What are you doing today?

This has seemed like a very long day. Can't wait for it to be over. Raining outside so not been able to get out much except for my walk this morning.
 
Just opened a bottle of wine (in marked contrast to other years, at Christmas, when the wine would have been opened by midday, or lunch time).

Yes, was lashing here all day, and Decent Brother also reported rain.

Currently reading recipes; methinks that there may well be a spot of toil in the kitchen tomorrow.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
Brilliant post, and a wonderful - and a fascinating and utterly compelling - slice of social history. That is hilarious.

My grandmother always said that one of her greatest regrets was not learning to drive, and she loved - thrilled to - the fact that my mother could - and did - drive (not that my mother was taught to drive in the house where she grew up; they were comfortably off, and big into education, but a lot less so on matters such as mobility - social, political and actual - for women).

Mind you, two further things occur: My own mother's first ever car was - snigger, wait for it, yes - a coupe, bought as a result of a promotion - she was promoted to succeed her boss who had died - which had my father wholly green with envy. That is absolutely hilarious.

The fact that my father had monopolised to some extent (and this was subconscious, in his case, or, perhaps an expression of the lure of the idea of a "car" as an extension of self-image, rather than a desire to control female mobility) - or, rather, to be more precise, had first call on, or priority on - the "family" car (which she had always contributed to, financially, so that she could argue it was "their" car, - the family car - rather than "his" car), served to motivate her to buy her own car.

Anyway - and, this is the second thing, and it goes right back to @lizkat's brilliant post on the reasons women were originally "allowed" to drive, or, "accepted" or "tolerated" behind the wheel while on the road by the males in their family, - in other words, not usually for "private" reasons (pleasure, private pursuits, personal hobbies or interests) - but for necessary reasons (shopping, errands, taking kids to the doctor, or other necessary trips, and, in fairness, also attending her classes when she went to college), reasons that some of those males belatedly realised were also of considerable convenience to themselves.
Click to expand...
I really had to push Mrs AFB to learn to drive. At the time we lived in London and I could walk to work. When Miss AFB came along I kept telling her it would be much easier if she could drive rather than get around on buses etc, as the car would just be sitting there.
By the time she passed her test we were living in the Midlands. But she has never been a confident driver and refuses to drive if we are both going somewhere. The longest drive she ever accomplished was when we moved to our new house. Must be around 20 odd miles. She followed me all the way as she refuse to use a Sat Nav.
 
Roller said:
I suspect the cost of building and storing copies of the assembled telescope or even just its components was prohibitive, though they did manufacture spares for some parts. For example, the ring that attaches the telescope to the booster malfunctioned recently and was replaced with a backup. The primary reason for the mission's lifespan is its limited fuel supply, which will be consumed to periodically correct the telescope's position orbiting L2. I've read speculation that a robotic fuel resupply mission could be considered at some point in the future.

One of the coolest aspects (pun intended) of the JWST is its sensitivity to long wavelengths of radiation. I hadn't thought about this before, but apparently that's needed because light from the most distant/oldest objects the telescope is expected to observe will have been severely redshifted. Hence the need to keep the equipment at such cold temperatures. One instrument will operate at 7 degrees C above absolute zero.

Although it'll take almost a month for the JWST to arrive at its destination, some critical events will happen within the first two weeks. These include deployment of the sunshield and the primary and secondary mirrors. I agree that it must be terrifying to be back here on Earth and wait for events to unfold (pun again intended) if you've spent much of your career working on Webb. However, I'll note that this is not uncommon in science and technology, where one may devote decades to a line of research that doesn't pan out. When that occurs, though, there is solace that failures often do as much to advance the state-of-the-art as do successes.
Click to expand...

Well, obviously the issue is cost, but I suspect the cost of constructing the the telescope and launching it is a fraction of its $10B cost. The development, many engineering complications, and many, many program delays due to funding made the program as expensive as it is. So to build another telescope with all the engineering sorted out and proper amount money allocated to build an additional unit should cost not that much more, relatively speaking. It’s pretty typical to build backup satellites, historically speaking.

