If you're lost, you can use these ridiculous signs for an excuse
The cryptic & bizarre signs proliferate, and the chance of meeting one of these examples of poor spelling, ignorance or sheer neglect are getting higher. Try driving to some backwater towns in a 100 mile radius and you'll see something worth posting in our next collection. Less than 2 months have passed since out last installment, and here we go again:
This Russian sign advices: "Please do not touch naked wires with your wet hands. The wires are getting rusty." -
Another harsh-sounding Russian sign: "This bomb shelter is full. Hide in the features of the landscape" (something you definitely do not want to read when the need comes...) -
This is in Hebrew, it says: "This room is for you to relieve yourself from gas in your bowels" (apparently after the medical tests are over. You don't want to accidentally wander into this room) -
I am pretty sure the last sign, the one with the two empty circles, means that everyone should drive witht their car lights no matter the time of the day
Your second "mystery sign" looks like the helmet worn by the original version of the comic book character "The Flash", which suggests that one not take flash photographs.
It's nice to see that Torontonians hold firmly to the myth of Canadian politeness. In future installments, please try to date and locate the items wherever possible.
the one with the "bogus" brand names is actually pretty funny; all of them are Japanese puns: "kani" means crab, "uuma", horse; in "sakedas", "sake" is salmon; in "kanidas", "kani" is crab again; "kuma" is bear.
Here is a better translation to the sign in Hebrew:
"Relieving yourself freely (burping and farting) is allowed (and desirable) in this room. The release will help calming down the stomachaches that appear after the medical exam."
A red circle always signifies (or should signify) something you are not allowed to do. So the two lights in a red circle should, on the contrary, mean that you must not continue beyond this signs with your headlights on, i. e. you must switch them off.
I have the can of dehydrated water, they were given out at a food show years ago. I keep mine in the the kitchen cabinet with the rest of the canned goods.
the sign with "free wireless.." on it, is from the Hans Brinker budget hotel, i've worked there a couple of days, and yes i'm from holland, so i'm srry for my bad english
That Easter Island head is an advertisement at the airport in Berlin. It's interesting to get off the plane and see it going around on the baggage claim, but finding out that it's really just an ad for a travel company is dissapointing.
I agree the P1800 is perfect as well, especially considering you can get a restored one for around 15000. The tipo 33 is gorgeous but completely unobtainable.
I wouldn't say that the Alfa is beholden to the E Type Jaguar. Its style is really evolutionary from the late 40's early 50's Disco series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_Romeo_Disco_Volante, and you can even see some of these styling hints in the touring cars from the 30s like the great 2900 8c coupes. I would say if anything Jaguar was behind the times when you compare say the XJ120 to a Disco Volante, though I love the Jaguar for any other dozens of reasons.
Joe, here is a link to a lot of historical Alfa Romeo cars that were either concept cars or especially reflective of a design from specific models. http://www.conceptcarz.com/view/model/6/Alfa%20Romeo/model.aspx
One great thing about Alfa is that they used a lot of different designers and were not afraid of taking chances. Not a great business model, but a treasure for us car buffs.
I really like that Type 33. I like the new Alfa C8 too. Why isn't the Ferrari 275GTB in on THE list? I would never say that the 904 wasn't a beautiful car, I've lusted for one since the day I first saw and sat in one. BUT, i would say that the 906 is more beautiful. And while we're at it, A Lotus Eleven was sensual as well. AND while the "E" type is beautiful, you must look back to the "C" and "D" types....They were truly "Sex on wheels". And those Elise's are seducing me at this very moment...Gotta go.......
About the similarities in the design. To my knowledge the space shuttle design itself was never classified. I remember hearing an interview with a NASA engineer who stated that if the Russians had asked for the schematics they probably would have been given them.
All similarities end after external appearances. The main point of difference is that Space Shuttle is TWO-stage rocket -- first stage are solid boosters, while second stage is an orbiter itself. Buran-Energia is a three-stage rocket, Energia being a complete independent heavy-lift booster in the same class as Saturn V. Orbiter is just a payload (or a third stage at most), and could be lifted to LEO without ever engaging its engines, which are much smaller and less powerful that Shuttle's ones. It had much more sophisticated avionics compared to early shuttles, as it could land automatically, and it was also equipped with ejection seats for all of crewmembers -- something that Challenger crew would sertainly wish they had.
khathi is essentially correct. The Buran was a principally different vehicle, similar in appearance only. It is significantly smaller the the Shuttle as well. To call the Energia a launch vehicle in the same class as the Saturn V is technically correct but deceptive. The Saturn V had a design capacity of 200 tons to LEO (It actually lifted 156 tons to LEO with Apollo 17.). I think the Energia could manage just over 100 tons. Still, I don't mean to belittle the Energia. It is an impressive launch vehicle. But it is unlikely the Saturn V will be topped any time in the near future.
