October 20, 2016 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold. Like Tuesday, we taped two 18 minute segments, the one below that aired tonight, and the second which will air tomorrow. Tonight’s podcast focused on discussing the problems experienced by Juno and Schiaparelli.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Embedded below the fold. Like Tuesday, we taped two 18 minute segments, the one below that aired tonight, and the second which will air tomorrow. Tonight’s podcast focused on discussing the problems experienced by Juno and Schiaparelli.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
If Schiaparelli hit the ground a minute too early, maybe because its parachute wasn’t deployed or deployed too early and tangled up, then it wouldn’t be where expected when Opportunity tried to image it.
Bad days for space flight with ExoMars and Juno both at somewhat reduced science and Falcon 9 exploding. But I do think that Juno will get almost as good science in this orbit too, if it stays alive long enough. And manages to turn on the instruments during the close flybys. I suspect that this two months orbit was designed with this scenario in mind. Maybe it will stay in it for upwards a year until they are satisfied with the data it has collected, before they dare take the risk to fire the engine to go into the two week orbit. It doesn’t look so bad to me, unless that safe mode is the symptom another problem.
Earlier this year Hitomi, an X-ray space telescope, spun itself to pieces, faster and faster until the solar panels were ripped off by centrifugal forces, 7 weeks after launch because the inertia navigation system failed and the star finding navigation system hadn’t been activated yet. It “thought” it was spinning when it wasn’t and autonomously tried to despin. Too bad, it would’ve given valuable data about dark matter and black holes among other things (they surprisingly discovered that even comets emit x-rays just a few years ago, x-ray telescoping is hard and not yet well explored). Still, it did get decisive data during that short time. I think that even after a single flyby with the instruments on, Juno would get the bulk of the intended science done.
Dear Mr. Zimmerman,
I found this article. It may of interest for you for a new blog entry.
https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2016/07/americas-economy-is-cartelized-corrupt-and-anti-competitive
What happened to the second part?
Willi: Well, I’ve been doing Batchelor appearances now for more than 10 years, and have been taping appearances with him now for five years. This appears to be the very first time that one of the appearances I taped didn’t make it on air. At least so far. None of the material was super time sensitive, so it could still run, though with each day the chances go down.
Willi–
thanks for spotting that. Thought I had downloaded the 2nd part…
Mr. Z;
Pivoting slightly– caught the last 1/2 of The Midnight Ocean show last night & am downloading the whole thing today. It was really good!
For the YouTube stream, they did a nice job with scrolling through (displaying) your book covers, and the whole show is on-line at their various platforms.
(We ab-so-lutely, have to get you recruited as the Science-Correspondent for Crowder when he goes daily! I’m convinced they would love you, and am making inquiries.)
Totally off topic; did you have to join SAG/AFTRA to work on Films?– I actually read the credits on films, I know what a Key Grip does, but what does the “Best Boy,” do? (Sounds “sexist,” (HA) is there a corresponding “Best Girl?”)
Wayne: SAG is the union for actors. No requirement to join if you work behind the camera. AFTRA is the actors’ union for television with similar membership rules.
None of this really mattered, however, because for most of my film career I generally worked on non-union films. No one on these productions belonged to any union. When I was a producer I also never hired any Teamsters (the union thugs who drive the vehicles). Most non-union producers would make a deal with the Teamsters union to hire one or two drivers in order to placate the union and prevent them from committing sabotage. These drivers would generally be paid more than everyone else, and do nothing more than drive a vehicle. I refused to do this and, despite making dozens of low budget features in a union town like New York for almost two decades, never had any problems.
A best boy works under the gaffer, who in turn works for the Director of Photography (DP). Both are part of the lighting department, setting up lights and running the electrical equipment to power them.
Thank you. >very (extremely) cool!