The latest practical consequence of the unhappy times we live in (NASA NTRS offline)

I have the solution.
We have to put the word "BOAT" in any sentence. For exemple, I will rephrase a post from Michael:

Original:

New style

The "war against BOAT muslims " only requires proper BOAT intelligence and police work.
The BOAT crusade cant justify the trillions of dollars needed from the BOAT taxpayer for Military hardware like aircraft carriers BOAT, space based BOAT weapons, fighter jets BOAT nuclear subs BOAT............... These toys BOAT need a big BOAT enemy.... China is a big BOAT.

Just kidding

 

Actually, I guess we all knew this thread would turn into a political discussion, at one point or another. But what can one do about it?

The OP is about NASA cutting off the access to it's database of technical papers. Their technical papers are a resource for anyone involved in boat design. It was enormously valuable for me. This site is about boat design, hence the thread.

But the decision of closing the NTRS site is evidently of political nature (though we can give it names we like the most), hence the discussion inevitably had to touch the political side of this news.

Perhaps we just need to live with the fact that many things are a matter of politics and special interests today (want to talk about boating-related taxes, for example? Or about the "green revolution" in boating, and what's behind it?), and to accept that people will want to discuss that aspect too. As long as the discussion is polite and reasonably argumented, of course...

Cheers

 

The topic of the NTRS closure itself does seem to be relevant to those interested in boats and design. And in a way everything is related to everything else.

However, the request is simply instead of starting or taking this thread into potentially enormous and very heated discussions of the political nature of the Iraq war or the Bush Administration or "war against Muslims" (or other religion), it would be better to take these very lengthy political/nationalistic/religious criticisms and debates to one of the many political forums which exist to host this type of discussion.

Just as a designer or boatbuilder who decides to put a sophisticated garden on the side of his land and wants to have lengthy debates and share opinions on different types of fertilizer would join an agricultural/gardening forum, starting the large political and religious debates in forums which exist for this very purpose puts them in a better context, where more political insiders with specific and detailed information (or those who have dedicated their entire life to studying a particular religion) already take part. It keeps these grand political/religious/nationalistic debates from overwhelming and spilling over into other more relevant and useful discussions here.

 

If any of you folks are starving for NASA style information, these old videos are very educational.


http://mit.edu/hml/ncfmf.html

I watched this one: NCFMF Video: How to Reduce Drag......................Fluid Dynamics of Drag Part IV short.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ftq8jTQ8ANE

 

The NASA site appears to be up now: NTRS