National Geo has greenlit an epic documentary detailing the successful search and discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s sunken Endurance ship near Antarctica, helmed by British historian Dan Snow.
The doc will chart the successful search by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust for famed explorer Shackleton’s shipwrecked Endurance, which sank in 1915 near Antarctica.
Led by Polar Geographer Dr. John Shears and Marine Archaeologist Mensun Bound aboard the South African icebreaker Agulhas II, a crew of scientists and archaeologists teamed with filmmakers and Snow to document the events in real time leading up to the discovery.
I look forward to the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder letters and I have excerpted from many over the years on this blog. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor, but I enjoy even more the historical perspective he brings.
So, it was a treat to watch the webcast of the shareholder meeting on Saturday. The travel restrictions during the current crisis worked to the benefit of all of us who cannot go those annual events in person.
Just the fact that at 89 he could present and answer questions for 4 straight hours is inspirational. He also keeps his sense of humor. First time in his life he says he has used slides. And points out his long term partner, Charlie Munger, who is even older at 96 is now a big Zoom user:)
He kept talking about the "American Tailwind" ...how we have bounced back many times, usually much stronger than the stumbles we have had. It was calming to see his slides about the losses of young, productive men during the Civil War. Puts in perspective the mortalities during the current crisis. He also compares how much we have bounced back economically since the Great Depression. And how, since the founding of the country, our wealth, diversity and other metrics have dramatically improved. Here are some of the slides he presented.
I would recommend watching his entire history lesson. It starts around 1:00 in the replay video at bottom and goes for about an hour. The rest is about his investments and procedural stuff since it was a formal shareholder meeting.
It is highly specialized work. The tiny blips on the maps would mean nothing to the uninitiated, but to Parcak they provide clues that have led her to discover the location of 17 potential pyramids, some 3100 settlements, and 1000 lost tombs across Egypt. Parcak also used remote sensing to identify the location of the lost city of Tanis, which gained notoriety when it was featured in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The network of streets and houses of Tanis are completely invisible at ground level, and yet using infrared satellite images, Parcak was able to show the massive extent of the ancient settlement.
Parcak gave a hugely popular TED talk on space archaeology in 2012, and in 2015 was awarded the 2016 $1 million TED prize. She's used the money to create the citizen science platform GlobalXplorer, which allows anyone to analyze images from space in order to discover more lost archaeological sites across the globe—and spot evidence of looters.
Today, that looks set to change thanks to the work of Cameron Browne at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and colleagues. They are pioneering a new area of archaeology focused purely on games. The goal is to better understand these ancient games and their role in human societies, to reconstruct their rules and to determine how they fit into the evolutionary tree of games that has led to the games we play today. They call this discipline archaeoludology.
The researchers have ambitious plans for their incipient science. They say the new techniques of machine vision, artificial intelligence, and data mining provide an entirely new way to study ancient games and to build a better understanding of the way they have evolved.
I find Quentin Tarantino movies too violet. Given that his new movie features Charles Manson, I thought QT would have even more blood and gore than usual and I almost skipped "Once upon a time in.. Hollywood". My wife did but I enjoyed it so much that I convinced her to go see it with me on my second trip.
What have I enjoyed?
It celebrates secondary Hollywood characters - stuntmen, talent scouts, production crew. It brings to life iconic actors like Steve McQueen, Sharon Tate, Bruce Lee, James Stacy and others. It brings out Westerns, even the spaghetti kind. Like them or not, that is what made Hollywood famous around the world
It showcases a mind boggling 2,000 vintage cars on the streets of LA. Here is Brad Pitt in his Karmann Ghia.
It also has vintage 747s with their spiral staircases (Most of my global travel in the 80s was on 747s - lots of good memories). It repurposes vintage Hollywood camerawork and other wizardry as this article shows.
It is chockful of 60s music - Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, Joe Cocker, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Neil Diamond among them. Plenty of DJs and KHJ radio (Boss radio)
It features popular LA restaurants and theaters including El Coyote, Chili John's, the original Taco Bell, the Fox Westwood Theater and many more
You know what? I may go see it in a theater once again. And buy a copy to watch on flights. There are so many easter eggs in the movie, I have a feeling I will discover a couple new ahas each time I watch it.
Final in series of posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 journey to the moon. This looks at upcoming trips back to the moon
"As early as September of next year, a metal-wrapped spacecraft will slowly fall toward the surface of the moon. Retro rockets on its underbelly will puff tiny amounts of fuel into the moon’s tenuous exosphere, silently slowing and steering the uncrewed ship. As its legs find purchase on the sun-bleached gray surface, the moon will once again host the American flag. But this time, the stars and stripes will decorate a spacecraft designed not “for all mankind,” as the Apollo lander was, but for kickstarting lunar commerce.
This time, the spacecraft is not owned by NASA but by the company that built and will operate it. NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS) reflects the agency's 21st century outlook that private ownership is the surest path to a robust and self-sustaining lunar economy, in which not only NASA but also other space agencies and private companies will pay to ship freight and eventually people to the lunar surface."
