Wolverine

Well they probably just didn't have the weight luxury to add in a back-up of some sort. Genesis also went into a death tumble on it's way down so the fact that it spiralled out of control also increased the likelihood of damage on impact. It is a mighty shame. 3 years or work just down the drain so it would seem. I think it's highly unlikely that they'll be able to recover any uncontaminated specimens considering that the craft was split in two on impact. It was a daring plot to try and catch it mid-air to start off with, and as is common in the realms of space travel, setbacks will occur. I think that all is not lost as they would have gained a better understanding of the logistical errors during this mission that will lead to further safeguards in future missions. The Wolverine

Ok will do thnx, tho it's quite a lot of info to filter thru. The Wolverine

Actually I meant neutrino, I wasn't aware that it had been detected. So how does one go about detecting a massless, chargeless particle then? Anyhow it was meant more to be an example of a postulation yet to be proven, take otherwise the existence of strings if that suits you better. My point was the existence of a lot of cosmological entities are pure postulation in theirr very nature to start off with. The Wolverine

How is it anymore science fiction than the concept of a neutrino? It's all postulations. The Wolverine

was that the explosion in Siberia that's supposed to have changed the tilt of the Earth by a measurable degree as well? Or have I got the completely wrong end of the stick? As for travelling to Alpha Centauri, the discovery of a worm hole would facilitate such travel wouldn't it? The Wolverine

Get going on Navier-Stokes, you solve that in closed form and I can guarentee you that you'll be a legend No seriously, model rocketry as already stated is a very good way to get into the business of aerodynamics, control, propulsion etc. Water rockets are generally a gr8 place to start off. The Wolverine

Yea our program is an automatic Masters if you complete the 5 years....3 years Bachelors + 2 years Masters. Anyhow good luck to all those doing exams. I've got my last two next week. So far it's not gone as well as I had hoped, but that's nearly always the case when I do exams The Wolverine

It's good. It's a mix of a lot of different engineering disciplines and my course is also relatively strong in practicals so you see a lot of the theory directly in action. I've actually got my semester exams starting next week. Got exams in Airplane Performance/Gas Turbines (one paper), Aircraft Stress Analysis, Electricity and Magnetism, Vibrations of Aerospace Structures, History of Technology and Materials and Manufacturing. Our last semester we had Aerodynamics, Space Engineering and Technology, Aircraft Structural Analysis, Thermodynamics, and Differential Equations. So you can see the areas covered are quite diverse. It's a good grounding in engineering practices. As I said we do a lot of practical work too like Windtunnel experiments, and structural stress analysis experiments. We had two major projects this year. The first one was related to the design of aircraft controls for a given aircraft. We had to design the control system from scratch and weight up for instance the use of rods or cable/pulley systems. Then we had to focus on a structural component of the system, like a rocker and develop it through from a concept to an end design. Our second project was a space task. We had to develop software to explore where a satellite can be controlled by only measuring two geometric measurement angles. Anyhow that's a bit a of taste of the kind of things that we do. The best thing we've done this year is probably the zero-G flight. That was bloody awesome The Wolverine

Second year, aerospace engineering student here The Wolverine