December 10, 2020 · 23:54

The Great Conjunction – December 10th

The planets move about the sky in their orbits, like clockwork, and sometimes they come near each other from our viewpoint. This is called a conjunction.

We’ve had conjunctions before, they’re not that uncommon at all. Jupiter and Venus get close pretty regularly. The Moon literally “runs over” planets from time to time (this is referred to as an occultation) and gets close to something (often Venus) pretty much every month.

You’ve probably heard news reports, possibly some rabid ones, about the “Christmas star” coming up in eleven days. The simple fact is that it’s just another conjunction, where Jupiter and Saturn will be in conjunction, close together from our viewpoint in the solar system. What makes this one special is that both planets are reasonably bright, and for this particular conjunction they’re going to be REALLY close together.

It should look gorgeous.

You don’t need a telescope. You don’t even need binoculars, although even a simple pair will show you some of the larger and brighter moons of both Saturn and Jupiter. You just need your naked eye and a clear sunset sky. Go out right after sunset, look to the southwest.

Jupiter will be very bright, white, and Saturn will be just a bit to the upper left of it, slightly dimmer, with a slight yellowish tinge if you’ve got a clear, dark sky.

If you’ve got binoculars or a big telephoto lens, zoom in a bit. Depending on timing, you may see four small dots in a line near Jupiter, and maybe one small dot near Saturn. Those would be moons.

Blow this (so-so quality) picture up and you’ll see two small dots at about the four o’clock position on Jupiter, and maybe one very near Saturn at about the seven o’clock position.

Over the next eleven days the two planets will appear to get closer and closer. They’ll be just a small fraction of this distance apart.

Tomorrow night I’ll try to get a better tripod setup so there’s not so much vibration, and I’ll try to get better pictures. I hope you’ll be out trying to see it as well.

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December 9, 2020 · 23:53

Congrats Yet Again, SpaceX!

I ranted and raved enthusiastically here when SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 first stage booster on a barge, something I thought was insane to even try when I first heard of it, and I’m a space cadet with a science & engineering background. Obviously I needed to be thinking bigger, since not only did they prove it can be done, they now do it regularly and almost routinely. (Another launch scheduled for Saturday afternoon, a SiriusXM satellite.) They’ve now had 68 successful booster recoveries and one booster has been launched 7 times already.

But they’re going to retire the Falcon 9 sooner rather than later because they’re building Starship, a two stage monstrosity that will be bigger than NASA’s old Saturn V rocket. The first stage (Super Heavy) will fly back and land like the Falcon 9 does and the second (Starship) will go to orbit, the ISS, the moon, Mars, beyond (literally) and then re-enter the atmosphere like a cross between the Space Shuttle and a space capsule, landing upright like the Falcon 9 first stage does. To be used again, and again, and again…

Yeah. Right.

Today they had the first really big test flight of a full-size, early design of the Starship. SN8 is the 8th Starship test vehicle to be built, and it was scheduled to take off, fly to about 44,000 feet, cut off its engines, flip over onto its belly to coast and glide and slow down, switch fuel tanks, at the last second (and I didn’t realize just how much “last second” meant “LAST FREAKIN’ SECOND” until I saw them do it) relight the engines and flip back up to an upright position, and land gently upright. Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, gave it no better than a 1 in 3 chance of success. Most everyone at SpaceX would have been perfectly happy if it had lifted off and gotten to 44,000 feet before blowing up or spinning out of control. That would have been wonderful for a first test flight.

It. Was. Amazing!

(video from SpaceX – it’s a long video since there was a scrub and a re-set in there, so go to the 1:47:53 mark for the launch if it doesn’t go there automatically)

Take off with no explosion! ✅

Throttle back one engine, then a second one, to keep the loads on the vehicle in range ✅ (Those of us not on the inside at SpaceX didn’t know it was supposed to happen so it looked like a problem, but it was going just as planned.)

Reach 44,000 feet, shut down the engines, flip over onto our belly without going out of control. ✅ ✅ ✅

Maintain perfect control gliding back down toward not just the planet, but the precise point on the planet where the landing pad is! ✅

Perform that engine restart and flip back up to vertical thing! ✅ (They’re calling that maneuver the “Crazy Elon.” If you’ve watched “Hunt For Red October,” you’ll know why.)

Get vertical, get down right onto the landing pad, land upright… ✅ ✅ ✅

…way, way to freaking fast and end in a gigantic explosion ❌❌❌🚀💥💥💥😥

It was a test flight with minimal expectations and maximum hopes. We got much closer to the maximum than the minimum. And that’s how we get that much closer to doing it all next time. They’re already building SN9 through SN15, as well as the first Super Heavy, SH1.

I may yet get the chance to get this creaky, flabby butt of mine off the planet.

Finally, if you want to know just how insane that final “Crazy Elon” move is and just how “last minute” that flip is, watch this video that SpaceX released late tonight from a camera very near the landing pad, looking straight up at the incoming SN8.

Outstanding!!

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December 8, 2020 · 23:41

Hibiscus

At least, I think it’s a hibiscus.

In the summer it’s covered in these bright red flowers.

Now, it has a few.

But it’s a GREAT plant on the side of the house to hang Christmas lights on!

Lots of good surface area with lots of branches capable of bearing the weight of a string of lights. PERFECT!!

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December 7, 2020 · 22:04

Cold Wind Sunset

The sunset was nice, if not spectacular. It’s chilly, and the winds are again really whipping up here on the hill.

How windy? Lemme tell you a story…

In my home office (aka one of the spare bedrooms) I prefer it warmer than the rest of the house, so I tend to keep the door closed. The computers and printers keep it warmer just fine. But unless I’m actually on a call or a Zoom meeting, I don’t necessarily want the door shut all the way, so I’ll leave it partially closed. Not latched, not open, but in that in-between position where the spring loaded latching mechanism has engaged and put some tension on the door frame, but it hasn’t clicked into the hole in the door frame yet.

Four or five times today the house has flexed enough with the pressure of the wind that it has torqued the rectangular, interior, hallway door frame enough to allow the latching mechanism to find the hole and snap shut. This sounds like a freaking rifle. And when it comes totally out of the blue, especially after it’s NEVER done this before in 2+ years here, it’s disturbing. Scares the shit out of me.

I’m not a fan of the wind.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography, Weather

December 6, 2020 · 23:51

CMA’s Neighbors To The South

The CAF Southern California Wing’s hangars are at Camarillo Airport (CMA) and we have a neighboring airport just a few miles to our south, the Naval Air Station Point Mugu. It’s a great place for an airshow every couple of years (if we can ever get this COVID-19 bullshit behind us) and they fly some out of there, but there’s not a ton of air traffic in and out of there. It’s not like living next to MCAS Miramar or NAS Oceana where you can see a pretty steady stream of fighters, cargo aircraft, and reconnaissance missions.

But as I was leaving yesterday, this big guy was lumbering in from the north, hanging there exactly the same way that bricks don’t.

He was a ways off, turning to final approach, but I’m pretty sure that’s a C-5 Galaxy. Usually the cargo planes going into Point Mugu are the smaller C-130 Hercules (back when I was flying I had a couple of them on long finals that I gave a wide berth, because the wake turbulence can be a bitch and a half if you’re in a tiny Cessna!) but today we had something large being moved.

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Photography

December 5, 2020 · 19:49

Red Leaf Saturday With Berries

Fall has started to arrive in SoCal.

It might not be the Black River Valley or Franconia Notch, but we do get some color.

Not sure what these are, but there are a bunch of them in the parking lot at my office.

Even better, with COVID the lot and the building were almost empty, so I didn’t have to deal with anyone wondering why some lunatic was wandering around the parking lot taking pictures of leaves.

Yeah, like that’s EVER stopped me!

It was odd being in the office for a couple hours (computer problems, had to get it back online) but at least I had something spectacular to look at when I came out!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

December 4, 2020 · 23:59

The Scenic Tour Of LA Airspace

We live under the flight path for Burbank Airport, about fifteen miles out on the straight-in approach to Runway 8. In normal times, that means a few dozen 737’s a day coming from west to east at about 5,000′. Especially as a pilot, I know what’s normal.

Tonight I went out to look at the Christmas lights and get some air and there was a Southwest 737 going overhead from north to south. That’s odd. It could be that the winds had shifted and they were landing on Runway 33, but the winds weren’t blowing. Odd.

