Heya, I’m back. There was so much work the last months, I couldn’t manage to keep the blog running but now all work is done and I’m happy to continue writing about aerospace engineering, my life and stuff I’m interested in. Â Many things have changed, our dog Shadow died in January but we decided to buy a new dog as fast as possible because life without a dog is so boring and sad. We’ve got our new Entlebucher Swiss Mountain Dog for 4 days now and we have such a great time with him.
“There was something in the air in the early years of commercial aviation. Perhaps more excitement, perhaps more glamorous stewardesses… in any case, it’s worth savoring once again.” Get more of those wonderful images of gorgeous flight attendants at DarkRoastedBlend.
I’m sorry but I can’t keep up my steady stream of blogposts as you already may have noticed. There’s so much to learn and practice and hear and read, I’m so damn busy at the moment but I hope it’s gonna get better in a few weeks when the all the calculations for the multi disc clutch are made.However there’s something delightful I want you to know: DesignMeltDown listed me today in the new article about beautiful blogs. This means a lot to me because I myself use DesignMeltDown so often to search for inspiring websites.Â
A friend of mine, Tim, sent me the link to this interesting video today. I think most of you already roughly knew how it works when you’re not on earth and you must go to the bathroom, I mean, that can happen to everybody, doesn’t it ? What I didn’t know was that some falling stars might actually be frozen poo. Pretty romantic. By the way, I’m a little bit disappionted by the English language. In Germany we’ve got that wonderful sounding name “Sternschnuppe”, in English it’s just an awkward “falling star”.
Pets die, humans die, airplanes die as well. Thinking about that too lang makes me sad so let’s have a look at something very beautiful, though also dealing with some kind of death. Flickr photo artist “dimsumranch” went to an airplane graveyard and made some really amazing pictures.
Our lecturer of drafting systems showed that video to us during a lecture once. I think he wanted to demonstrate that well designed wing profiles are useful, but not necessary to let something fly. It’s Monday, and I bet some folks have to get cheered up a bit like me. The third semester is said to be the most demanding one. We got lots of homework and exercises each weak and we have to construct and calculate a multi disc clutch although we hardly have any clue how to do that. Today I’m feeling like I am standing right at the foot of a huge montain and I got no idea how I should reach the top.
“Now I hike myself into my chair by using the grab, duck, swoop and plop method. That is, I grab the hand-hold at the top of the front windshield to steady myself then duck my head to clear the overhead panel and swoop my leg across the seat then finally plop my backside onto the cushion. Some pilots with shorter legs employ the step, grab, duck and flop method which starts with a step up onto the seat cushion. I’m too tall for that and would probably jam my head into the vee between the windshield and dash panel and FO Paula would have to call the mechanic to come lever me out. By-the-way, I’ve never yet seen a pilot stumble while getting in and out of the seats during flight and so fall onto the controls but when it happens it won’t be pretty. I always remind passengers that when the flight attendant recommends keeping your seat belt on in flight, even during smooth weather, it’s a good idea. Occasionally I have seen a pilot open a small gash on their forehead from failing to adequately complete the duck! portion of the sit-down drill.”
Besides, there are further interesting blogposts and the blog is updated regularly. It’s truly a MUST for every aeronautic enthusiast to bookmark the website.
Paul Falstad has written lots of educational java applets which you can see and use on his website. You should be able to view them with any Java-capable browser. They are all very easy to control and help a lot to understand complicated facts and issues. The 2d and 3d vector field animation for example made me understand how that all works for the first time. Thank you Paul.
That’s an awesome video of a pilot’s 3 day trip from Boston to Paris and again back to Boston. It really makes me feel like I’m studying the absolutely right thing. Kent Wien, the creator of this video wrote on youtube:
“I made it in September of ‘04. The Vertigo song had come out the day before I went on this three day trip and I thought it would be fun to make up a ‘daddy goes to work’ video for my daughter. I certainly didn’t think it would be seen by so many people or I would have reshot the underwear scene. This video in a higher resolution along with some of the other flying videos I’ve done on my personal site. See my profile for the address if you want.”
Click here to get to his website. And you have to visit his blog. Kent is an interesting man with a gorgeous job he loves AND he’s into apple stuff. I wanna be like that in 20 years, too =)
The blog has now been only for some 13 days and as far as I can estimate, it’s a success. It’s fun and interesting to blog, I learn so much new stuff and other people like my blog too. Like the guys from TheBestDesign.com who listed me on their website which brought 500 visitors to my blog the last days. Thank you ! However, no one left me a comment yet. So I’m gonna make you guys an offer, the first one leaving a comment here on my blog gets a permanent link to his website in the linklist on the right side, just below Whalesalad.
Let’s get to a very personal issue. Next year in October I have to do an internship for about 20 weeks in an aerospace company. I’d love to do that abroad. I’ve already asked some companies in the United States but none of them offer internhsips. So if anybody knows of a good aerospace company who could offer me an internship for about half a year, let me know ! (Companies in California and the UK are very welcome). Everyone who gives me a name of a company I could apply to will get a permanent link on my website, too. I’m very generous today, eh ?
Last thing you should know, I updated the resources. Some people asked me if they could have the image in the background here on kknd as a wallpaper. Well, here we go. If a size is missing, let me know. Company names and other personal stuff can be send to me via the contact form you find on the “about” page.
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, is a telescope in orbit around the Earth (as everybody should know). It can make awesome pictures of the universe because it’s outside of the atmosphere and far away from any light created by humans. Since its launch in 1990, it has become one of the most important instruments in the history of astronomy.
Its original mission target was to measure distances to Cepheid variable stars more accurately than ever before, and thus constrain the value of the Hubble constant, the measure of the rate at which the universe is expanding, which is also related to its age. While Hubble helped to refine estimates of the age of the universe, it made the outstanding photographs of the universe you can see below and above.
The Hubble Heritage Project’s goal is to build a bridge between the endeavors of scientists and the public by providing the best images made by HST online. You can find the high quality pictures in their > image gallery. I recommend the “Index View” and then the links to the “Full-Resolution Images”.
The photo of the Eagle Nebula above e.g. can be downloaded as a 66 MB 3857×7804 .tiff file. This website is such a terrific resource for space pictures !