They’re obviously going to have spare parts of things that’s could potentially fail on the ground. In fact, some parts are actually made in multiple batches, each batch is tested, and the best performing batch has those parts used. As it is, a lot of the sensors are those used (ir derivatives of) existing sensors on spacecraft. But as I’m sure you know, the JWST, unlike Hubble, will be hanging out in a place in space inaccessible for future repairs and does not inherently have a mechanism to dock to other spacecraft and if in fact we have a spacecraft to make it there (Orion possibly- though it lacks a way of manipulating the spacecraft).

There is no design to support to support a robotics fuel resupply mission, though that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. But it would likely be much more risky and dangerous. There was talk of adding an adapter so it could dock with other spacecraft, but that apparently doesn’t appear to have made the final design.

In that the JWST has almost 350 single point failures, and a bunch that are mission critical, I think having a backup would have a good idea. A lot can go wrong between now and deployment. Additionally, with as little as a 6 year lifespan due to the fuel limitations, if the primary program is successful the backup could be used to essentially extend the program as has been done with many space programs. If JWST fails (knock on wood) it’s pretty unlikely we’ll see a second one built.
 
Neither of my grandmothers learned to drive, but my mother, born in 1910, took after her father more than she did her mother -- adventurous, curious about the world around her and wanting to explore it -- and my grandfather taught her to drive (at least the basics) when she was only about 14 years old -- of course, the roads back then were not exactly congested, nor was anyone strict about young people having a driver's ed course or a learner's permit, all that, before obtaining a driver's license. My mother got her license at age 16 and my grandfather bought her a yellow Buick Roadster (convertible). She loved that car and I can only imagine the fun she had driving it around with her friends all piled in, too.

Later on she moved from navigating on land and water (she loved piloting their small Chris-Craft, too) to navigating in the air, and took flying lessons and learned how to fly open-cockpit planes in the mid-1930's. Of course WW II put an end to that sort of recreational flying, as well as her meeting my father and marrying him. When eventually I came along, too, that really put "paid" to the whole flying thing for her. One of my most treasured items is her student pilot's license, with a photo of her in a leather flight helmet and goggles..... Along with the necessary signatures of the officials, there is one by Amelia Earhart, She appeared at some sort of event in Western Pennsylvania, my mother's home base, at some point while my mother was still a student pilot, and my mother was able to briefly meet her and receive the autograph. Needless to say she was thrilled that day, remembered it for the rest of her life, and then later was devastated when Amelia Earhart disappeared.
 
Clix Pix said:
Neither of my grandmothers learned to drive, but my mother, born in 1910, took after her father more than she did her mother -- adventurous, curious about the world around her and wanting to explore it -- and my grandfather taught her to drive (at least the basics) when she was only about 14 years old -- of course, the roads back then were not exactly congested, nor was anyone strict about young people having a driver's ed course or a learner's permit, all that, before obtaining a driver's license. My mother got her license at age 16 and my grandfather bought her a yellow Buick Roadster (convertible). She loved that car and I can only imagine the fun she had driving it around with her friends all piled in, too.

Later on she moved from navigating on land and water (she loved piloting their small Chris-Craft, too) to navigating in the air, and took flying lessons and learned how to fly open-cockpit planes in the mid-1930's. Of course WW II put an end to that sort of recreational flying, as well as her meeting my father and marrying him. When eventually I came along, too, that really put "paid" to the whole flying thing for her. One of my most treasured items is her student pilot's license, with a photo of her in a leather flight helmet and goggles..... Along with the necessary signatures of the officials, there is one by Amelia Earhart, She appeared at some sort of event in Western Pennsylvania, my mother's home base, at some point while my mother was still a student pilot, and my mother was able to briefly meet her and receive the autograph. Needless to say she was thrilled that day, remembered it for the rest of her life, and then later was devastated when Amelia Earhart disappeared.
Click to expand...

