Dropping 1,000 cats from 32km: How practical is that? Our report yesterday into NASA's high-altitude, heavy-lift super pressure balloon (SPB) mission - lofted by a stadium-sized sandwich bag and weighing in at 1,000 cats - prompted the traditional provocative reader input. First up, since the SPB's orb is crafted from 22 acres of polyethylene film, swelling to a whopping 516,499 …
Determining hunger should be done using the calorific value of traditional stadium food. For football, that's a pie. We'll go with meat and potato as that's a classic.
A meat and potato pie contains approx 430kcal *. A ham sandwich contains 230kcal*, so each stadium goer would need a minimum of 1.8 sandwiches to sustain them.
* according to the first result on google for "calorific content in X"
"They were talking about 1,000 cats. What kind of meat do you think they had an excess of?"
Well, if dropping 1,000 cats from 32km, I reckon they would have an excess of about...1,000? Including splashy bits?
However, I'm assuming you're commenting on the "Fido" reference. Here you go.
Several degrees of hunger have been observed in Scotland
1) Ah'm guttin - I have a pain in the midriff is it dinner time?
2) Ah could eat a scabby dug - I really am quite peckish is it time to eat?
3) Ah'm that hungry I'd eat a shit pie - I'm that hungry I'd even consider some fruit.
4) That pie wiz boggin' - I still ate it though!
None of these are quantitative and setting them in any particular order is dependent upon a variety of variables not least of which being the availability of deep fried pizza, which is likely to provoke the first three prior to consumption and the 4th post consumption.
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They'd land randomly, because they'd suffocate at 33.5 km and be either unconscious or dead when they reached the ground. The temperature at that altitude would also be a problem for them.
Unless you gave them feline sized spacesuits with oxygen tanks; then they'd be OK, but that might throw off their ability to land spread eagled which is what allows cats that fall from great heights to survive with only a few broken bones at most.
Which is unfair if you think about it.
Cats have a myriad ways of getting our attention.
Dead presents.
Live presents that you wish were dead.
Using you as a landing pad from the window sill at 4.30 am
Destroying various parts of the furnishings.
Being cute.
Being aggresive.
Making any kind of noise.
Purring.
Interrupting anything you are doing by walking through/on it and then just sitting there. (usually computer, book, paper, your food)
Being sick.
Requiring vetinary assistance.
What do we get? Opening a tin and a laser pointer.
This raises another important safety issue.
What happens if one of these over chilled moggies is ingested by a hungry jet engine?
Would it purr, burp or fart?
Would it be able to sick up the hairball?
Would the average feline fit in the standard chicken hurler?
What is the speed of a cat in a vacuum?
So many imponderables ....
Enquiring minds need to know.
Of course, now it becomes clear. All these years we've had the relationship between the evil genius in his volcano lair and the white Persian he's stroking entirely backwards...
Since cats only have staff, I always thought that was obvious to even the most casual of observers. The guy stroking the cat is merely the leader of the rest of the cat staff.
"Imagine if you will a thick blanket of 1,000 wailing felines, claws deployed, descending at an immense rate of knots as you desperately attempt to defend yourself with a garden hose."
<pedant>
knots - as any fule no - is already a rate i.e. nautical miles per hour, so a "rate of knots" is an acceleration - which is accurate, well for the initial part of the drop until terminal velocity is reached anyway - in any case it's g or 68,579 kn/h (which - I'm surprised to find - does appear to qualify as "immense" :) )
</pedant>
Kudos for "kilocat" and also for bringing "kilokitten" to a wider public!
" a "rate of knots" is an acceleration"
no its knot. Its like saying "high rate of speed", except by saying "knots" to some extent you are defining what you are speeding in: aircraft or ship
With a name like Trubshaw I would have expected better: I take it Brian Trubshaw was no relative to you
Knots is a distance originally used by navies. It did involve a knotted rope. So, technically "rate of knots" is correct. There is however the speed "knots" which is "Knots per Hour" or in the "duldrums".. Knots-per-Fortnight".
Thank <$Deity> that no-one used the term "parsecs"....
" There is however the speed "knots" which is "Knots per Hour" or in the "duldrums".. Knots-per-Fortnight""
wrong!!!!!
A knot is one nautical mile per hour as is in itself a unit of speed.
A knot is NOT a unit of distance
"Knots per hour" is an invalid term as "knot" already implies distance per unit of time
The usage of "knot" does imply distance per unit of time, however it is shorthand for "knots per hour". It does not invalidate "knots per hour" as a term. In the days when streaming the log and counting the knots and fathoms run off before the 28 second timer ran out the two terms could be, and were, used interchangeably.
"[When the wind has a relative velocity of some 40 knots per hour]"
Lieutenant W Gordon RN, The Economy of the Marine Steam Engine, 1845.
In this modern age of impeller driven speed measurement and GPS the usage has made the knot the standard term, however the ultra-pedant should mention that the modern usage should be "nautical miles per hour". The knot is a slightly shorter distance than a nautical mile (although the nautical mile distance is dependent on which country you are from anyway).
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