So I pulled out my phone, called up the FlightRadar24 app, and checked to see who it was above me. Southwest Airlines flight 605, from Phoenix to Burbank.

You can see where Burbank airport is (the pin just below and to the left of the “210” interstate icon, where the dashed black line going from the aircraft ends) and that green line shows the plane’s flight path.

This is not normal.

I called up the ATC Live app (Air Traffic Control) and started listening to the conversations between the plane and the Burbank tower. They were asking “how much fuel and how many souls onboard,” which is critical information in an emergency situation. It was obvious pretty quickly that they were having trouble with the flaps on the plane, couldn’t get them fully deployed, and weren’t going to be able to land at Burbank. With no flaps they would be landing fast and it would take a long time to slow down, so they needed a long runway. They headed off to LAX.

I followed the conversations through LAX Approach ATC and then LAX Tower. They cleared out some other traffic going into LAX, took a couple of opportunities to circle around a bit to buy time to slow down, and finally got down safely at LAX. There were some conversations about whether or not they might need to stay on the runway for an inspection (I’m sure their tires and brakes were really hot trying to slow down from a very fast landing) and whether or not they might have shed any debris (like from a broken flap or a burst tire) onto the runway, which would interfere with any planes landing behind them, but in the end it all turned out pretty well, all things considered.

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December 3, 2020 · 23:59

Maybe Tomorrow

The Chinese have landed a robot probe on the moon. It’s scooped up samples and then taken off to lunar orbit, heading back to Earth in a little bit. It will be the first time since the mid 1970’s that samples have been brought back from the moon.

The Japanese had their own asteroid sample pick up a couple years ago and on Saturday the vehicle with the sample will be coming back to land in Australia.

Meanwhile, yesterday the Arecibo radio telescope collapsed in Puerto Rico.

We could use a win. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, SpaceX is going to try to take a 30-story rocket that looks like something out of an Isaac Asimov novel and send it 50,000 feet up into the sky, then try to land it like they do their Falcon 9 rockets.

It’s insane. It will be cool. Let’s do it!

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Filed under Astronomy, Space

December 2, 2020 · 22:49

No Context For You – December 02nd

The less you know, the better.

As Crash told Nuke, “Don’t think. It can only hurt the ballclub.”

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Filed under Photography

December 1, 2020 · 23:44

December At Last

It’s one thing to have your head know that it’s December, but in a year like 2020, which for a significant portion of the populace has been the worst year of our lives, it’s another thing to have your gut know.

Yes, I know that other societies have gone through truly horrific years that are worse than this – 1939 through 1945 come to mind, as do 1914 through 1918, and I’m sure that the early 1860’s were no picnic. You get the drift. And individuals no doubt have years which are much worse with deaths of family members, natural disasters, disease, all of the above, and so on. But for my generation and the several that follow, as a whole, as an international, global society, 2020 has arguably been the worst of our lifetimes.

And now it’s almost over. There’s hope for 2021 with vaccines on the horizon, as well as a shift in the political winds. That’s not to say that something even MORE horrific might not do a jump scare on us all still, but in real life the odds seem to be against it.

So we’re in that last month. We’re locked down. We’re wearing masks on the rare occasions we do go out for groceries or essential tasks. We’re decorating for the holidays and doing Zoom meetings instead of huge holiday dinners and parties. We’re sacrificing and we can see, if not the actual finish line, at least the bell lap coming in just four to seven weeks.

(By the way, if you’re NOT wearing masks and NOT quarantining and NOT staying home from parties, then please eat shit and die, fuck off, then keep fucking off, then fuck off until you come to a gate with a sign saying, “You can’t fuck off past here” – climb over that gate, dream the impossible dream, and just keep fucking off forever until the heat death of the universe.)

[Yeah, I know, I should come out and just say what I REALLY feel and not hold back…]

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah…

Assuming you’re sane and intelligent and not a sociopath (which is a good assumption since you’re reading my site), then you will understand why I was so struck today in a staff Zoom meeting (or was it Teams? or Slack? or Skype? or Ring Central?) when it hit my gut that we are finally in December. It’s symbolic. It’s a marker, a signpost, a solid, tangible bit of evidence that proves that 2020 is almost over. And 2021 is hope…

Stay safe. December’s going to be okay in some ways, incredibly rough in others. But we’ll make it through.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul