The Da Vinci Code - An interesting fact?

hamster

Hey has anyone read the "Da Vinci Code" book by Dan Brown? I have just got into it and I find a reference to Venus and the origins of the Pentagram.

In it, the author describes Venus as the graphic origin of the Pentagram. Venus, over an eight year cycle draws out the pattern of a Pentagram! I haven't tried checking this yet. But wow did anyone here know this? That's amazing.

Must check this out....

Capt'n Midnight

hamster wrote:

Must check this out....

yeah do that and let us know what you found out, having read the book - hey I was on holidays foreign country outside tourist area - most of what's in it could be found on the internet.. And LOTS of factual errors in other books , my favorite being the way in Deception Point he assumes that some jets can run on afterburner for hours when in the real world its only a matter of minutes.

Talliesin

One page on this:
It has been pointed out by some trying to determine the origin of the pentagram's religious and occult significance that if you plot the position of venus at each synodic period you get five points, and those five points make a pentagram.
Of course any five points make a pentagram! It's not even a regular pentagram. Really, it's not terribly convincing.
See also, http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/venus.html

Geoffw

The best review of the Da Vinci Code reads ........... "the worst book I have never finished!"

....sadly for me I stuck it out to the very end.

Danno

Ha! That book is total garbage. An insult to loo roll IMO!

dearg_doom

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

yeah do that and let us know what you found out, having read the book - hey I was on holidays foreign country outside tourist area - most of what's in it could be found on the internet.. And LOTS of factual errors in other books , my favorite being the way in Deception Point he assumes that some jets can run on afterburner for hours when in the real world its only a matter of minutes.

ConcordeRIP used afterburn for over an hour at a time between NY-LON.

But you are right that fighters can only AB for a few minutes, they're far too small to hold enough fuel for any longer.

Capt'n Midnight

dearg_doom wrote:

ConcordeRIP used afterburn for over an hour at a time between NY-LON..

At takeoff over half the weight was fuel, more than the passengers, cargo and the rest of the aircraft combined and unlike fighters it was optimised for straight line speed at high altitude. Having said that a delta still has a fair bit of lift at angles of attack up to 70 degrees , wouldn't fancy pushing the drinks trolly agains that. Many fighters are optimised for manuverability down around 400Kts

But for real long distance crusing you can't beat the XB-70, not quite as fast as a blackbird but it could get to where it was going without having to refuel on-route


.. 2c

dearg_doom

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

At takeoff over half the weight was fuel, more than the passengers, cargo and the rest of the aircraft combined and unlike fighters it was optimised for straight line speed at high altitude. Having said that a delta still has a fair bit of lift at angles of attack up to 70 degrees , wouldn't fancy pushing the drinks trolly agains that. Many fighters are optimised for manuverability down around 400Kts

But for real long distance crusing you can't beat the XB-70, not quite as fast as a blackbird but it could get to where it was going without having to refuel on-route


.. 2c

Talk about great minds:)

I was going to use the XB-70, SR-71(my current Desktop) and talk about the optimisation differences between Concorde and a fighter(as clarification of my main point), but left them out because most people wouldn't care too much.

So I'll take those 2c and raise you $0.02:)

Have you ever seen the pics of the XB-70, very impressive plane. Unfortunately during the publicity shoot it crashed into one of the picture taking chase-planes and got cancelled as a result, which is why the B52 is still with us.

And the SR-71's biggest flaw??

It was a cutting edge spy-plane with a minisule radar sig for it's size but the very engines that made it so valuable also glowed white hot! Which isn't too handy if your being chased out of hostile airspace by a fighter with IRG missiles.

Capt'n Midnight

www.labiker.org/xb70.html - best XB70 site even though it hasn't change a lot in the last decade or so.

one of the XB's strangest problems - it's anti lock brakes
"This is a delicate affair, because the XB-70 has demonstrated a major problem with braking at low speeds (a violent chatter that caused the XB-70s braking distance from just 5mph to be 400 feet!), making maneuvering a tedious affair."
"White let the Valkyrie coast to a stop, using 10,800 feet of runway"

http://www.ghostsquadron-ggw.org/proptalk/speaker.cfm?date=200208&name=Col. Joseph F. 'Joe' ...
http://area51specialprojects.com/xb70story.html - copy of labiker with more pics

And everyone knows that CERN make thier own planes