Please forgive a intrusion by a ship modeler who's straying a long way from home. Maybe everyone in this forum has heard the following sad story - but if not, everyone needs to know it.
It's fairly well known that, a few years ago, NASA, in its ongoing effort to figure out the potential effects of collisions with birds on spacecraft and aircraft, developed a cannon-like machine that, in a laboratory environment, fires dead chickens at airplane and space shuttle mockups. It seems that a British manufacturer of railroad locomotives was concerned about what would happen if one of its latest high-speed trains collided with a flying bird. So the company ordered a duplicate of the NASA chicken cannon.
The first chicken they fired at the windshield of the locomotive smashed the glass, went straight through the head of the dummy sitting on the operator's seat, continued through the headrest behind it, and imbedded itself in the steel bulkhead behind the seat. The engineers, needless to say, found this disturbing. They sent NASA an e-mail, describing the problem in detail and asking, "what on earth should we do now?"
NASA sent back an e-mail consisting of three words: "Thaw the chicken."
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.