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Comment Re:Enhanced images have always had a downside (Score 1) 28

Even when I was growing up (in the 1950s) my first impressions of astronomy were formed by illustrations of the solar system--shown from a point of view outside the system, with the orbits displayed as brightly colored, ellipses ...

Now that would be cool; standing at a point where the ecliptic plane is right overhead, and seeing a bright red ribbon erupting from the ground, extending straight up as far as the eye can see. The eruption point would move at 1600 km/h and the ribbon itself would move up at 29 km/s. I'm so disappointed this doesn't happen :-)

Comment Re:misquote (Score 2) 117

I'd be really "easy" to land if they had an RCS, just a couple seconds worth to cancel out any lateral movements and rotations

In its current configuration, the stage can't hover: on its lowest thrust setting, the engine still provides too much thrust. So they land using a "hoverslam" maneuver where they try to decelerate to a vertical speed of 0 just as the stage intersects the barge.

There is an RCS at the top of the stage to keep the stage upright, but any lateral thrust at the bottom has to be done by gimbaling the main engine. The gimbaling angle is limited so they may have run out of control authority on this landing.

Comment Re:Can we have this summary in English, please? (Score 1) 108

The only thing you can remotely call a "day" on the ISS is about 90 minutes long.

The astronauts are on a 24-hour work/sleep cycle. It may not have anything to do with sunrises and sunsets anymore (1), but is there any reason other than extreme pedantism to not call that cycle a day?

1: other than the sunrises and sunsets over the control centers in Houston and Moscow.

Comment Re:C64 had a cassette drive (Score 1) 74

An extended play tape cassette could store 3 hours of audio per side

I'm sorry, a what now?

The Compact Cassette standard had one tape speed (4.76 cm/s). Readily available cassettes came with 60-minute or 90-minute runtimes (total). You could get C-120 cassettes with 1 hour per side, but those used extra-thin tape that jammed easily. The longest tapes ever made were C-180, for 90 minutes per side, these used even thinner tape and so unreliable they never sold widely.
I've never seen one, and I was a bit of an audiophile in those days.
You'd have to combine a C-180 tape with a non-standard playing speed (used only in dication machines) to get 3 hours per side.

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