As the father of a 23-year-old (who is going to Georgetown for his Master's in math in a few months), a kid who could handle engineering, science, or finance as he chose, here's the thinking: Finance is very attractive in terms of income, but also morally bankrupt. Engineering is losing respect and stature because the word is that making things is on the way out, to the developing countries. It's losing respect like teaching is and it's associated with social misfits.
I'm not commenting on whether any of that is true, but those are the perceptions. Most of his friends are similarly talented and superior students -- it's a widespread impression on their part. And we've done little, as a country, to change them.
(The kid majored in economics with a minor in math. He's now an economics research assistant for a large think tank that does a lot of work in health care, which is now his specialty.)
You got Engineers that do things and get their hands dirty?
Not our Engineers. They locked in a black box and toot plans that don't work.
They got all kinds of tools but never picked one up. By this I mean education tools but never had to apply them. Now they need a 5 year apprenticeship before they get a title, here. Good idea but still never with dirty hands.
-------------------
Unless it's as simple as, as others have noted, they've been dumbing-down the schools so bad that the "Engineers" can't even follow a print? I currently sit in a shop where there are a couple of Real Machinists, and I've seen them cut parts to dead nuts. There's a guy out there right now, making a skew cut by turning the "X" drive on, and doing "Y" by hand, and coming out within .030".
If you have ever been involved in the production of a complex product over any length of time you would understand that maintaining production is a constant battle as components become obsolete, vendors are bought out, key people leave etc. The knowledge needed to build a complex product is not completely contained on any one set of drawings. The truth is it is scattered in a hundred thousand different places among the vendors and employees of vendors. To try to keep it together long enough for a manufacturing run, many companies have a group called sustaining engineering. They deal with individual problems that arise when, for example, an employee at vendor A leaves and he was the only one who really knew how to align the optics in subassembly B and his replacements are failing miserably.
The expense to re-create all the impossible-to-find obsolete components in a Saturn V would be a ridiculous waste.
(By the way, regarding your last comment, machining something to a tolerance of 0.030" is not much to brag about, unless it is something really, really big. )
Well, it wouldn't have to be "from scratch," unless the liberal/NIMBY class has successfully burned all the books that have been produced in the interim.
You wouldn't want to duplicate a Saturn anyway. The real miracle of the old heavy lifter's was that any of them got off the pad at all. At least in one piece. The Shuttle isn't that much different. People are going to look what we do today in 100 years in disbelief.
That Kennedy guy was a Democrat. We landed on the Moon in 1969 Rich. Al Gore was frequently refered to as the "Vice President from NASA". Do try and keep up....
If you ever learn to check your facts, Rich, you'll be a powerhouse. For now, though, you've just popped off with another mindless, self-invented right-wing myth:
Yeah, it would. It also would be meaningless, since people aren't paid in 1962 dollars, they aren't taxed in 1962 dollars, and they can't buy a loaf of bread in 1962 dollars. The graph shows what we've paid out in terms of actual purchasing power over the years.
If you've been doing a Rip van Winkle, we've had a lot of inflation along the way.
The first stage isn't all that exotic, It's just kerosene and LOX. Just LOTS of brute force in a squeeze tube!
But stage 2 and 3 were something else indeed - cryogenics!
THAT'S what took us to the moon.
Not bad for slide rules, you know?
(* reduced from Wiki)
*Stage 1 was 138 feet tall and 33 feet in diameter, and provided over 7,600,000 lbf of thrust to get the rocket through the first 200,000 feet.
*It had a dry weight of about 288,000 pounds and fully fueled at launch had a total weight of 5,000,000 pounds. The five F-1 engines were arranged in a cross pattern. The center engine was fixed, while the four outer engines could be hydraulically turned ("gimballed") to control the rocket.
*Stage 2it had five J-2 engines in a similar arrangement to the S-IC, also using the outer engines for control. The S-II was 81 feet 7 inches tall with a diameter of 33 feet, identical to the S-IC, and thus was the largest cryogenic stage until the launch of the STS. The S-II had a dry weight of about 80,000 pounds and fully fueled, weighed 1,060,000 pounds. The second stage accelerated the Saturn V through the upper atmosphere with 1,100,000 lbf of thrust (in vacuum).
*When loaded, significantly more than 90 percent of the mass of the stage was propellant; however, the ultra-lightweight design had led to two failures in structural testing. Instead of having an intertank structure to separate the two fuel tanks as was done in the S-IC, the S-II used a common bulkhead that was constructed from both the top of the LOX tank and bottom of the LH2 tank. It consisted of two aluminum sheets separated by a honeycomb structure made of phenolic resin. This bulkhead had to insulate against the 70 °C (158 °F) temperature difference between the two tanks. The use of a common bulkhead saved
7,900 lb.
*Stage 3 had one J-2 engine and used the same fuel as the S-II. The S-IVB used a common bulkhead to insulate the two tanks. It was 58 feet 7 inches tall with a diameter of 21 feet 8 inches and was also designed with high mass efficiency, though not quite as aggressively as the S-II. The S-IVB had a dry weight of about 25,000 pounds and, fully fueled, weighed about 262,000 pounds .
*The S-IVB-500 model used on the Saturn V differed from the S-IVB-200 used as the second stage of the Saturn IB, in that the engine was restartable once per mission. This was necessary as the stage would be used twice during a lunar mission: first in a 2.5 min burn for the orbit insertion after second stage cutoff, and later for the trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn, lasting about 6 min.
*The three-stage Saturn V had a peak thrust of at least 7,650,000 pounds-force (SA-510 and subsequent) and a lift capacity of 118,000 kg to LEO. The SA-510 mission (Apollo 15) had a liftoff thrust of 7,823,000 pounds-force. The SA-513 mission (Skylab) had slightly greater liftoff thrust of 7,891,000 pounds-force.
*No other operational launch vehicle has ever surpassed the Saturn V in height, weight, or payload.
Well they are not paid in 2006 dollars either. And that is what the chart uses. So the chart is useless unless you want to know what was paid out in 2006. You can not even tell if the actual dollar amounts increased or stayed the same. So what happened? Did the actual dollar amounts go up, but not as fast as inflation? Or did the actual dollar amounts stay the same? Or was it some of both?
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.