[geeks] Why? i.e. why do people have such poor math & engineering skills?

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 01:29:43PM -0700, Gary Nichols wrote:

> > Now the walking dragline, well that's something else entirely because
> > the scales are so huge that we little humans can't begin to measure them
> > without getting up close and climbing around.  There's a picutre near
> > the front of "Giant Earth-Moving Equipment" by Eric Orelemann of the
> > author, who's a big tall 6'4" guy, standing beside one track of the
> > Marion 6360 stripping shovel, and he looks like an ant.  The pads alone
> > weight 3.5 tons each, and there are 42 per crawler belt and 8 crawler
> > belts.  It just gets bigger from there on up (21 stories up).  You can
> > drive a pair of semi-tractor trucks with full-height trailers down
> > between the crawlers, side by side, with lots of room to spare
> > (i.e. it's got room between its "feet" for a full two-lane highway), and
> > you could probably park four 53' trailers under there and never see them
> > from the air.

A ha!  A new way to hide ballistic missles.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd