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August 28, 2021 Archives

Saturday, August 28, 2021

THE HAPPENING WORLD: SpaceX CRS-23 Cargo Launch to the International Space Station—This Time for Sure!

After a weather scrub yesterday, the second attempt to launch the CRS-23 resupply mission to the International Space Station is scheduled for 07:14 UTC on Sunday, 2021-08-29.

Posted at 21:35 Permalink

THE HAPPENING WORLD: Astra LV0006 Orbital Test Flight—Second Attempt

The launch window opens at 21:00 UTC on 2021-08-28.

Update: Launch failure—that was one weird launch. Immediately after liftoff, the rocket appeared to lose thrust and slide sideways like some of the early V-2 launches but, instead of flipping over and blowing up, recovered and continued to climb. But then, at 02:32 after liftoff, the engine cut off, something appeared to separate from the rocket, and the call “Termination sent” was heard. The rocket went all Kerbal, tumbling, and the rocket camera downlink was cut off.

Update:

2021-08-29 00:12 UTC

Posted at 18:42 Permalink

CONTEXT: Weekly Space Report: Starbase Developments, NASA Spacesuit Woes

Posted at 14:09 Permalink

CONTINUITY: Four Legged Amphibious “Whale”

Posted at 13:29 Permalink

THE HAPPENING WORLD: Eugene Podkletnov’s “Impulse Gravity Generator”

Here is the original Podkletnov and Modanese paper from 2001, “Impulse Gravity Generator Based on Charged YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-y} Superconductor with Composite Crystal Structure”. You may remember Dr Eugene Podkletnov from his “gravity shielding” experiments with rotating superconductors in the 1990s. This is a different (although possibly related) phenomenon, created by discharging a high voltage Marx generator through a superconductor placed in an intense magnetic field, with a pulse length of 60 to 70 nanoseconds. The claimed effects are wild.

Despite the short duration of the effect, the beam we’re generating is able to knock down objects in the beam’s path, and under certain conditions it’s even possible to make holes in brick walls and even deform metals. So it’s a very powerful tool.

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The force of the impulse depends entirely on the structure of the superconducting emitter and the voltage that we apply to it. Given the materials & voltages we currently have available, we can obtain large impulses capable of punching holes in thick concrete walls, and we’ve also been able to demonstrate deforming metal plates with a thickness of a couple of inches.

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We’ve experimented with using the impulse generator on a variety of materials, and it’s led us to another important find: the beam can hit a target over very large distances with a minimum of divergence and what appears to be zero loss in energy, even after passing through other objects in the beam path.

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A more recent experiment was conducted over a distance of 5 kilometers, and the beam penetrated through several houses made of concrete. We did not measure any loss of energy, but after closely evaluating the calculations that we’ve made, we should get some decrease in beam-energy at distances greater than 100 kilometers.

Oh, and “Nonetheless, we always had precise, consistent results, giving us a figure of 64 C, which indicates that the gravitational impulse is propagating at a speed 64 times faster than the speed of light.”

Extraordinary claims, and all that, but this sounds like a fun project with which those inclined to mad science should be tinkering away in search of extraordinary evidence. Reports of unexplained holes in concrete walls in the vicinity of Fourmilab are completely unsubstantiated, exaggerated, and not my fault.

Posted at 12:53 Permalink

TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Epic Flop—The IBM PCjr

Here is more about the IBM PCjr. The PCjr was much anticipated, with some analysts expecting IBM to dominate the home computer market as the original IBM PC had in business applications. But the machine's sorely limited memory, poor (and memory-hungry) graphics, crude sound, truly awful (although, innovatively, wireless) “chiclet” keyboard, limited expandability, and high price doomed it. Interestingly, the Radio Shack Tandy 1000 series, originally introduced as a PCjr clone, was highly successful and remained on the market from its introduction in 1984 through 1993.

Posted at 12:29 Permalink