Well, Saturn V COULD've been topped -- if the whole Energia-Buran project wasn't scrapped, that is. You see, Energia was a highly scalable design, and you could've easily bolt up to a four additional fist stage boosters (IIRC, some of the pics even show this config, sadly, it was never really flown) effectively doubling its capacity -- up to 175 tonnes. But you are right, LEO capacity for standard config was just 100 tonnes, 20 tonnes less than for Saturn V (which could lift just 120 tonnes to LEO, not 200).
Another point -- the orbiter that was destroyed in 2002 was OK-1K1, the very same that was flown in 1988. Another one, OK-1K2, one that should've fly manned mission, was never completed and is still mothballed in Baikonur, IIRC.
Objection! Crew capsule remained intact after orbiter disintegration, and remained intact (and crew alive, albeit with at least several crewmembers inconscious) until the final strike into the water. Had it been equipped with ejection seats, crew could safely eject during "drop" phase.
I am sorry to disappoint you, but the Baikal story is a well done 1st April joke, by Vadim Lukashevich, the webmaster of buran.ru - the most comprehensive website on Buran project.
There were advanced plans to improve the Saturn V as well. One was to stretch the tanks and add a sixth main engine for a total of 9 million pounds of lift-off thrust. Another was to add solid, strap-on boosters. Yet another of the more ambitious proposals was to separate the main engines from the tanks and parachute them down for re-use. I actually knew one of the engineers who helped develop the F-1. He said that the only reason the engines were not re-useable was because they were at the bottom of the Atlantic. The engines were actually designed to be able to be used five to seven times. But, alas, so many good ideas never to be tried. Sigh.
"khathi: ejection seats would not have helped the challenger crew - they (still) would have been incinerated at the speed they were traveling."
According to: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/investigations/q0122.shtml
The Challenger was at 46,000 ft travelling at 1.9 Mach when the disaster struck.
According to: http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg14920124.300-please-keep-your-seat.html
The Zvezda K-36 ejection seat of the Buran allows cosmonauts to eject at 30Km (98,000 feet) and 4 Mach.
Columbia disaster... that's another story.
Thank you for the pics. I've been fascinated by space ships since I was a child and this is the first time I see Buran from inside. So I'm very grateful :)
''Pre-launch moving of "Buran" and "Energia" on rails'' The last two photos are of Proton, not Buran or Energia.
Proton is a much smaller rocket (A medium one). You can also see the 6 outer tanks and 6 engines attached to them, no central engines, very different from Energia's 4 boosters and 3 core engines.
I'm surprised nobody noticed yet. Proton is a sixties design, still flying today, commercially, although they just had one launch failure with the second stage just after staging.
Yoy may be interested in the end of the Buran story: The last prototype has been discovered by a television team somewhere in Bahrain back in 2004. These days, it is on its way to a museum in Germany. Some pics can be found here: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/weltall/0,1518,546884,00.html
One reason they might have decided to have it horizontal when transporting to the launchpad is that it's possible to accelerate much faster. The angular momentum on an already erected rocket is so much greater that any acceleration beyond a bare minimum risks damage or even toppling the rocket.
One of the Buran's was stored for a couple of years in a shipping yard in Bahrain (Persian Gulf). I was visiting the yard and saw a space shuttle type of craft, found later on the internet that it was one of the Buran's. The wings where taken off but you could enter the Buran trough a opening in the hull. Took home one of the smaller panels from the cockpit as a souvenir.
Last thing I heard that is will be transported to a museum in Mannhein, Gemany.
The 'German museum' mentioned here several times, is the Technik Museum, and the Buran is shipped to the Sinsheim location of the museum. See http://www.technik-museum.de.
One of these shuttles is in Australia. It was at the worlds fair, and the russians didn't have the cash to fly it home. So it still sits there to this day.
Anon, the one that was in Australia -- it's the very same that finally arrived in Germany some time ago. The company couldn't make profit by using it as an attraction, so they've shipped it to warehouse in Bahrain and just let it sit there.
Regarding the Shuttle and ejection seats, there *were* ejection seats on Columbia, for her first few flights, before the system was considered flight-qualified. There were two ejection capsules, similar to those found on SR-71 Blackbirds, and intended for use if the vehicle was nearly finished with its reentry and about to ditch -- a landing off of a runway is not considered survivable.
But they're problematic. For one thing, they are very heavy. For another, you need a path for the ejection seats to take. For structural reasons, that could only be provided for commander and pilot. It is simply not done to have ejection seats for only two of the crew, so once the crew grew above two, the ejection seats were deactivated and eventually removed. No other Orbiter had them but Columbia.
