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April 16, 2021 Archives
Friday, April 16, 2021
THE HAPPENING WORLD: SpaceX: NASA Selects Starship for Human Lunar Landing System
NASA has selected Starship to land the first astronauts on the lunar surface since the Apollo program! We are humbled to help @NASAArtemis usher in a new era of human space exploration → https://t.co/Qcuop33Ryz pic.twitter.com/GN9Tcfqlfp
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 16, 2021
Update: here is the NASA Source Selection Statement [PDF]. (2021-04-16 22:15 UTC)
Update: this is the NASA video announcement of the SpaceX selection for the Artemis Human Landing System. (2021-04-16 23:55 UTC)
Posted at
21:31
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: What Shall We Call the Hill?
Me: painstakingly selects names for every town, mountain, river, etc in my books using lots of research into meanings and associations
— Serra (@TattooedMuppet) April 16, 2021
The real world: pic.twitter.com/ibWf1zZNyL
Posted at
16:41
CONTINUITY: HP 9825 Repair Part 3: Logic Analyser and a 43 Year Old Patent to the Rescue
After going about as far as possible with an oscilloscope (although back in the day we went way deeper into the woods with just a ’scope), it's time to hook up a logic analyser and see what the CPU and memory are doing. Aiding in the process is U.S. Patent 4,075,679 [PDF], granted in February, 1978 and assigned to Hewlett-Packard, whose 606 pages contain, inter alia, a complete commented source code listing of the ROM and extensive logic, circuit, and timing diagrams. How deep was the damage to this vintage machine when its power supply went all berserker?
Posted at
13:42
CONTEXT: New Insights in the Search for Planet Nine
Here is the musical composition mentioned in the interview, Planet 9, op. 3, by Eduardo Marturet, in its premiere performance by the Miami Symphony Orchestra on 2021-03-14.
Posted at
12:01
THE HAPPENING WORLD: Lots of Launches Coming Up
Upcoming orbital launches:
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 15, 2021
• April 22: Falcon 9 / Crew Dragon
• April 25: Soyuz / OneWeb
• April 26: Delta 4-Heavy / NROL-82
• April 27: Vega / Pléiades Neo
• April 28: Falcon 9 / Starlink
• April 29: Long March 5B / Chinese space stationhttps://t.co/ufc1f2AZX5 pic.twitter.com/KuOR4Bzy6a
There hasn't been an Ariane 5 launch since August, 2020—eight months ago.
Posted at
11:00
CONTINUITY: The Story of NASA's Space Tracking Ships
In the early days of missile testing and spaceflight, tracking ships allowed covering gaps where satellites in low Earth orbit were out of range of ground-based tracking and control stations. As satellite communication constellations such as NASA's TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) matured, the need for such ships diminished and now most have been retired.
Many of NASA's early tracking ships were converted from World War II Liberty ships, many built at the Marinship yards in Sausalito, California. Years later, I named my computer hardware company, Marinchip Systems, after this enterprise and, a few years after that, Autodesk, Inc. had its headquarters at 2320 Marinship Way in Sausalito, on the site of the former shipyard.
Posted at
09:58