January 2003 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Re: Another way
by RStmarie＠aol.com 04 Jan '03

04 Jan '03

I love this bowling ball drop idea! Brent the little chute you saw on the Arizona web site may be a hand held drogue chute. I'll have to go look. Lots of jumpers prefer it for the near instantaneous deployment of the main, and fewer malfunctions, when compared to the older "rip cord" type that is deployed with an internal spring propelled drogue packed in the back of the pack on top of the main chute. Patrick, set me straight on that, you would know. I know all base jumpers (people who jump off towers, bridges, large rocks) all use the hand deployed drogue. I'm sure you can drop stuff. Just don't hit anyone. The late Gene Schumacher was an expert in meteor caused craters and studied it for the nuclear testing program (ie. big boom make big hole). I'm sure the USGS has excellent information on how far into the ground your bowling ball would go! Bob St. Marie

2 1

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Bowling balls and the salt Flats
by RStmarie＠aol.com 04 Jan '03

04 Jan '03

I remember working at a drop site where they did an October pumkin drop. The pumkins have about the same density and drag as a human body in jump gear. That allowed you to pass the pumkin around for a few before pulling the rip cord and letting the jack'o'lantern smash into the ground.

1 0

Another way
by Patrick Wiggins 04 Jan '03

04 Jan '03

Well, here's another way to get the bowling balls to altitude... http://www.ahpra.org/BBLmain.htm Patrick :-)

3 3

RE: [Utah-astronomy] Bowling balls and the salt Flats
by David Dunn 03 Jan '03

03 Jan '03

It depends on what/who you hit. They do it all the time with F-16s. -----Original Message----- From: Grahn Family [mailto:bsi@xmission.com] Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 11:25 AM To: utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Bowling balls and the salt Flats >And, being the crazies some of us are we thought, "Why not find out?" "Let's >fly over the Salt Flats, drop a bowling ball and, provided we can find it, see >how far it goes into the salt." Patrick, Is it really lawful to drop things out of airplanes? Jo _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy

8 10

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Bowling balls and the salt Flats
by Grahn Family 03 Jan '03

03 Jan '03

At 03:06 PM 1/3/2003 -0700, you wrote: >On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Grahn Family wrote: >> Is it really lawful to drop things out of airplanes? > >Some (possibly crazy) guys in Arizona have it down to a fine art: > > http://www.skydivingstunts.com/Pages/skydriving.html > http://www.brentfinley.net/photo1.htm > >Chris Absolutely Amazing! Thanks for the links and the response from Ken. I just figured that it ~HAD~ to be illegal to do anything that had the potential "fun quotient" that dropping things out of an airplane had. Now I think we need to come up with an array of differently sized objects, to simulate the realistic range of meteors. I've got a few Christmas presents that might qualify :) Jo

1 0

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Bowling balls and the salt Flats
by Grahn Family 03 Jan '03

03 Jan '03

>And, being the crazies some of us are we thought, "Why not find out?" "Let's >fly over the Salt Flats, drop a bowling ball and, provided we can find it, see >how far it goes into the salt." Patrick, Is it really lawful to drop things out of airplanes? Jo

5 4

RE: [Utah-astronomy] Bowling balls and the salt Flats
by Grahn Family 03 Jan '03

03 Jan '03

At 01:06 PM 1/3/2003 -0700, you wrote: >Just don't try dropping bowling balls from F-16s ;-) > >-- Dan Hanks > >On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, David Dunn wrote: > >> It depends on what/who you hit. They do it all the time with F-16s. > And all this time I thought they were trying to drop the F-16's out of the sky... :) Jo

1 0

Bowling balls and the salt Flats
by Patrick Wiggins 03 Jan '03

03 Jan '03

Some time ago Kim Hyatt had the idea to look for meteorites on (or would that be "in") the Salt Flats. That led some to wonder how deeply a fleshly fallen space rock would bury itself in the salt. And, being the crazies some of us are we thought, "Why not find out?" "Let's fly over the Salt Flats, drop a bowling ball and, provided we can find it, see how far it goes into the salt." So now we're doing a bit of number crunching to find out how high a bowling ball would have to be dropped from in order to have it impact at terminal velocity. Anyone out there care to give that problem a shot and report back here? How far would a bowling ball have to fall to reach the ground at terminal and what is terminal velocity for a bowling ball? The one answer we have so far says: "Terminal velocity is about 117 meters/sec. The bowling ball will reach 99.99% of terminal velocity at 59 seconds, after falling about 5922 meters." Cheers! Patrick

2 1

[Fwd: [Guests] (no subject)]
by bill biesele 02 Jan '03

02 Jan '03

6 6

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Re: HP building
by Grahn Family 01 Jan '03

01 Jan '03

Patrick, The original post was from Bill Biesele, forwarding a message from the Astronomical Society of Nevada, protesting the plans of the University of Nevada at Reno to tear down the existing planetarium before a new one has been planned for. They would like assistance in protesting this move. The message is as follows: Dear Members & Guests, As I am sure most of you know by now the president of UNR, John Lilley, has decided to close the planetarium and in it's place put a parking lot in June of 2003. A few months ago the planned closing date was in 3 to 4 years. Now it has been moved up to only a few months from now. The ASN has <http://www.astronomynv.org> publicly stated our position on closing the planetarium BEFORE a new science center has been built. In press releases UNR is sending out on the subject they state that a new science center is already in the works and that the planetarium has been losing money over the past 3 years. Both of these statements are debatable. The Great Basin Exploration Center is still just a dream at this point. Site selection has yet to be completed. And while the planetarium has lost money in the past, reports are that under new management, it has actually turned a comfortable profit. The December 26th issue of the Reno News & Review has put out a story on the subject. I have included a link in this mailing to share. There are other articles out there that I will try to send out as I get them. Many of us who are working on this issue feel that the university wants to close the planetarium before anybody knows that it happened. There is also the opinion that UNR believes that the public doesn't really care all that much if the planetarium closes or not. It is our hope that through public awareness, the community can help preserve this treasure as long as possible or until a suitable replacement has been built. I will be sending out a list of UNR officers, regents and community leaders to everybody. This is information that should be passed around to everybody. If you have any questions, feel free to email me and I will see what I can do to help. Timothy Kendziorski Webmaster Astronomical Society of Nevada At 02:27 PM 1/1/2003 -0700, you wrote: >Hi, > >I guess I missed the post that started this thread, but if the original question >was about the Hansen planetarium building, I don't think it can be torn down as >it is on a national list of historic sites. > >

1 0