Mega-storm Sandy

[TimothyC]

You're whining about a tiny amount of damage sustained to a space shuttle? What were they supposed to do, encase it in titanium in 3 days?

They should have never had it if they couldn't protect it from a hurricane - remember the decision was partly based on the ability to exhibit the shuttle for 500 years. Less than half way through year one, and it's been damaged twice. Maybe it should have gone to the site that had the building ready to go - The Seattle Museum of Flight.

Looks like they did and they ripped in the wind. The orbiter can sustain a fucking reentry, I don't think a hurricane (especially a cat 1) looked like much of a threat.

The aerodynamic loads of reentry are more or less fixed, and can be planned for. There is a reason you wouldn't land a shuttle in a hurricane.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Many things, but if Enterprise hadn't been damaged twice in 6 months now, it would be a lot easier to let go.

Not only that, but a museum piece that likely suffered only superficial damage at worst.

It's the pattern it's helping to establish. Intrepid wasn't ready for the shuttle, and yet it got it anyway.

The 30+ dead, billions of dollars in damage, 7 million+ without power, evacuated hospitals, flooding, etc. etc.? Pfft!

Perish forbid I bring up some storm caused damage in a thread about the storm!

[General Zod]

snip

Nobody really gives a shit about your hard-on for the space shuttle.

[Broomstick]

You're whining about a tiny amount of damage sustained to a space shuttle? What were they supposed to do, encase it in titanium in 3 days?

They should have never had it if they couldn't protect it from a hurricane - remember the decision was partly based on the ability to exhibit the shuttle for 500 years. Less than half way through year one, and it's been damaged twice. Maybe it should have gone to the site that had the building ready to go - The Seattle Museum of Flight.

You do realize that hurricanes in NYC are extremely rare, and there hasn't been a storm this bad on the East Coast of the US for at least 200 years? (That's about as far back as any records extend so far as I know) Heaven forbid a museum not build a structure for a once in two century event!

What damage has the shuttle sustained? Seriously. A few scratches, maybe? Or do you have information on more substantial damage.

Sure, express regret for anything damaged, but the manner you went about it made your priorities look skewed.

And what General Zod said.

[Slacker]

Power's coming back on here on Long Island. Where I live, in the center part of the island, it really wasn't so bad. The coasts got shellacked, and not just the barrier islands. Going to be a few days until power's back on everywhere, that's for sure.

And seeing the 86th St. station under water confirms I'll be off of work, likely for the remainder of the week.

People forget that Manhattan Island was a swamp before settlement. This should remind them.

Commendably, Cuomo was talking about how we have to rebuild infrastructure so it can deal with these sorts of problems, because "It seems like we're getting a storm of the century every couple of years" and "People who think that the climate isn't changing are just delusional".

Not see if anything comes of it.

[Terralthra]

I care about the Space Shuttle, and I don't think he expressed his opinion poorly at all. He said that the people harmed have his sympathies, but the lack of attention paid to securing what should be a well-protected artifact angers him.

I doubt you'd be so cavalier about your favored historical artifacts or works of art getting "a few scratches" while they're supposedly in a place that will protect and display them to future generations for 500 years.

[Gaidin]

I'm reminded of the librarian in The Day After Tomorrow.

[Slacker]

I'm certainly concerned about the safety of important artifacts around New York, including the Space Shuttle. It's just when you have a storm that causes TWENTY BILLION dollars of damage, including turning most of the mass transit system into the world's largest water floom, we need to have priorities.

[General Zod]

I care about the Space Shuttle, and I don't think he expressed his opinion poorly at all. He said that the people harmed have his sympathies, but the lack of attention paid to securing what should be a well-protected artifact angers him.

I doubt you'd be so cavalier about your favored historical artifacts or works of art getting "a few scratches" while they're supposedly in a place that will protect and display them to future generations for 500 years.

And they were supposed to protect it . . . how? Divert the manpower away from more important things? Is there anything they could have legitimately done in such a short amount of time? Getting worked up over a situation where nothing could have been done kind of makes you look like a petty shithead. And frankly I'm more concerned about things that have a more immediate impact on my immediate economic future, like, I don't know, the whole subway system.

[Broomstick]

I doubt you'd be so cavalier about your favored historical artifacts or works of art getting "a few scratches" while they're supposedly in a place that will protect and display them to future generations for 500 years.

As it happens, the space shuttles, all of them that remain, ARE "favored historical artifacts" of mine but realistically there are far more important things to worry about. Even if the shuttle had wound up on the bottom of a river it could be recovered (albeit would need some repairs after that) and short of having a boat dropped on it (and I seriously doubt any museum building would have "able withstand having a boat dropped on the roof" as part of its specs), it was going to survive this storm.

Not so much other parts of NYC.

[LadyTevar]

In case anyone was worried, Nitram and I survived just fine.

Power is still flickering, but not shutting off thankfully. Snowfall of 8inches, and still falling.
State of Emergency, both WV and Federal, was declared, no work for me. More than 200,000 homes without power across the state, with the worst in higher elevations where there's 20-30inches of snow. Several roads closed, either by snow, trees, or accidents, even a few Interstates are down to one-lane traffic.