Continuing the series of posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 journey to the moon - On July 20, 1969, the lunar module Eagle touched down at Tranquility Bay with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
"When Apollo 11 happened in real time, people back home could follow along with grainy, though exhilarating, video footage. Yet they had little sense of where on the moon the action was happening and how far the astronauts explored. Now three-dimensional computer models based on recent satellite imagery can re-create each step of the mission and the terrain it covered. Based on a 2012 photograph of the landing site from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a height map of the surface shows the contours of the moon where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin traveled, as well as the positions of the lander, the experiments and even the astronauts’ footpaths."
Continuing the series of posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11
As geeks we have been raised with error codes. This Wired article about early '60s computer chips and consoles, early Fortran and primitive consoles and error codes will make your palms sweat. It describes the 1202 error code Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did not recognize on the Eagle lunar module and how close NASA came to abort the landing
"Houston, meanwhile, gave Apollo 11 a GO in spite of the alarms because of how spread apart they were — they came at mission elapsed time 102:38:22; 102:39:02; 102:42:18 (that was the 1201); 102:42:43; and 102:42:58. If they had been closer together it could have wiped out navigation data during a reboot, but being separated even by as few seconds as they were meant that that vital information was retained. The computer behaved exactly as designed, protecting itself in a way that wouldn’t cancel a lunar landing without just cause."
Video below of Working Replica DSKY-AGC Apollo Guidance Computer
Part of a week of posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's journey to the moon.
Here is NASA's Mission Overview - a nice catalog of the 8 days from takeoff to the water landing
"Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969, carrying Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin into an initial Earth-orbit of 114 by 116 miles. An estimated 650 million people watched Armstrong's televised image and heard his voice describe the event as he took "...one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" on July 20, 1969.
Two hours, 44 minutes and one-and-a-half revolutions after launch, the S-IVB stage reignited for a second burn of five minutes, 48 seconds, placing Apollo 11 into a translunar orbit. The command and service module, or CSM, Columbia separated from the stage, which included the spacecraft-lunar module adapter, or SLA, containing the lunar module, or LM, Eagle. After transposition and jettisoning of the SLA panels on the S-IVB stage, the CSM docked with the LM. The S-IVB stage separated and injected into heliocentric orbit four hours, 40 minutes into the flight.
The first color TV transmission to Earth from Apollo 11 occurred during the translunar coast of the CSM/LM. Later, on July 17, a three-second burn of the SPS was made to perform the second of four scheduled midcourse corrections programmed for the flight. The launch had been so successful that the other three were not needed.
On July 18, Armstrong and Aldrin put on their spacesuits and climbed through the docking tunnel from Columbia to Eagle to check out the LM, and to make the second TV transmission.
On July 19, after Apollo 11 had flown behind the moon out of contact with Earth, came the first lunar orbit insertion maneuver. At about 75 hours, 50 minutes into the flight, a retrograde firing of the SPS for 357.5 seconds placed the spacecraft into an initial, elliptical-lunar orbit of 69 by 190 miles. Later, a second burn of the SPS for 17 seconds placed the docked vehicles into a lunar orbit of 62 by 70.5 miles, which was calculated to change the orbit of the CSM piloted by Collins. The change happened because of lunar-gravity perturbations to the nominal 69 miles required for subsequent LM rendezvous and docking after completion of the lunar landing. Before this second SPS firing, another TV transmission was made, this time from the surface of the moon.
On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin entered the LM again, made a final check, and at 100 hours, 12 minutes into the flight, the Eagle undocked and separated from Columbia for visual inspection. At 101 hours, 36 minutes, when the LM was behind the moon on its 13th orbit, the LM descent engine fired for 30 seconds to provide retrograde thrust and commence descent orbit insertion, changing to an orbit of 9 by 67 miles, on a trajectory that was virtually identical to that flown by Apollo 10. At 102 hours, 33 minutes, after Columbia and Eagle had reappeared from behind the moon and when the LM was about 300 miles uprange, powered descent initiation was performed with the descent engine firing for 756.3 seconds. After eight minutes, the LM was at "high gate" about 26,000 feet above the surface and about five miles from the landing site.
The descent engine continued to provide braking thrust until about 102 hours, 45 minutes into the mission. Partially piloted manually by Armstrong, the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility in Site 2 at 0 degrees, 41 minutes, 15 seconds north latitude and 23 degrees, 26 minutes east longitude. This was about four miles downrange from the predicted touchdown point and occurred almost one-and-a-half minutes earlier than scheduled. It included a powered descent that ran a mere nominal 40 seconds longer than preflight planning due to translation maneuvers to avoid a crater during the final phase of landing. Attached to the descent stage was a commemorative plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon and the three astronauts.
