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Right Angle: Backstage (09-27-2022)

You should have seen the “backstage” Backstage, and we’re glad you didn’t.

Right Angle: Backstage (09-27-2022)

You should have seen the “backstage” Backstage, and we’re glad you didn’t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BYdYq2cYHg

O, and here’s the Space Engine tutorial Bill did. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aLEMSAA7kw

20 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage (09-27-2022)”

Our foreign policy is freedom – great idea, though I think it is somewhat hampered by the “we’re not the world’s police” idea as well. Quieter, what used to be called back channel, work would certainly get a lot more done. Sneaking a bunch of Starlink ground units into Iran would make Musk’s satellite orientation actually useful.
Carbon credits always struck me more like indulgences rather than bitcoin or virtual property. You only need them to counter the things you do that people say are bad. If however you pay off the people accusing you, what did bad isn’t quite so bad anymore.

On the uprising in Iran: There were articles today that Elon Musk has positioned Starlink over Iran and it’s now available to the people there. That is such a great, humanitarian thing to do for those poor, oppressed people. I don’t always agree with Musk, but he sure can come through when needed.

I always assumed it was the recharge time. Faster to let the moon come around than to cycle up a massive battle station.

But wouldn’t destroying Yavin pretty much frag all of its moons in the process?
On a side note, I dropped this in the comments over the summer but I don’t know if you saw it. Your 40 year retrospective on 1982’s movies was excellent – any thoughts on doing the same for the music of 1982?

Lol, a LOT of things are ‘repurposed spy satellites’. The first major application of CCDs (Charge Coupled Devices) was on the KH-11 KENNEN spy satellite at 800×800 pixels. CCDs are what makes the camera on your phone, and every other digital camera, possible. The more pixels the greater the zoom capability.

Take any digital camera, set it to max resolution, and take a picture of anything that has distance in the field of view. The more pixels the greater the detail at distance before pixelation occurs and detail is lost.

That’s exactly how spy satellites work.

Just for fun, go find a picture of the KH-11 KENNEN spy satellite. If you didn’t know any different you’d think it was a photo of the Hubble Space Telescope.

That satellite was launched in December of 1976. Which is long, long before the general public was aware of and had access to digital cameras.

Before that satellite was deployed real-time surveillance was impossible from space. Satellites used physical film in canisters which were ejected from the satellite and had to re-enter our atmosphere. Then be recovered from wherever they fell. Usually in a desert inside the CONUS where there were few to no people to observe and interfere with the material.

(BTW, CCDs were what rendered the OXCART family of planes, the A-12/YF-12/SR-71/M21 aircraft, obsolete. It was no longer necessary to send high altitude high speed reconnaissance planes with human pilots into harm’s way to find out what an enemy was doing.)

This is just one example. Nearly all the silicon transistor technology that we take for granted today was developed to facilitate miniaturization and increase the robustness of space vehicles of one sort or another.

Our current society owes a lot to the benefits accrued from space exploration and space applications. No small part of which is derived from the technology developed for and used in spy satellites.

Sadly too few people are aware of the benefits derived from aeronautics and space engineering.

Our current society owes a lot to the benefits accrued from space exploration and space applications. No small part of which is derived from the technology developed for and used in spy satellites.

Sadly too few people are aware of the benefits derived from aeronautics and space engineering.

Amen to this. There is a website out there that I cannot locate quickly today that is dedicated to enumerating the quality of life benefits along with the financial benefit that the “SPACE” program actually derived.
If the general public could be made to understand these benefits AND the benefits from petroleum distillation (i.e. all the products we would have to give up if we actually stopped completely) attitudes would change.
IMO this should be mandatory teaching in HS.

Once again we find ourselves in complete agreement.

If this kind of information was a mandatory part of education then the idea of curtailing or eliminating things like space exploration and petroleum distillation would be relegated to an equivalence of advocating mass suicide. Which in fact is the case, if eliminated they would be wholly destructive to the modern way of life and all the benefits even those who do not live in industrialized nations reap from them.

So anyone trying to promote such things would be easily seen for the nut job they really are.