Would such seats have saved the Challenger crew? Forgiving that they could only have been effective for CDR and PLT, it is still by no means clear that a safe ejection could have been achieved. Most likely, they would have ejected directly into the fireball. And it's not a flight regime where you'd ordinarily want ejection seats -- in all other failure modes, ejection seats during a Shuttle launch will be fatal.
It's not as clear as it might seem. Wayne Hale (former Shuttle program director) has a fascinating series of posts on Black Zones in his blog that goes into this problem in more detail. http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/waynehalesblog/
One more thing -- there are some very cool pictures in there. Two are of Proton rockets, unrelated to Energia-Buran but to this day, the heavy-lift workhorse of the Russian rocket fleet. More interesting are the pictures of what I presume to be Polyus, the payload of the "other" Energia launch. Energia flew once without the Buran. It carried a space station called Polyus on its back. Little is known about it, as it was a military flight. It may even have been nuclear powered. What *is* known is that although the Energia performed flawlessly, Polyus' own engines failed to inject it into the proper orbit, and it ended up in the Pacific Ocean. Very sad.
One piece of Buran-related hardware did eventually fly: a docking compartment for Mir. It was modified with Apollo-Soyuz Test Project unisex docking adapters and installed on Mir by the Space Shuttle Atlantis. The newly-constructed Orbiter Docking System was designed to mate with it, and it was used throughout the Shuttle-Mir program. Its legacy lives on in the ODSes in each surviving Orbiter, and in the Pressurized Mating Adapters aboard the ISS.
The Nazi UFO photo is not a fake. Read some of it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_UFOs and check the external links - they were building such hmm vehicles? as I have seen on Discovery Channel they were supposed to work on hovercraft-like fans only capable to lift them more than few inches above ground :) Similar small saucers have been built more recently and some of them even work in a limited way.
"QUANTUM SHOT" #321
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23 Comments:
I am pretty sure the last sign, the one with the two empty circles, means that everyone should drive witht their car lights no matter the time of the day
That one about yesterday, today and tomorrow is at the entrance to Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom (there may be a similar sign at Disneyland).
Of course Badfart is just up the road from Middelfart .. the Middelfart Tourist Bureau is here: http://www.middelfartturist.dk/
The middle mysterious sign looks like a flash/hermes/mercury helmet so i guess it means "don´t run".
First sign may be "don´t broke the bed = don´t broke the sleep = be quiet"
"No members of the Yakuza allowed?"
No tattoos (which often does mean membership in a gang though)
Probably posted in an Asian bath house.
I wonder why the Japanese have to put ninjas in their instructions.
Hilarious!
The broken bed is a french ad for some viagra-like pills :)
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/87/238515710_0f111104a6_m.jpg
thanks for the info, guys!
what fun.
Your second "mystery sign" looks like the helmet worn by the original version of the comic book character "The Flash", which suggests that one not take flash photographs.
SHADES OF DEATH!!!!! THATS IN NEW JERSEY!!!! ive driven on it many a time and even gotten a flat tire on it haha
"Bådfart", means ferry... It's not a place.
It's nice to see that Torontonians hold firmly to the myth of Canadian politeness. In future installments, please try to date and locate the items wherever possible.
the one with the "bogus" brand names is actually pretty funny; all of them are Japanese puns: "kani" means crab, "uuma", horse; in "sakedas", "sake" is salmon; in "kanidas", "kani" is crab again; "kuma" is bear.
The one from a Japanese metro train is a photoshop:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/metro.asp
Here is a better translation to the sign in Hebrew:
"Relieving yourself freely (burping and farting) is allowed (and desirable) in this room. The release will help calming down the stomachaches that appear after the medical exam."
A red circle always signifies (or should signify) something you are not allowed to do. So the two lights in a red circle should, on the contrary, mean that you must not continue beyond this signs with your headlights on, i. e. you must switch them off.
The second sign of the helmet with wings is a warning? There be Vikings ahead.
The Japanese pictures with ridiculous warnings are not Japanese pictures. They are written in Chinese.
I have the can of dehydrated water, they were given out at a food show years ago. I keep mine in the the kitchen cabinet with the rest of the canned goods.
the sign with "free wireless.." on it, is from the Hans Brinker budget hotel, i've worked there a couple of days, and yes i'm from holland, so i'm srry for my bad english
The last sign is the bicycle one, but someone must have removed everything but the wheels...
Mackin - that sounds about right.
"The Japanese pictures with ridiculous warnings are not Japanese pictures. They are written in Chinese."
It is not. It is a Japanese product with ridiculous japanese warnings that have Traditional Chinese translations.
Please, don't steal.
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