AdamSmith

Yes. Is FF the culprit? Safari on my iPhone does not suffer from these pathologies, so maybe it must be FireFox?

Horrible! Also uproarious!

Voyager 1 Thrusters Fired Up After 37 Years of Deep Sleep By AKALib Friday Dec 01, 2017 · 7:08 PM EST 14 Comments (14 New) 44 Credit: NASA RSS REBLOGGED BY SciTech Recommended TAGS Recommended Science Space Voyager Share this article After 37 years of deep sleep, a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft, were successfully fired up on Wednesday, Nov 29. They will help augment the primary thrusters which are getting old and weak. The thrusters are used periodically to reorient the spacecraft and re-point its antenna to Earth, now 21 billion km away. Voyager 1, launched in September 5, 1977, now flying in interstellar space, relies on thrusters that are fired for short millisecond periods to subtly rotate the spacecraft and point its communications antenna at Earth. Since 2014, NASA engineers had noticed that Voyager’s "attitude control thrusters" have been degrading and losing efficiency. The Voyager team assembled a group of propulsion experts to study the problem. The solution that came up with was to use the four Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) thrusters, which were originally used for orientation control when Voyager flew by planets and moons during the first few years of its mission. The TCM thrusters are identical in size and functionality to the attitude control thrusters, and are located on the back side of the spacecraft. The TCM thrusters were last used on November 8, 1980, when Voyager 1 flew by Saturn. Back then, the TCM thrusters were used in a more continuous firing mode; they had never been used in the pulse mode necessary for its new role. On Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, Voyager engineers sent instructions to fire up the four TCM thrusters. It took 19 hours and 35 minutes for the signal to reach Voyager 1 and another 19 hours and 35 minutes for the response to arrive. The received signals indicated that everything went according to plan — after 37 years of deep sleep in cold dark space, the thrusters worked perfectly! Kudos to the designers of the spacecraft and the mission team, who pored through decades-old data and outdated assembler language software to figure out and implement the solution. The plan going forward is to switch to the TCM thrusters in January. To make the change, Voyager has to turn on one heater per thruster, which requires power -- a limited resource for the aging mission. When there is no longer enough power to operate the heaters, the team will switch back to the attitude control thrusters. The thruster test went so well, the team will likely do a similar test on the TCM thrusters for Voyager 2, the twin spacecraft of Voyager 1. The attitude control thrusters currently used for Voyager 2 are not yet as degraded as Voyager 1's. More details at www.nasa.gov/... Voyager 1 Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, to study the outer Solar System. Its twin Voyager 2 was launched 16 days earlier. The Voyager 1 mission included flybys of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's large moon, Titan. It completed its primary mission with the flyby of Saturn on November 20, 1980. It is now pursuing an extended mission to explore the regions and boundaries of the outer heliosphere. The mission is expected to continue until around 2025 when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough electric power to operate its scientific instruments. A few vital statistics - Parameter Value Distance 141 AU (2.11×1010 km) from Sun A AU = Earth-Sun distance = 150 million km Speed 38,026 mph 520 million km per year Communications Delay (one-way) 19 hours and 35 minutes Launch Date September 5, 1977 Power 3 radioisotope thermoelectric generators 470 W at launch time Plutonium-238 left = 72.76%. Will decline to 56.5% by 2050. Here is a diagram of Voyager 1 and its instruments - voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/... Voyager 1 is in "Interstellar space" and Voyager 2 is currently in the "Heliosheath" -- the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. See voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/… for some more fun facts of Voyager. Here is an animation showing the trajectory of the two Voyager spacecraft - The Golden Record Each Voyager spacecraft carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc intended for any intelligent life forms out there. The disc carries encoded photographs, music, sounds and greetings in 55 languages.See diagram below for the record cover. voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/... See voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/… for a fascinating description of the images and the playback instructions encoded in them. An excerpt is shown below - In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary arithmetic is the correct time of one rotation of the record, 3.6 seconds, expressed in time units of 0,70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom. The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in. Below this drawing is a side view of the record and stylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record - about an hour. Voyager 1 and 2 both carry this record. There are ten more on display at various NASA institutions. Even Carl Sagan, who chaired the committee that created the record, did not get a copy. The record was never made available to the general public. Now we can get a copy (for $98), thanks to a Kickstarter-funded reissue of the Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition, issued as a 3 LP box set. Also, available as a 2 CD set at lightintheattic.net/… for $50. Both versions come with a hardcover illustrated book. Ozma Records. Here is video containing decoded information from the record - https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/1/1720285/-Voyager-1-Thrusters-Fired-Up-After-37-Years-of-Deep-Sleep

Sorry! Here we go... What Michael Flynn’s Plea Deal Means Eleven legal experts weigh in. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/01/what-michael-flynns-plea-deal-means-215995?lo=ap_d1

This current version of the forum software is fucked up beyond all belief. My simple attempts to edit the above mispost were not responded to by the sw. A pattern over many days now. Can we just revert to the previous rev?

