xkcd: Range Safety

[Lynn McGuire]

xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/

I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

Lynn

[Paul S Person]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire
<lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>xkcd: Range Safety
> https://xkcd.com/2876/
>
>I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Or a Range Mischief Officer?

>Explained at:
> https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

[Dimensional Traveler]

On 1/5/2024 8:17 AM, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire
> <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> xkcd: Range Safety
>> https://xkcd.com/2876/
>>
>> I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
>
> Or a Range Mischief Officer?
>

How about the government agency from a 1940s-50s era short story who's
purpose was to sabotage and slow down the rest of the government because
it had become too efficient and fast so the voters didn't have time to
give input on bills before they were made law? I remember one of the
specific examples was waxing a floor to the point where government
messengers would slip and fall, delaying their deliveries.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

[Jay E. Morris]

On 1/5/2024 10:17 AM, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire
> <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> xkcd: Range Safety
>> https://xkcd.com/2876/
>>
>> I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
>
> Or a Range Mischief Officer?
>
>> Explained at:
>> https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

Mischief went on in the control room but there was no officer
controlling it.

[Paul S Person]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 10:12:20 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
<dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:

>On 1/5/2024 8:17 AM, Paul S Person wrote:
>> On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire
>> <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> xkcd: Range Safety
>>> https://xkcd.com/2876/
>>>
>>> I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
>>
>> Or a Range Mischief Officer?
>>
>How about the government agency from a 1940s-50s era short story who's
>purpose was to sabotage and slow down the rest of the government because
>it had become too efficient and fast so the voters didn't have time to
>give input on bills before they were made law? I remember one of the
>specific examples was waxing a floor to the point where government
>messengers would slip and fall, delaying their deliveries.

A year or two before I retired, the various bits of the IRS that used
the same chapter of the Internal Revenue Manual that we did got
together and decided to rewrite that chapter.

The goal being to actually make it usable with endless working aids
and SOPs and sticky notes and so on.

They were not allowed to do it. There was, it turned out, an office in
the IRS with its own chapter in the IRM and that chapter laid out how
the other chapters were to be written.

This, apparently, was to be as useless to the actual workers as
possible.

Instead, our group created a single computerized checklist that we
used instead. By the time I left it had not only the basic calls
covered, but about 30 special cases for us to identify and
instructions for how to handle them.

But it wasn't part of the IRM. Honor (or at least Stupidity) was
satisfied.

So the gummint agency you reference may not have been /entirely/
fictional. It may live on, at least in spirit.

[Dave]

A guy I worked with at Condor Systems was in a bunker, somewhere, about
600 yards from the launch of a Delta II (if I remember correctly). The
Range Danger Officer was on site that day. They all thought they were
going to die.

--
Dave Scruggs
Captain, Boulder Creek Fire (Retired)
Sr. Software Engineer (Retired, mostly)

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:

> xkcd: Range Safety
> https://xkcd.com/2876/
>
> I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Someone in a rocketry forum I subscribe to suggested that the RSO is the
only person present who *isn't* an RDO.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <un7f7r$3qsri$1...@dont-email.me>,

[Hal Heydt]
G. Harry Stine in his book _Rocket Power and Space Flight_ cited
the time a range saftey officer borrowed a rifle from a guard and
shot holes in the tanks of Viking rocket. After that incident,
tanks had targets painted on them to show where to shoot should
the problem recur.

[Paul S Person]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2024 15:39:48 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

IIRC, the recent Mainland China military purge was motivated, in part,
by the discovery that a lot of /their/ rockets were fueled with ...
water.

Well, that certainly makes them /safe/.

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2024-01-09, Paul S Person <pspe...@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

> IIRC, the recent Mainland China military purge was motivated, in part,
> by the discovery that a lot of /their/ rockets were fueled with ...
> water.

Something that is unlikely to ever be used makes an excellent target
for embezzlement. Who would ever notice that there's nothing behind
the Potemkin front?

I'm reminded of Michael Crichton's _Sphere_ (because I just mentioned
this over on the German group): When the occasion arises, the
handbook for alien first contact is taken from a report commissioned
by the government, whose author is quite appalled to discover this,
because given the low likelihood of the event he didn't take the
issue seriously and just made stuff up.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

[Thomas Koenig]

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> schrieb:

What problem was that?

[Mad Hamish]

Difficult to aim at