Fascinating to me. I love everything to do with space although I don't know very much about it. My two year old daughter came on a walk last night with me and she was always pointing at the large moon in the clear sky. It was a lovely walk and I wondered what she would be able to do by the time she is as old as daddy Would there be space travel in 50 years? Probably.
An HP41c. I recognise that gadget. Complete with card reader? But we used those in 1980 to work out hydraulics calculations. Reverse Polish notation? As one American said to me...."wheres the railway tracks?"
Contrary to popular belief we didnt get off on that stuff or smoke it. What exactly did you do? Subsea rig work? ROVs?
Mike the 41C is a classic probably the best all rounder they ever made as it had the card reader and external programability, the later HP 42S which was more powerful and better packaged had no way to externally load programs or connect to a computer. They still go on eBay for a small fortune, the 41C wasn't around till the early 80's I think and in its own right it was probably hundreds of times the power of the flight computer on the Apollo lunar lander, that computer has been compared unfavorably to a digital watch I guess the 41 may well have been used on the Shuttle. I could not afford an HP until the mid 80's when I got the HP 15C since then I have built up a small collection of RPN calculators, don't know what I'll do when HP stop making RPN calculators just have to hope my old ones keep working.
Yes. I joined my last employer in late 1980s and they were dishing out 41Cs then. I just had a squint on ebay and noticed the old thermal printer that we used with it.
I was trained by the MOD as an electronics tech. Left the UK in 1977 to sit on base stations providing signals for offshore seismic and rig moves. Then went as a mobile operator on seismic ships, rigs, pipelay barges and was an offshore tech in Saudi for two years on a hydrographic survey vessel. Eventually became a shore rep for a Norwegian exploration company where I was onshore doing whatever was necessary to keep the seismic vessel working...crew changes, import/export, port calls, those types of things. Worked in 44 countries until 1998 when I got out of that game. I got married to my beautiful wife and we have two wonderful kids now. I never really tried very hard to get back into the oil biz logistics and I get home every night now to my family.
I see. Seismic boats. Yes. I started working onshore full time in 2005 and haven't been offshore since. But am still in the business. I started in Libya in 1979. 44. Thats a lot of countries.
There's a blue moon tomorrow. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bl...u&sa=X&ei=ubk_UPDHDYHU0QX2nYGADQ&ved=0CB8QqAI
Conglomerates : deposited by flowing water.... "Nasa's Curiosity rover has only been on the surface of Mars seven weeks but it has already turned up evidence of past flowing water on the planet. The robot has returned pictures of classic conglomerates - rocks that are made up of gravels and sand. Scientists on the mission team say the size and rounded shape of the pebbles in the rock indicate they had been transported and eroded in water." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19744131
Wondering if these are from an ice comet or something that crashed into the planet over a few billion years or so.
Interesting to hear what Oss says, but the more of this kind of stuff they find, the more likely it is to be locally derived and locally deposited on the planet. I haven't seen the broader picture but it looks like there are a lot of indiginous looking sedimentary strata up there.
No Jim, they are fairly sure that there was substantial oceans on Mars a few billion years back, the problem with Mars is that its internal dynamo died a long time ago so the planet is not capable of generating a strong magnetic field as a result the solar wind stripped its atmosphere and probably a fair bit of the water. However loss of most of the atmosphere also removed the greenhouse and resulted in freezing conditions, the poles of mars are layered in Water Ice, lots of it, enough to cover most of the planet to a significant depth. It is thought that at one time there was tens or hundred's of times the amount of water that we can see there today. The real question is where it all went, as I suggested above a lot could have been lost once the atmosphere went, but there could also be a lot in underground aquifers, that's the whole point of sending probes to learn a lot more about this stuff
‘Out of control’ Mars Rover building sandcastles "NASA scientists admit they’ve lost control over Curiosity since the Rover started to use its $50million robotic arm to skim pebbles across an ancient Martian sea. Earlier this week Curiosity deployed a titanium scoop to make a precision line of sandcastles. It then reversed 20 metres, sped towards them and flattened them. Communication is now difficult. Control messages are returned marked ‘I am on annual leave. Please direct any queries to my colleagues Spirit or Opportunity’. However, Curiosity has started transmitting via MoonPig. Three ‘wish you were here’ cards arrived at the space centre this week. One shows the vehicle sheltering under its solar umbrella. In the second, the Rover is buried up to its antenna in Martian sand. The third card is quite smutty, but has a message, ‘Sorry, this is the best I could find.’ The wayward machine has rolled up its rubber gaiters, exposing delicate components to the Martian sun. But apart from this, Curiosity appeared to be back to normal this morning, driving about collecting sand samples. It carefully tipped 30 differently coloured sands into a small glass vial, one after another, forming layered strata, before sealing the vial with a small plug. Relieved that the Rover is again engaged in sample collecting, scientists are nonetheless puzzled that the vial is shaped like the Isle of Wight with a keyring attached." http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2012/10/01/out-of-control-mars-rover-building-sandcastles/
Mars rover Curiosity sees key water indicator "The robot has drilled into a rock that contains clay minerals - an indication of formation in, or substantial alteration by, neutral water." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21755976
It is getting very interesting indeed. Although some of the theories and suppositions seem to be, for me, a bit over the top.... But I am waiting with bated breath for absolute proof of some other form of past life.
Mars pebbles prove water history "Scientists now have definitive proof that many of the landscapes seen on Mars were indeed cut by flowing water. The valleys, channels and deltas viewed from orbit have long been thought to be the work of water erosion, but it is Nasa's latest rover, Curiosity, that has provided the "ground truth". Researchers report its observations of rounded pebbles on the floor of the Red Planet's 150km-wide Gale Crater. Their smooth appearance is identical to gravels found in rivers on Earth." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22708902 Interesting stuff. But was it water? Any idea, Oss, what it might have been if it wasn't water or is water the only liquid likely to have been flowing there?
Distance from the sun dictates the kind of liquids that are possible, one has to remember that the sun was much cooler in the past, as it ages it gets hotter and hotter, but even if the sun was putting out a lot less energy it is unlikely that any other liquid would have been flowing in the vast quantities required for this kind of erosion. Mars is small and it's gravity is low, so gas pressure is unlikely to have ever been really really high, so CO2 is not a likely candidate all the other candidates require high pressure or very low temperature so I can't really think of anything other than flowing water that would explain it.