I even see a lot of so-called conservatives advocating against space exploration and technology simply because they do not grasp the previously unimaginable benefits we reap as a species from that sort of thing.

Whenever I see someone saying “We don’t need to be wasting money in outer space.” or something similar I know I’m either dealing with an idiot or someone who is ignorant and badly in need of being educated on the topic. It’s simple to discern which, idiot or ignorant, by simply asking “Are you aware that for every dollar we spend on space we get three dollars back in tech? Name any investment that pays 300% and I’ll wait while you try to come up with one.”

Almost nothing we do today would be possible without the technological advances garnered from aerospace technology or the materials produced cheaply and abundantly from the distillation of petroleum. Anyone who wants to do away with either and even worse both is not someone to be taken seriously.

You’re right, including that sort of information as a mandatory part of education would very likely change the world for the better. Doing this would be a simple thing. It’s one of those tactics that I’m always trying to find and point out that would get the world back on a track towards a brighter future.

Bravo.

And it goes beyond that even. As Bill has pointed out, the modern cell phone is essentially a Star Trek communicator reimagined.
The data tablets from 2001 are now called iPads.
People saw the things that could be and actually created them.
How do you put a value, an ROI on that?
Incalculable is a poor word choice.

And it blows my mind how cheap this stuff has gotten. I run a Moto G7 Power phone that cost less than $200 and it lasts for +/- 5 days on a full charge. It’s not that expensive and it’s literally an internet connected computer that fits in my pocket.

I just ordered an Amazon Fire Tablet because I want a dedicated portable display for my weather station. It’s a refurb but all it has to do is display the Ambient Weather app and the tablet cost $15.

I have another one of those in service right now and all it does is display the RadarScope Pro app.

I do volunteer work for the US National Weather Service so these things are not just toys to fiddle with. I get a real time feed from the area Weather Forecast Office (WFO) doppler radar. People who do what I do are responsible for many of the life saving warnings issued by the National Weather Service in regards to hazardous weather. I feed weather data directly back up to the NWS. This improves both forecast and early warning scope and accuracy. It’s not a trivial thing.

If you need a display for something $15 is dirt cheap.

I remember when a PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) CCD or closed circuit analog camera cost between $3,000 and $5,000 per unit. There was no way I or most people could afford them and only high security installations and high crime prone retailers could justify that cost. Now I can buy a decent one for around $50.

When the price of cameras got down to something anyone could afford I added custom design and installation of camera systems to my business offerings. So this makes me money and is directly derived from aerospace and materials engineering.

These examples are just how this stuff has improved my life personally and are by no means the only examples just applied to my life.

My point here is that not only are the things we’re talking about responsible for massive improvement to our lives, the tech we’ve developed thereby is so affordable it’s accessible to nearly everyone.

There are two groups of people directly responsible for this; scientists and engineers. Real scientists, not global warming alarmist political toadies. Scientists discovered the principles and concepts, engineers took those principles and concepts and developed primary, secondary and tertiary applications for them.

That includes people like you, who give people like me the tools needed to accomplish so much more than would otherwise have been possible.

The world has become safer, more productive and more prosperous thereby. This is not a zero-sum game, it is for all practical purposes an infinite range over time. We have no idea what principles and concepts will be discovered and developed in the future but we can get a glimpse in extrapolating from the current steep curve demonstrated by technology in our lifetimes.

I could, and probably should but also probably never will, write a book on this topic.

You’re right in saying that ‘incalculable’ is far too mild a word.

Now if the Left would just get out of our way and stop hindering nearly everything we probably could not deliver utopia to mankind but we could make serious improvements over what is already becoming a damn good world for human beings to live in.

The woman that was murdered in Iran for not wearing her seatbelt properly, wait a minute what would happen here in America if we refused to wear or take the ticket / refuse to go to jail what to you think the cop will do, walk away or escalate until he “fears for his life”?

Try this…go to the great lakes area on Earth…see how the lakes look partially dried up…you’ll find it’s still a long way from being a full version Universe sim.

Scott…fyi, this isn’t showing on the Shows/Right Angle/Backstage tab. And oh…Space Engine! I’ve been using that for a long time…and yet it’s still in beta.

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