4/15/2003: New Mars rover

[Elspode]

Its a dessert topping...its a floor wax!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Does anybody know when this "skinny women" trend set in?

Yes. Hugh Hefner. The first playmate was Marilyn Monroe. After that they got slimmer and slimmer.

[tw]

Something that characterizes an industry. In nuclear power, it was cooling towers. In Home construction, hammers or duct tape. In spacecraft, it is that yellow Kapton tape. The stuff was to spacecraft constuction what duct tape is to domestic building and repair. Some is draped down from the rover. In iMax pictures of the shuttle, Kapton tape floats off of walls in the cargo bay.

Two functions necessary for spacecraft. It must withstand UV radiation AND it must not outgas. Nylon, for example, is taboo in spacecraft because nylon continues to outgas. But Kapton tape was the one material good for fixing almost anything on a spacecraft.

[GlassJaw]

Originally posted by Pie


I think they're trying to keep from infecting the Red Planet with terran bacteria, virii, etc. The whole thing is being assembled in a cleanroom. [snip]
- Pie

It is hard to tell from the pict if it is a true Cleanroom, or merely a Controlled Environment. The difference being in the number of allowable particles greater than 0.5 Micron in diameter per cubic foot of air; Cleanrooms like Intel uses to make wafers for harddrives are rated and tested at 1 (or less!) particle per cubic foot of air, Controlled enviroments are typically rated at 1000 or 10,000 particles per ft^3.

Either way, The gloves they are wearing are Nitrile Critical Environment Gloves, where the gloves are designed to protect the environment/equipment from the particles shed by the people, and not necessarily protect the people from the environment (as in the case with Surgical Gloves.)

In my previous life, I worked QA/QC for one of the companies that supplied these types of gloves for AMD/Intel/etc. Quite fascinating actually.

[novice]

GlassJaw, how can you tell those are NCEG gloves ? They look exactly the same as the ones the nice lady at LAX was wearing.

[Unknown_Poltroon]

" In former times and even nowadays in different cultures corpulent women are seen as higly reproductive and are therefore favoured. Does anybody know when this "skinny women" trend set in?"

Actually, something neat i saw on the discovery channel, the standards of beauty dont change that much from culture to culture. MEn tend to find a woman with a certan ratio of hip measurement to waist measurement, i think its .7 or 1.7. ANd its remarkably consistent overall, from culture to culture.

[GlassJaw]

Originally posted by novice
GlassJaw, how can you tell those are NCEG gloves ? They look exactly the same as the ones the nice lady at LAX was wearing.

First, from the way they are all dressed, (in full "bunny suits"), the cleanroom they are in would require no less than a Glove rated for Critical Environments, or else the contamination engineer would be looking for new employment. Each lot of the gloves we maufactured for this type of environment were tested for quality assurance for particulate and ionic extractable contamination. One of our OEM Customers had a MAXIMUM Specification for allowable particles which was 1500. That is a Total of 1500 particles per sq-cm of glove area greater than 0.5 microns in size. For reference (following a quick search of google) a single crystal of Table Salt is about 100 Microns in diameter, a human hair is about 50-70 microns, and a bacteria is about 2-3 microns. VERY stringent. I have been suited up in similar garb to the group in the picture, just to go into and observe a Class 10 Cleanroom in action. (That would be Rated at less than or equal to 10 particles greater than 0.5 microns in size per cubic foot of airspace.)

The white color of the gloves leads me to believe that they are nitrile material. I would have to get my hands on one to tell you 100%, but I am confident in my statement. Could be Natural Rubber (normally yellow-ish) with Titanium Dioxide as a coloring agent, but most likely not. There are a number of levels of quality that gloves can be made to fulfill. Most likely the LAX-Lady was using a White Glove, which could be either a lower quality nitrile glove, or the aforementioned natural rubber glove with colorant. Remember your MarketDroidSpeak: Perception is Reality, ergo "White" is "Clean (aka Not Dirty)".

Either way, I would bet that they were a lower quality (read Commodity Product) glove than those used in the picture above. By way of example, the Gloves we manufactured for the CE Industry sold for between $97.00 and $175.00 per case of 1000 gloves. If you need gloves from Costco for checking the luggage at LAX, look for a price range of about $20 per 1000. Huge difference in price, and MEGA difference in quality of product.

[tw]

Contamination is not the only reason for those suits. Static electric control is quite strick. Fabrics may be woven with electrically conductive materials so that static electric is not a threat.

Working in such environments is interesting. How do you tell who is who - especially when you don't know most people in the other shifts? Somehow I managed to learn without knowing why. They later tell me, learn by viewing the eyes. However I also found height to be important.

Contamination is also why recovering satellites from space using the shuttle was not productive. Any space vehicle brought back to earth in a shuttle bay was so contaminated as to require complete disassembly and cleaning. Often cheaper to just build a new one.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally posted by Unknown_Poltroon
" In former times and even nowadays in different cultures corpulent women are seen as higly reproductive and are therefore favoured. Does anybody know when this "skinny women" trend set in?"

Actually, something neat i saw on the discovery channel, the standards of beauty dont change that much from culture to culture. MEn tend to find a woman with a certan ratio of hip measurement to waist measurement, i think its .7 or 1.7. ANd its remarkably consistent overall, from culture to culture.

Actually, the standard of beauty IS different from culture to culture, but also from time period to time period. For example, in 1400's Europe, most art depicts women with "full" hips and bulging abdomens (see picture). Back in those days, most people ate very little as a rule, nigh on starving, and the body style was the "waif" look of today. The attractive women were the ones who ate well, and therefore had a "thicker" appearance. This is well documented throughout history.

In addition, on the cultural side of things, going back to the "nose plug" post, I would say that "attractive" is a hugely relative term. You probably won't see a 18 year old male in LA saying, hey, look at those neck rings!! But it's probably pretty common for 18 year old equivalent in that culture to admire that.

[edit]
pitcure from www.stanford.edu website.
[/edit]

[xoxoxoBruce]

3 cheers for Ruben's women.

[Torrere]

I'm guessing that she would be quite attractive today.