Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "" video.

  1.  @scottmanley  G'day mate from Oz. On star trackers, I did my degree in America (late 80s). Our team project for the final year was a comet fly-by space craft and I did the Attitude and Articulation system. One of the key components of that was a triple redundant star tracker and that was in 1986. So they have had for space probes fully automated star tracking systems since the 80s. The voyagers had a sun tracker that was on the back of the high gain antenna and looked through the dish. the idea behind that was that so long as they could line up on the sun then the earth was also in the direction of they were transmitting. On space Elevators, can you or someone else put this into the grave. Its one of those sci-fi fantasy zombie tropes that people wont let go of. Every time I hear about it I just want to scream. Arthur C Clarke (yeah the same guy who wrote Fountains of Paradise) pretty much killed in his NON-FICTION book "Profiles of the Future." Yeah I have read of some other places they might work like in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars", "Blue Mars" & "Green Mars" Trilogy. In that case he was smart enough to point out that if you did build one on mars it would need to be very flexible so as to dodge Jack McDevitt's book "Deepsix" also involves a space elevator but only as a side issue. The book that really uses space elevators as a major plot line is "Lifeburst" by Jack Williamson but it also required the artistic creation of a magic fibre called Kwanlon. It also describes what happens when elevators fall - that bit I think he got right. Its a nice tool for writing science fiction and complete bunk for anything practical, because EVEN if you did have a magic fibre like Kwanlon how do you install it? Go watch some operations with cranes or even better lifting operations from a helicopter and then imagine that but the rope is at least 200,000 meters long. AND THAT only reaches LEO you then need another rope counterweighted out past GEO. I actually dislike (not yet hate) the discussion because it wastes time when we have more pressing matters.
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  2. Great comment. For anyone looking for info on NASA, there are official NASA archives where you can find lots of stuff. One of my favourites to have is the user manual for the AGS Computer. Its one of those things the moon hoaxers hate to have brought up, but almost every document regarding Apollo not only exists but has been archived and you can download it. I have a bunch of the manuals.
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