The flight plan called for the first EVA to begin after a four-hour rest period, but it was advanced to begin as soon as possible. Nonetheless, it was almost four hours later that Armstrong emerged from the Eagle and deployed the TV camera for the transmission of the event to Earth. At about 109 hours, 42 minutes after launch, Armstrong stepped onto the moon. About 20 minutes later, Aldrin followed him. The camera was then positioned on a tripod about 30 feet from the LM. Half an hour later, President Nixon spoke by telephone link with the astronauts.
Commemorative medallions bearing the names of the three Apollo 1 astronauts who lost their lives in a launch pad fire, and two cosmonauts who also died in accidents, were left on the moon's surface. A one-and-a-half inch silicon disk, containing micro miniaturized goodwill messages from 73 countries, and the names of congressional and NASA leaders, also stayed behind.
During the EVA, in which they both ranged up to 300 feet from the Eagle, Aldrin deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package, or EASEP, experiments, and Armstrong and Aldrin gathered and verbally reported on the lunar surface samples. After Aldrin had spent one hour, 33 minutes on the surface, he re-entered the LM, followed 41 minutes later by Armstrong. The entire EVA phase lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, ending at 111 hours, 39 minutes into the mission.
Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the moon's surface. After a rest period that included seven hours of sleep, the ascent stage engine fired at 124 hours, 22 minutes. It was shut down 435 seconds later when the Eagle reached an initial orbit of 11 by 55 miles above the moon, and when Columbia was on its 25th revolution. As the ascent stage reached apolune at 125 hours, 19 minutes, the reaction control system, or RCS, fired so as to nearly circularize the Eagle orbit at about 56 miles, some 13 miles below and slightly behind Columbia. Subsequent firings of the LM RCS changed the orbit to 57 by 72 miles. Docking with Columbia occurred on the CSM's 27th revolution at 128 hours, three minutes into the mission. Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the CSM with Collins. Four hours later, the LM jettisoned and remained in lunar orbit.
Trans-Earth injection of the CSM began July 21 as the SPS fired for two-and-a-half minutes when Columbia was behind the moon in its 59th hour of lunar orbit. Following this, the astronauts slept for about 10 hours. An 11.2 second firing of the SPS accomplished the only midcourse correction required on the return flight. The correction was made July 22 at about 150 hours, 30 minutes into the mission. Two more television transmissions were made during the trans-Earth coast.
Re-entry procedures were initiated July 24, 44 hours after leaving lunar orbit. The SM separated from the CM, which was re-oriented to a heat-shield-forward position. Parachute deployment occurred at 195 hours, 13 minutes. After a flight of 195 hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds - about 36 minutes longer than planned - Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, 13 miles from the recovery ship USS Hornet. Because of bad weather in the target area, the landing point was changed by about 250 miles. Apollo 11 landed 13 degrees, 19 minutes north latitude and 169 degrees, nine minutes west longitude July 24, 1969."
The documentary by Todd Douglas Miller, released earlier this year, did a nice job of summarizing the voyage, the build up and the celebrations upon return
Over the next few days I will be profiling several posts related to the Apollo 11 takeoff, lunar landing and splashdown 50 years ago. My personal celebration, however, started much earlier in the year.
During SAP's event Sapphire in May, BirlaSoft invited me to join a group of their client executives for dinner at the Atlantis Zone at the Kennedy Space Center.
Then on Father's Day last month, my daughter took me to a "Lunch with an Astronaut" - Jon McBride who flew one of the early shuttle missions. Both visits were awe-inspiring - when you think of the boundaries NASA pushes when it comes to rockets, computers, even the diet of astronomers in zero-gravity.
But even more inspiring was the Apollo 11 documentary I saw in March. The amazing production mined "65-millimeter and 70-mm film preserved at the National Archives, as well as 18,000 hours of audio that was largely uncataloged before the documentary's creation." When you think about how primitive computing and communications were in the 1960s (the Apollo 11's onboard guidance computer had a processing speed of 1 MHz, and had about 4 kilobytes of reusable memory) you are even more impressed with the accomplishment.
Don't bet against the "American Tailwind"
I look forward to the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder letters and I have excerpted from many over the years on this blog. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor, but I enjoy even more the historical perspective he brings.
So, it was a treat to watch the webcast of the shareholder meeting on Saturday. The travel restrictions during the current crisis worked to the benefit of all of us who cannot go those annual events in person.
Just the fact that at 89 he could present and answer questions for 4 straight hours is inspirational. He also keeps his sense of humor. First time in his life he says he has used slides. And points out his long term partner, Charlie Munger, who is even older at 96 is now a big Zoom user:)
He kept talking about the "American Tailwind" ...how we have bounced back many times, usually much stronger than the stumbles we have had. It was calming to see his slides about the losses of young, productive men during the Civil War. Puts in perspective the mortalities during the current crisis. He also compares how much we have bounced back economically since the Great Depression. And how, since the founding of the country, our wealth, diversity and other metrics have dramatically improved. Here are some of the slides he presented.
I would recommend watching his entire history lesson. It starts around 1:00 in the replay video at bottom and goes for about an hour. The rest is about his investments and procedural stuff since it was a formal shareholder meeting.
May 03, 2020 in History, Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)