Brilliant post, and thanks for sharing.

Why not post a shot (image, picture) of that autographed form - and your mother's student pilot licence - by Amelia Earhart?

Given our mutual distaste for much of the quotidian nonsense (in form and content, both) that is posted under the name of photography - along with a fascination and a desire to salute, acknowledge, recognise and applaud female adventurers and women who loved to be independent and mobile - and a marked preference to post stuff that is actually interesting and thought-provoking - I know that I, personally, would love to see a shot of this.
 
Clix Pix said:
Neither of my grandmothers learned to drive, but my mother, born in 1910, took after her father more than she did her mother -- adventurous, curious about the world around her and wanting to explore it -- and my grandfather taught her to drive (at least the basics) when she was only about 14 years old -- of course, the roads back then were not exactly congested, nor was anyone strict about young people having a driver's ed course or a learner's permit, all that, before obtaining a driver's license. My mother got her license at age 16 and my grandfather bought her a yellow Buick Roadster (convertible). She loved that car and I can only imagine the fun she had driving it around with her friends all piled in, too.

Later on she moved from navigating on land and water (she loved piloting their small Chris-Craft, too) to navigating in the air, and took flying lessons and learned how to fly open-cockpit planes in the mid-1930's. Of course WW II put an end to that sort of recreational flying, as well as her meeting my father and marrying him. When eventually I came along, too, that really put "paid" to the whole flying thing for her. One of my most treasured items is her student pilot's license, with a photo of her in a leather flight helmet and goggles..... Along with the necessary signatures of the officials, there is one by Amelia Earhart, She appeared at some sort of event in Western Pennsylvania, my mother's home base, at some point while my mother was still a student pilot, and my mother was able to briefly meet her and receive the autograph. Needless to say she was thrilled that day, remembered it for the rest of her life, and then later was devastated when Amelia Earhart disappeared.
Click to expand...
My mom, also born in 1910, didn't learn to drive until her mid 50s, a couple years after my dad passed. I never asked her, nor did she volunteer, why she felt the need to do start late. Perhaps it was a desire to provide what my father had done for us for years. While I was quite supportive and was the only family member willing to be a passenger with her, it soon became clear to me that her skills weren't where they should be — she actually closed her eyes while turning on occasion. She probably would have improved with additional practice, but soon decided never to get behind the wheel again. I don't view that as a failure, though. She re-entered the business world when doing so was even more challenging for women than it is today and did well until retirement.
 
Roller said:
I suspect the cost of building and storing copies of the assembled telescope or even just its components was prohibitive, though they did manufacture spares for some parts. For example, the ring that attaches the telescope to the booster malfunctioned recently and was replaced with a backup. The primary reason for the mission's lifespan is its limited fuel supply, which will be consumed to periodically correct the telescope's position orbiting L2. I've read speculation that a robotic fuel resupply mission could be considered at some point in the future.

One of the coolest aspects (pun intended) of the JWST is its sensitivity to long wavelengths of radiation. I hadn't thought about this before, but apparently that's needed because light from the most distant/oldest objects the telescope is expected to observe will have been severely redshifted. Hence the need to keep the equipment at such cold temperatures. One instrument will operate at 7 degrees C above absolute zero.

Although it'll take almost a month for the JWST to arrive at its destination, some critical events will happen within the first two weeks. These include deployment of the sunshield and the primary and secondary mirrors. I agree that it must be terrifying to be back here on Earth and wait for events to unfold (pun again intended) if you've spent much of your career working on Webb. However, I'll note that this is not uncommon in science and technology, where one may devote decades to a line of research that doesn't pan out. When that occurs, though, there is solace that failures often do as much to advance the state-of-the-art as do successes.
Click to expand...
What gets me excited about the JWST is what I learned in the context of Oumuamua (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ʻOumuamua). I didn't think about the fact before that "spaceship" sized objects are below the resolution of our current telescopes, so we actually have very little idea of small object traffic even in our Solar system.

