Postcards from the Bleeding Edge: 09/11/2005 - 09/18/2005

Postcards from the Bleeding Edge

Friday, September 16, 2005

Blond perception

Two blondes living in Oklahoma were sitting on a bench talking.

One blonde says to the other: "Which do you think is farther away... Florida or the moon?"

The other blonde turns and says "Hel-loooooooooo, can you see Florida?

¶ 1:13 PM 2 comments links to this post

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Epicycles

I just stumbled across the best graphic illumnation of what an epicycle was (left) - from Sparkleberry springs - this pic is an earth centric view of what the solar system looked like to early stargazers.

Can you imagine what a wrench in our worldview it was to finally apply occam's razor and put the sun at the center of the solar system - and our solar system at the edge of a thin ring of otherwise insignificant stars?

The odd white track is of near earth asteroid 1999RQ36 - which will be passing earth at about 4 million miles away next weekend.

¶ 10:24 AM 1 comments links to this post

Sunday, September 11, 2005

meanwhile, 30km out from landing

Hayabusa closes in on Itokawa... and to me it looks like a yummy cashew - filmed in black and white.

The robot Minerva will detach from Hayabusa, land on Itokawa, and survey it while moving around its surface.

Moving around on wheels works only when gravity is present, so a probe with wheels is of no use on Itokawa. Minerva travels by leaping, using its own momentum by accelerating a weight inside itself. This is an entirely new idea.

Not exactly. I remember discussing the same thing back in my L5 days. You don't need rockets to get around on an asteroid - springs suffice. Small springs.

But it's the first time it's been implemented - and it's a heck of a lot more useful - than the recently announced lunar penguin....

Minerva was the goddess of Wisdom, by the way - and she knew that gravity sucked.

Labels: asteroids, hayabusa, jaxa, space, space05

¶ 11:37 PM 1 comments links to this post

David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.

Resume,Songs, My new blog, NeX-6, My facebook page
Orgs I like
The EFF - keeping free speech in the world
Musical stuff I like
Jeff, Rick, Ardour, Jack
Prior Rants - Wheels down on mars! Tracking the landing of Curiosity, from Seattle spotting NEOs from around venus's orbit Asteroids as lunar orbit resources SOPA is bad news Departing France for England, then 'home'. An incredible stream of co-incidences passing me b... 12 suggestions for startups Steve Jobs, RIP. Welcoming my father to the blogosphere
Best of the blog:
Uncle Bill's Helicopter - A speech I gave to ITT Tech - Chicken soup for engineers
Beating the Brand - A pathological exploration of how branding makes it hard to think straight
Inside the Internet Mind - trying to map the weather within the global supercomputer that consists of humans and google
Sex In Politics - If politicians spent more time pounding the flesh rather than pressing it, it would be a better world
Getting resources from space - An alternative to blowing money on mars using NEAs.
On the Columbia - Why I care about space
Authors I like:
Doc Searls
Where's Cherie?
UrbanAgora
Jerry Pournelle
The Cubic Dog
Evan Hunt
The Bay Area is talking
Brizzled
Zimnoiac Emanations
Eric Raymond
Unlocking The Air
Bob Mage
BroadBand & Me
SpaceCraft
Selenian Boondocks
My Pencil
Transterrestial Musings
Bear Waller Hollar
Callahans

If you really want to, you can poke through the below links as well.

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