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The UK's ambitious space cheese mission was yesterday spared total humiliation when the 300g lump of Somerset farmhouse cheddar sent into the upper atmosphere was recovered from a garden in Buckinghamshire. The intact wedge of dairy produce came down in Cressex - 74 miles from its launch point in Pewsey, Wiltshire. It had been …
Radar Station: - "We've tracked a UFO, General. It seems to have crashed near Cressex."
General: - "Roll out a cover story that it's a weather balloon and that it was *meant* to burst."
Radar Station: - "We *can't* do that again! - People got very suspicious when it was tried at
Roswell back in '49. Also, what about the alien body?"
General: - "Hmm.... I know! - Tell them it's a lump of CHEESE !!"
While I for one, would never bring the noble and magnificent Cheese into any kind disrepute you do have to ask what real, meaningful information of any kind be drawn from lobbing cheese in the upper atmosphere? Is this a spit in the face to cheese chasers across the land or are they demanding zero-g Stilton on the IIS?
I find it hard to believe that while some of the scientific community are crying out over dwindling numbers of people pursuing science based jobs and careers others are seemingly making mockery of it fcuking about with cheese and model rockets, can't we aim higher than wasting food and pitching more space debris into orbit?
So far the only recession proof business is the Pizza industry. If Britain can develop a space based delivery system whereby the pizza is cooked to perfection by the heat of re-entry and targetted to the recipients address via GPS co-ordinates launched from a helium balloon, just think of the carbon footprint reduction. No only would Britain save the planet from global warming, melting ice-caps etc but we would also have enough money from selling pizzas to build a Skylon Spaceplane! How could we possibly aim higher than that?
I've said this in the other post, that this is an achievement. The Beagle2 was lost probably because of the parachute deployment. So now, even when all else fails, the parachute tech remains solid. If you marry the Beagle to this new parachute uber-tech, we have progress. Well done to all.
He's right. Once back from space, this cheese will be unlike any other. It will have seen things no other cheese saw before and may have had a spiritual experience.
If space travel mind-f*cks ordinary humans, spare a thought for this cheese. It could have had a "Contact", like Jodie Foster in the movie. It could have passed an Event Horizon. The possibilities are endless.
So, back to the point: DON'T EAT THE CHEESE!
Paris because I feel the same way about her growler...
The Americans decided that the boundary between the atmosphere and space was 50 miles, apparently so that X-15 pilots could get Astronaut Wings, but then abandoned the idea of a formally defined boundary.
The FAI uses 100km since above that altitude you need to fly faster than orbital velocity to get enough aerodynamic lift. The 100km figure is a bit approximate, but it's a nice round figure.
Sounds like a well-known GPS receiver 'bug'. To avoid them being used in ICBMs, commercial GPS receivers are required to stop working if they are used above a certain altitude *AND* above a certain speed.
Apparently a number of GPS chip manufacturers have incorrectly interpreted this requirement as above a certain altitude *OR* above a certain speed. This bites a lot of amateur balloon experimenters, whose systems suddenly fail at altitude, even though they're just pootling along at a few tens of MPH with the breeze.
Our budding Wallace & Gromit team should probably try again after changing the GPS for one that's known to work at high altitude. Stick to the cheddar though, it would be a waste of good Wensleydale to do otherwise...
The cretin churnalists [sic] at msn.co.uk reported it as 300kg of cheese, rather than 300g.
http://news.uk.msn.com/odd-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=148891047
Surely even a dim, half-pissed humanties graduate understand the difference between 300g and 300kg? I live in Cressex and I think I would have heard/smelled the later coming in to land...