space ships full of delicate things is a bad idea.


Other tidbits:


"We replaced six 48-inch valves that had reached the end of their service life," said NASA test director Steve Payne.

The system includes a 290-foot-high water tank filled with 300,000 gallons of water, and it empties in 41 seconds during a launch.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/shuttle/f_watertest.html



48 in valves. Dios mio...

 

The fact that the explosive thrust from the rockets isn't whats damaging the shuttle's wings, but just the noise it makes is mind bottling.

 

 

Yup.

 

ID X Injector Info, nifty.

 

Launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. Notice the water pipes and the giant channel for the rocket exhaust and the eroded special bricks. They are anchoring in the concrete slabs adjacent to the blast Channel because the slabs were taking flight previously. You can see the water tower for this launch pad in one of the pictures.

 

55 gallon drum of cell phones.

 

 

55 gallon drum of sex lube:





Enough for almost two Miata Club meets.

 

 

Needs more amperage!

8000a almost turning a 4"x1" piece of titaninum into liquid.

 

Holy ****, dude.

Stuff like that is what gives me nightmares.

 

That just ain't right.

I mean, a large part of my job is making sure that power levels of that magnitude DON'T turn metal into a liquid. (Or plasma. Or exotic particles and X-rays.) There's a lot of paperwork I have to file with the FCC, the FAA, the Dept of Homeland Security, OSHA, the insurance company, Sears Tower building management, the Chicago Fire Dept, the Chicago Police Dept, Vertical Bridge, and corporate risk management when that happens.

And I hate paperwork.

 

Today, while rummaging through a storage cabinet at work, I came upon a stack of Z80 CPUs, still in original packaging.

I'd have given my left nut for one of these back when they were new-hotness. Now I'm trying to figure out whether I need to keep one of them as a spare when I toss the rest into the bin.

 

You would be absolutely amazed at the conditions electrical and mechanical equipment can operate in.

3 years old:


I tend not to buy electrical tape, for obvious reasons.

 

I would gladly take a couple


I like that J-box connection erat.

 

Holy trees with dicks. What was the cause?