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July 8, 2021 Archives
Thursday, July 8, 2021
CONTINUITY: Construction of Hoover Dam
This 1937 U.S. Department of the Interior film, which in some ways resembles Stalin-era Soviet industrialisation propaganda, refers to the dam throughout as “Boulder Dam”. The present Dear Leader must not, of course, name anything after the previous Dear Leader. The dam was officially named “Hoover Dam” by an act of Congress in 1947.
Posted at
15:52
THE HAPPENING WORLD: Dubai Port Explosion Visible from Space
تصویر ماهوارهای از انفجار بزرگ بندر جبل علی دبی.
— 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝘇𝗮𝗱 𝗙𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗵𝗶 فرزاد فتاحی (@FattahiFarzad) July 7, 2021
این انفجار در مرکز تصویر قابل مشاهده است.
Satellite images of the massive blast at Dubai’s Jebel Ali port.
The explosion is visible in the center of the footage pic.twitter.com/jV8kzGSdmF
Posted at
14:54
CONTEXT: Don't Leave Your Bicycle Outside—at the South Pole
Hey, someone accidentally left the Fat Tire #bicycle out all winter! In summer time people enjoy riding this around, but I think it might be too iced over at this point! Picture from winter-over Lisa! #southpole #Antarctica pic.twitter.com/LZ14dTZVdy
— South Pole Telescope (@SPTelescope) July 7, 2021
Posted at
14:19
THE HAPPENING WORLD: What Is Chia, and Why Is It Devouring Solid State Drives?
What’s Chia, and Why is it Eating all the Hard Drives? https://t.co/DpnmS1qyTk
— hackaday (@hackaday) July 7, 2021
Posted at
12:39
CONTEXT: Hand-Flying a Rocket to Space
Both the Apollo command module and Space Shuttle had the ability for the crew to take over manual guidance during the ascent to orbit, but this was a backup mode never used in a mission. One question I've tried to answer for many years is whether crews were actually trained on this mode. Anybody know a pilot-astronaut who remembers?
While manual control of rocket flight is possible (and, as mentioned in the video, people can do a pretty good job of it), for pure rocket flight I'd argue that an “autopilot” is still necessary to provide closed-loop stability augmentation by thrust vectoring. I doubt that human response time is adequate to keep the pointy end up and flamey end down on an inherently aerodynamically unstable vehicle in the rapidly-changing centre of mass and centre of pressure environment of a rocket ascent.
For a humorous aside, see my “Landing by Hand on the Moon”.
Posted at
11:36