WTF

[gfish]

AP story via Houston Chronicle:

She will spend two hours on a modified Boeing 727 jet, which will soar six miles above the Earth before dropping, giving about a half-minute of weightlessness with each cycle.

AP story via CNN:

She will spend two hours on a modified Boeing aircraft, which will soar 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the earth before dropping, giving several minutes of weightlessness with each cycle.

I particularly like how the CNN version adds the metric conversion to look extra accurate while in fact being completely wrong about the basic physics of the situation.

Comments

[sickyprincess.livejournal.com]

You should let them know. Lazy fact-checkers...

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

That's just weird. Why would you deliberately change something to make it less accurate?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

It's just as possible that the AP updated the article and the Chronicle was using the later version. I just noticed that the BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5364722.stm) contains the same error, and it doesn't cite the AP at all. It's possible the Chronicle changed the AP article, since they're a lot more likely to know what's going on with reduced gravity flights, but I don't know if they're allowed to edit AP stories like that. I'd suspect not.

[adularia.livejournal.com]

Several minutes?

... In addition to doing much better science if we'd had that kind of time, I would have tried to shed a few more 0.001-G purity points. Sheesh.

[pomma-penses.livejournal.com]

OK, I know this is completely random, but I was at the pub on Tuesday with some friends and one said "y'know, spiritrover and opportunitygrrl should really update again!

I almost got whiplash when I turned around and said I KNEW those people!

Anyways, consider this your friendly neighbourhood heckle, via a stranger in Oxford. ;)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Hee! That's very cool.

The thing is, that eventually the rovers are going to fail. I can't speak for opportunitygrrl, but I really don't want to deal with covering that in the first person -- either in terms of narrative design or emotionally. Plus, the rover journals are getting pretty oldmeme. I'd rather just let spiritrover fade into Internet history gracefully. I think the birthday cake was a pretty nice gracenote.

[pomma-penses.livejournal.com]

Ooooh yeah, that would be much with the suck. I suppose you could fake an alien abduction, however. ;)

Thanks for pinging back, though!

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Perhaps by snarking about this: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/transformers/

(Perhaps, the blue skies and extensive cloud cover clearly visible in the shots of Mars?)

On an unrelated note: they made a feel-good movie about aerial combat in World War One. Why god, why? http://www.apple.com/trailers/mgm/flyboys/trailer/