-----
Fired up my old MBP 13" with TB2 and hooked up my UAD Apollo Twin Solo. It does a lot of justice to Apple Music's Lossless material. I have it on 96Khz upsampling with SampleRate conversion enabled for the SPDIF in from my TV. It's a very conservative stereo 2.0 setup using a 10-year old pair of Mackie MR5 mk1. Got them back in 2011 for $160 and oh boy, their only weakness is loss of accuracy in the sub bass range, but if they are adequately decoupled from the wall (I have them wall mounted) their bass is still neat. My psychological threshold would be ~$2000 for an upgrade but to date, I couldn't get myself to spend 10x to sound 1.5x or perhaps 2x better.

I also fired up my MIDI keyboard to teach the babies a little music. The issue is, they are way more excited about the sliders and encoders than the actual piano keys.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
Brilliant post, and thanks for sharing.

Why not post a shot (image, picture) of that autographed form - and your mother's student pilot licence - by Amelia Earhart?

Given our mutual distaste for much of the quotidian nonsense (in form and content, both) that is posted under the name of photography - along with a fascination and a desire to salute, acknowledge, recognise and applaud female adventurers and women who loved to be independent and mobile - and a marked preference to post stuff that is actually interesting and thought-provoking - I know that I, personally, would love to see a shot of this.
Click to expand...

I'll have to look in my archives for that photo, as I know I have indeed posted it somewhere before on a forum......
 
Clix Pix said:
I'll have to look in my archives for that photo, as I know I have indeed posted it somewhere before on a forum......
Click to expand...
Not this one.

I look forward to seeing it.

And thank you for digging it out; this is something that is worth seeing (Amelia Earhart?? Hero!!! ....Respect, respect!!!!...) and so well worth saluting.
 
Today looking at the mountains of toys in our living room and wondering where they are all going to go. Day 2 or tidying up and probably more cooking. Christmas is never relaxing.

I might install a new Ring doorbell my wife bought. We had our standard doorbell ripped off by some teenagers a couple of weeks back. We caught them and got an apology, but no offer to pay for a new one. At least the Ring one has a camera in it and harder to remove.
 
Received a few framed pictures done by Rodney Matthews that I need to find a good place for on the walls and we got some nanoleaf lights that need installing over the next few days plus the usual cleanup after the Christmas festivities.
 
AG_PhamD said:
On my thoughts exactly. It will be cool to see what the JWST will bring back interns of scientific discovery, assuming everything works to plan. If was a NASA enginner in charge of any aspect of that program I would be be terrified. So many things that could go wrong. They’ve had almost 30 years to work on this, so let’s hope they get it right! If everything goes to plan this will be a truly an amazing engineering accomplishment.

It’s just kinda crazy in my mind they only built one of these. They’ve already invested so much in developing JWST building a second one wouldn’t be that much more expensive. If this one fails then they would have had a backup. Plus, it only has a lifespan of 6-10 years, maybe a little more if they’re lucky. I’m not sure we’ll see a successor in anywhere close to that timeframe.

I guess we’ll know in about a month if everything had unfurled correctly. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.
Click to expand...

Roller said:
I suspect the cost of building and storing copies of the assembled telescope or even just its components was prohibitive, though they did manufacture spares for some parts. For example, the ring that attaches the telescope to the booster malfunctioned recently and was replaced with a backup. The primary reason for the mission's lifespan is its limited fuel supply, which will be consumed to periodically correct the telescope's position orbiting L2. I've read speculation that a robotic fuel resupply mission could be considered at some point in the future.

One of the coolest aspects (pun intended) of the JWST is its sensitivity to long wavelengths of radiation. I hadn't thought about this before, but apparently that's needed because light from the most distant/oldest objects the telescope is expected to observe will have been severely redshifted. Hence the need to keep the equipment at such cold temperatures. One instrument will operate at 7 degrees C above absolute zero.

