Dave Lavery in the news!

[Madison]

I guess I assumed, and probably erroneously so, that Mission: Space's pods should all be doing the same motions at the same time. That is, the big circle spins and the remaining pods at its circumference each tilt or roll (or yaw and roll or yaw and tilt or whatever) in sync. such that there need only be two "outputs" per centrifuge. One controls its rotation on the whole and the other controls the specific positioning of the pods -- all at once. Whereas, again, on Test Track, the individual cars are all doing individual things. It stands to reason that no two cars on that ride require the same control signals at a given time. But, if all of my reasoning is based on a bad assumption about what's going on in the Mission: Space ride system, I'm just blathering.

Of course, I could probably have better results trying to perform brain surgery than I would with trying to program a computer. My experience in each area is similar.

You have the neat advantage of getting to talk to all the neat folks involved, whereas I just have to sit along the sidelines and drool jealously. I really appreciate your insight, as this is one subject that I like quite a bit more than FIRST. I know, I know -- blasphemy.

But, you raised another question in your examples. . . I would've expected that each of Mission: Space's four centrifuges would operate as its own unit with no ties to the remaining three. Are they all connected to a central computer? Is that just a cost-saving measure, or is there a practical benefit in each centrifuge having the ability to talk with the others?