This python seems to be snaking its way toward the Orange One... What Michael Flynn’s Plea Deal Means Eleven legal experts weigh in. By POLITICO MAGAZINE December 01, 2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiatus_hernia

Have a good time! Orange Thai Beef Skewers Meat on a stick - what could be better? A bright and fresh marinade makes this ordinary flank steak ... https://ourbestbites.com/2009/05/orange-thai-beef-skewers/

About the only human effluent without discernible erotic interest.

Very bizarre question. kjun and I have had a public bitch or two with each other here before, but his bona fides has never been in question: he is one of the longest-standing posters on hooboy's ['daddy's ] forum, and his posts there speak for themselves. He is a very independent and at times very irritating soul; but then me too [I suppose, and indeed hope]. I respect and value his authenticity and commitment to truth, as he sees it, an awful lot.

Unless they specifically ask.

Jim Nabors died...sigh.

This piece is, just tangentially, also pretty good... https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/these-24-productivity-tips-will-help-you-start-off-2018-right.html?cid=mustread2

Here y'are...I think!... http://www.boytoy.com/forums/topic/13209-joke-for-the-day-add-more-if-you-want/

Pretty insightful look into how Amazon makes decisions... 3 lessons we can learn from Jeff Bezos and Amazon about making incredibly smart decisions http://www.businessinsider.com/3-lessons-we-can-learn-from-jeff-bezos-about-making-decisions-2017-11

Yeah. Those guys deserve to be shot in the head, just to get the stupidity out of the gene pool. Doing business anywhere in East Asia (really anywhere, for that matter) requires some learning of local custom, and how to respect and follow it.

My papa passed of an unexpected massive coronary in 1968, when he was 41, my mama 39, and I was 8. The random stream of friends, dozens of them, coming through the house, intensely for the first few days, and then more randomly for the next days and weeks -- and months -- and sharing their free, random thoughts about what my papa had meant to them in their own lives, were the most meaningful threads of support that my mama and I could have ever imagined receiving. All that supported us immensely through what would have been an otherwise emotionally and existentially insupportable time. All of us who knew Lurker are, I daresay, trying to process the same emotions now. Your comment is insensitive beyond any comprehension. This weird shit that you posted here -- telling us, who knew and, absolutely in a sense, loved Lurker, how we are and are not supposed to post our thoughts -- is not, to me, comprehensible. It seems in fact a little bit psychopathic.

Just saw this. Variety usually gets it right. Variety magazine has the Matt Lauer sexual harassment details and they are bad—really, really bad “The Today Show” abruptly announced that Matt Lauer had been fired for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.” Variety magazine had been working on a story about Matt Lauer’s behavior for months, behavior which was apparently known by many at NBC for more than a decade. Here are some of the rage-inducing details: As the co-host of NBC’s “Today,” Matt Lauer once gave a colleague a sex toy as a present. It included an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her, which left her mortified. On another day, he summoned a different female employee to his office, and then dropped his pants, showing her his penis. After the employee declined to do anything, visibly shaken, he reprimanded her for not engaging in a sexual act. He used his position and clout at NBC to prey on women looking to grow their own careers, taking advantage of them while traveling for work. And according to the sources who spoke with Vanity, NBC management protected and enabled Lauer at all costs. He even had a special button installed on his desk: Lauer, who was paranoid about being followed by tabloid reporters, grew more emboldened at 30 Rockefeller Center as his profile rose following Katie Couric’s departure from “Today” in 2006. His office was in a secluded space, and he had a button under his desk that allowed him to lock his door from the inside without getting up. This afforded him the assurance of privacy. It allowed him to welcome female employees and initiate inappropriate contact while knowing nobody could walk in on him, according to two women who were sexually harassed by Lauer. He targeted young female employees traveling with him for work, because of course he did: According to sources, the sexual harassment extended to when Lauer traveled on assignment for NBC. Several employees recall how he paid intense attention to a young woman on his staff that he found attractive, focusing intently on her career ambitions. And he asked the same producer to his hotel room to deliver him a pillow, according to sources with knowledge of the interaction. This was part of a pattern. According to multiple accounts, independently corroborated by Variety, Lauer would invite women employed by NBC late at night to his hotel room while covering the Olympics in various cities over the years. He later told colleagues how his wife had accompanied him to the London Olympics because she didn’t trust him to travel alone. He’ll have plenty of free time to spend with his wife now. If she isn’t already meeting with divorce attorneys. Who’s next? https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/29/1719596/-Variety-magazine-has-the-Matt-Lauer-sexual-harassment-details-and-they-are-bad-really-really-bad

There certainly is a danger that this -- long-needed and long-overdue, absolutely -- movement to at last take women's professional-abuse accusations seriously is about to spiral up into the witch hunt that we descendants of Salem (speaking figuratively) have long been prey to.

I agree!

Bet it was some harassment of the Key Grip.

If that's one's 1966-era taste...