I'll update more later. So far, the State was prepared and folks are being smart.


BTW: Whomever was bitching about the Space Shuttle? STFU. If the conversation continues, I'll be moving it to HOS where it belongs.

[Flagg]

Here's Queens.

[Broomstick]

In case anyone was worried, Nitram and I survived just fine.

I was pretty confident you two would be fine - you're sensible people. I hope you retain power. Being off work is a mixed blessing, but you're better off staying in today if your roads have that much snow on them. Stay warm and stay safe.

[Broomstick]

Here's Queens.

Part of Queens. I really need to know a good piece of Queens is OK, at least until my nephew checks in. That's the burned neighborhood, right?

[Zaune]

Here's Queens.

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/1406/aqueens.jpg

Anyone heard whether that neighbourhood was evacuated before the fire broke out?

[Flagg]

Here's Queens.

Part of Queens. I really need to know a good piece of Queens is OK, at least until my nephew checks in. That's the burned neighborhood, right?

Breezy Point, yeah.

[septesix]

Here's Queens.

Part of Queens. I really need to know a good piece of Queens is OK, at least until my nephew checks in. That's the burned neighborhood, right?

Flushing looks fine , so does Elmhurst from what I heard.

[Simon_Jester]

In local news, it looks like the DC area, or at least my part of it, didn't get hit as hard as some expected. Lots of flooding, but for sheer wind damage we were worse off in the derecho storm that hit this summer. We don't even have a day of school closures now that the weather's blown over us.

I feel bad for Jersey and New York; they got our share of extra hurricane winds. Literally so; we're in the soft quadrant of the storm because it dumped all that extra energy north and northeast of us.

What damage has the shuttle sustained? Seriously. A few scratches, maybe? Or do you have information on more substantial damage.

Looks to me like a dozen square feet or so of the tail fin got ripped off. Just look at the photo and compare to old Shuttle pictures, Broomstick.

Is this the biggest deal of the storm? Not remotely. But we've already got Snooki jokes and a post about public attitudes toward nuclear power here, and those aren't the biggest deal about Sandy either. This is a forum invented for and populated by science fiction fandom; being irritated when a major space history artifact gets damaged isn't that far out of line.

[General Zod]

Even all the way up in the Bronx Sandy's winds were powerful enough to snap a few trees in half.

[Col. Crackpot]

Here's Queens.

Wow. that's horrible.

Being without power and watching some of my favorite seaside spots washed away into the ocean is a mere annoyance next to that... We got lucky here. Damn lucky.

[Ahriman238]

Got at least a dozen trees down up here, and countless branches in the road. Every third of fourth tree seems to have been stripped leaves (which all end up in the street somehow.) Still, we were quite a ways outside the storm's path, so we have a lot of shaken people, but no dead I've heard of.

[Raj Ahten]

I just got back in from doing storm clean up at work today. My park will be open for business as usual tomorrow. While New York and New Jersey got hammered, Virginia really dodged a bullet with Sandy. The Derecho in July was far worse. I didn't even have any trees to clean up off the road & power, which is knocked out by any storm that comes by, came back on just as I was leaving work.

[Beowulf]

And just in case people didn't know, due to budget bullshit you're losing polar orbit weather satellite coverage for a few years soon. So the 80+ percent of tracking data used to predict and prepare for these storms? Gone, until the replacement is launched.

Have fun in the meantime.

80%? Uh, no. GOES East provides most of the tracking data. The polar orbiters give high resolution data, but only every 12 hours. I can get data from GOES every 15 minutes. The real benefit of the polar orbiters is the data they can provide to be ingested into models, from data sparse areas (like the middle of the ocean). But for short period forecasting (the next day) they're kinda useless.

[weemadando]

I've seen the 80 percent figure in press about it. I'd believe it in terms of losing the early detection and tracking stuff for shit forming offshore.

[Sea Skimmer]

Nothing offshore would be lost at all, the GOES satellites cover the entire North Atlantic and much of the Pacific. What would be lost is coverage far inland in Africa which is the earliest point of origin for this sort of storm. This would cut back early warning some, but still leave more then enough time for any and all preparations that are ever done. Sounds like you read some alarmist bullshit, or else the 80% bit was interpreted wrong, like more likely, its an 80% chance we have a gap in coverage, since we don't actually know when the existing satellite is going to break. Not 80% of coverage is lost. That sounds a lot more right anyway.

The limited value of the polar weather satellites, and the high cost of orbiting them, plus the limited life in orbit which compounds the cost factor, is precisely why they aren't a budget priority for the military or civilian program. Its actually a bigger issue for the US military which needs global weather data to makes its IR homing cruise missiles guidance (Tomahawk and certain other stuff) effective then it is for US civilian purposes. For civilian purposes the US could just buy or borrow data from European polar satellites. Its not like this is top secret stuff.

[weemadando]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/us/dy ... .html?_r=0

That's the link. Re-reading it looks like they mean the sat network gives 84% data for prediction, not the single bird. Still, that's skimming it again.