What is the mass of a falcon's feather...

[Spinney]

... like the one dropped on the Moon by Dave Scott.

The NASA website says 0.03 kg - btu 30g seems an awful lot for a single feather!

I emailed the chap responsible for the page at NASA, but all he could say was that was how it was originally written up after Apollo 15.

Anyone got any falcon feathers they can weigh? Or from similar birds?

 

[ufkacbln]

[QUOTE 3848799, member: 259"]Unless it was a Texan falcon...[/QUOTE]

Laden or unladen?

 

[Spinney]

http://www.ask.com/science/much-feather-weigh-feb66e65ee2cf966

"Ornithologists commonly measure birds' feathers as a proportion of total body weight. According to Cobb-Vantress, a 5-pound broiler chicken's feathers weigh about 74 grams or 2.6 ounces, or 3.3 percent of its body weight. Since that chicken has some 9,000 feathers, each one weighs about 0.0082 grams"

......unlikely that the falcon's feather weighed 30g

Yes, that is why I questioned it! I wonder if the NASA site meant 0.03 g ? as opposed to kg?

 

[jefmcg]

Was the falcon from Malta?

 

[winjim]

They let these people build rockets?

 

[Spinney]

They let these people build rockets?

Well no. The report was probably written by public relations bods, not rocket scientists...

 

[snorri]

I wonder if the NASA site meant 0.03 g ? as opposed to kg?

Probably, they're not so hot on metric over there.

 

[jefmcg]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I

 

[classic33]

Yes, that is why I questioned it! I wonder if the NASA site meant 0.03 g ? as opposed to kg?

The hammer was 44 times heavier though!

 

[ColinJ]

They let these people build rockets?

You might laugh, but ...

The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit ("American"), contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, that used those results expected them to be in metric units, in accord with the SIS. Software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings calculated results in pound-seconds. The trajectory calculation used these results to correct the predicted position of the spacecraft for the effects of thruster firings. This software expected its inputs to be in newton-seconds.

The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed. A meeting of trajectory software engineers, trajectory software operators (navigators), propulsion engineers, and managers, was convened to consider the possibility of executing Trajectory Correction Maneuver-5, which was in the schedule. Attendees of the meeting recall an agreement to conduct TCM-5, but it was ultimately not done.

[LINK]
And that was the end of that!