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[AZ-Observing] Re: Mercury

From: Jeff Hopkins <phxjeff@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 10:07:45 -0700

At 07:28 -0700 7/26/04, Workman, Brian (AZ76) wrote:
>
>>  CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA is about to embark on its hottest
>>  mission ever, to Mercury. The Messenger spacecraft, to be launched
>>  next week, will be blasted by up to 700-degree heat as it orbits the
>>  tiny planet closest to the sun - so close that it would be as though
>>  11 suns were beating down on Earth.
>
>OK this is a bit pedantic, but one of my pet peeves is seeing junk like this
>in an official press release. It should say "700-degree _temperatures_".
>Heat is energy and as such is measured in calories or Joules, and even that
>is not very useful. The thermal engineers who designed and analyzed the
>Messenger spacecraft undoubtedly dealt in "heat flow" (which is really
>power)in units of Watts (or btu/hr but nobody uses btu/hr).
>
>The 700 degree number is virtually meaningless and is an artifact of the
>design of the heat shield. The instruments themselves will be maintained
>under 100 degrees I'm sure. The very same spacecraft could have been
>designed so that the heat shield was at 100 degrees or 1000 degrees, it is
>just a matter of how that heat is routed and dissipated to protect the
>instruments.
>
>The folks at NASA who write this stuff ought to know better. Writing like
>this misleads the public and fosters erroneous concepts.
>
>Sorry for ranting but I feel much better now.

The release was quoted from CNN. While I agree 700 degree heat is not 
correct, it does not both me.  As an engineer/physicist I get more 
upset when people talk about their 650 mHz computer with 512 mb or 
RAM. A 650 millihertz computer is pretty slow and I don't think it's 
possible to have 512 millibits of RAM. Usually it's in MB (megabytes) 
of RAM and MHz (megahetrz) for clock speed.

I agree NASA should know better, but them I see so much garbage in 
the news from people who pretend to know what they are talking about.

Jeff
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References:

[AZ-Observing] Re: Mercury
From: Workman, Brian (AZ76)

[AZ-Observing] Re: Mercury

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