ApolloHoax.net
Off Topic => General Discussion => Topic started by: peter eldergill on May 01, 2015, 08:25:53 PM
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Hey there
Years ago I met Donald Pettit (he's the one that does the angry birds demos on the ISS) at a science teacher conference and as I recall, I thought he said that he was on the ISS when one of the shuttles exploded.
Does this make sense or am I misremembering or misunderstanding what he may have said?
I tried to check online but was unsuccessful. I thought the vast knowledge from the folks here may be of help.
Cheers
Pete
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According to his biography on Wikipedia, he was a member of Expedition 6, which was on the ISS when Columbia disintegrated on entry in 2003.
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Thanks for that.
I'm glad I'm remembering things correctly. I did see his mission list but didn't make the connection.
Cheers
Pete
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I really enjoyed his series of science demonstrations, especially those on angular momentum. It is *so* much easier to do cleanly in free fall.
He did get one thing wrong, though. At one point he taped together three CD players at right angles. He apparently expected them to remain fixed in space when he disturbed them, but they rotated as a unit around an axis at 45 degrees to all of them. This is actually what should have happened, since that was the vector sum of their angular momentum vectors.
It's a common misconception that a gyroscope remains fixed in inertial space against external torques. You can only minimize its precession rate by giving the gyroscope as much angular momentum as you can and reducing those external torques as much as you can.