Although it'll take almost a month for the JWST to arrive at its destination, some critical events will happen within the first two weeks. These include deployment of the sunshield and the primary and secondary mirrors. I agree that it must be terrifying to be back here on Earth and wait for events to unfold (pun again intended) if you've spent much of your career working on Webb. However, I'll note that this is not uncommon in science and technology, where one may devote decades to a line of research that doesn't pan out. When that occurs, though, there is solace that failures often do as much to advance the state-of-the-art as do successes.
Click to expand...
I was very pleasantly surprised when the solar array deployed so early; I thought of Skylab but thankfully the deployment went perfectly. Now I worry about the sun shield, the mirror and the cryo-cooler [1]; I hope they all operate perfectly.

Isn’t 2021 a wonderful year in some respects? Commercial Crew Program; Perseverance; Ingenuity; the SLS RS-25 tests; and JWST. That must be worth 0.5% of U.S. GDP over the years [2], isn't it?

Also re-watched some recordings related to Apollo 8. Frank Borman was not one to mince words!





[1] Autocorrect to cry-pooper, seriously iOS?
[2] That didn't account for contributions from other collaborating countries, but I guess it's not too far off.
 
Last edited:
Apple fanboy said:
I really had to push Mrs AFB to learn to drive. At the time we lived in London and I could walk to work. When Miss AFB came along I kept telling her it would be much easier if she could drive rather than get around on buses etc, as the car would just be sitting there.
Click to expand...
My mother and I always made fun of my father being a NY driver. One day we stopped and gave it some thought and realized he had never driven in NY since he left at 15 for California, where he never drove. Fast forward to to his 20’s in the Air Force, and the first time he drove was his first tour in London. Evidently London drivers are much worse than NY drivers.
 
Alli said:
My mother and I always made fun of my father being a NY driver. One day we stopped and gave it some thought and realized he had never driven in NY since he left at 15 for California, where he never drove. Fast forward to to his 20’s in the Air Force, and the first time he drove was his first tour in London. Evidently London drivers are much worse than NY drivers.
Click to expand...
London driving is not for the faint hearted. I’ll be doing that in a van on the 6th of Jan.
 
Alli said:
My mother and I always made fun of my father being a NY driver. One day we stopped and gave it some thought and realized he had never driven in NY since he left at 15 for California, where he never drove. Fast forward to to his 20’s in the Air Force, and the first time he drove was his first tour in London. Evidently London drivers are much worse than NY drivers.
Click to expand...

My grandfather never had a license or any interest in cars. In return he encouraged my grandma to learn how to drive and as a positive side effect she could then pick him up from the nearby pubs when needed.
 
chengengaun said:
I was very pleasantly surprised when the solar array deployed so early; I thought of Skylab but thankfully the deployment went perfectly. Now I worry about the sun shield, the mirror and the cryo-cooler [1]; I hope they all operate perfectly.

Isn’t 2021 a wonderful year in some respects? Commercial Crew Program; Perseverance; Ingenuity; the SLS RS-25 tests; and JWST. That must be worth 0.5% of U.S. GDP over the years [2], isn't it?

Also re-watched some recordings related to Apollo 8. Frank Borman was not one to mince words!





[1] Autocorrect to cry-pooper, seriously iOS?
[2] That didn't account for contributions from other collaborating countries, but I guess it's not too far off.
Click to expand...


It definitely has been a great year for space exploration and space hardware development. We’re definitely in a new golden age of space flight.

The next few years should be very interesting too- Artemis, Starship, various satellite internet providers, the future of the ISS (it sounds like NASA is exploring a commercial space station program), etc. Artemis sounds like a bit of a mess at the moment though- no spacesuit yet and putting all the lunar lander eggs in the starship basket seems quite risky.
 
Back
Top