Comments by "SeanBZA" (@SeanBZA) on "Primal Space" channel.

  1. Best part of the pen design is that the hexagonal shape fits a compact cassette, so allowing you to wind up a tape that is loose, without damaging the player, plus you could rewind a tape without wasting precious battery power.
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  2. Yes, but remember them it was absolutely cutting edge, totally new, and something that had never been done before. After Saturn that technology went on to be used in so many things that you find all over, even if you do not see them at all, but those spin offs still are having a profound change in the modern world. The servo system there used to track the drift of the IMU with wind eventually landed up being used to correct the laser beam used to read your modern CD. DVD and BD player and recorder, similar problem resolved with the application of that design idea.
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  3. Still is the ancestor of them, though the Saturn guidance system was developed in parallel with the missile guidance systems, as both were under development by the same companies, at the same time. Thus a lot of the problems share common solutions, though the modern ones have moved mostly away from mechanical gyro platforms, and instead use solid state gyro units, and rely on computers to correct them for drift, as that can easily be characterised during assembly and test, as you can use a reference platform to allow one axis at a time to be decoupled from rotation and get the inherent drift. They also use accelarometers, and computer based integration, to get velocity, and again to get distance, and then can use the ring gyro units to calculate a position, based off of initial conditions. Then you use things like GPS, or star trackers, to obtain the error you have, and use that as part of the drift correction applied. But the modern reference platforms are now so accurate that you have correction both for rotation of the earth, and also for rotation around the sun, and have to apply as well correction for the motion of the solar system around the galaxy core as well, simply because this does otherwise show up as a long term error. In the 1970's Boeing had inertial reference platforms that were stable enough that you could fly an autopilot based flight without any external correction, and have a single flight from London to Sydney do that flight, and at landing it would be within 100 feet of the true position. 3 separate gyro units in each inertial reference unit, and the logic would fault any single one that disagreed more than the specified amount, and still give a valid reference off the other 2, just with a caution that maintenance was required. 2 inertial units, just in case one failed, and as backup you also had the old standby magnetic compass, and the Decca beacon receiver to allow you to plot location, provided you did not use the wrong lane. Later on GPS with the Decca, until the Decca was finally phased out. But even in the 1990's Decca was still in use a lot, simply because the cost of retrofitting a lot of aircraft was expensive, so it was in use till almost every aircraft had been updated to both, before it eventually was slowly switched off world wide, though there are still a few stations running for some countries.
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  4.  @dieseldragon6756 Well, it had been developed to a great extent then for gas distribution, so this was merely another use for the existing manufacturers of gas lines, and the designers had come up with empirical rules for just how par a pulse of pressure could go, and then sized the pipe appropriately.
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  5. A solution to a problem that used things they knew worked. Would probably still be in use today if it had not been too expensive, as you can see from the USA still having a few sections of 100VDC systems still in use in SF, where it once was built out with the tram lines as a power source, and was sold to buildings along the routes as a convenient power source to drive things like elevators and pumps, along with winches and lighting as well.
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  6. Want to see the ISS get boosted to a much higher orbit, so it can have a life extension, and also to use a few FH launches to bring up a few of the modules that were built as near flight ready backups, to make it a much larger station, and thus more useful. Also want that Hubble service mission to go forward, to keep that spacecraft fast becoming the oldest telescope in orbit operational for a few decades more. After all cheaper to repair a vehicle, rather than throw it away and buy a new one.
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  7. Those were probably the most rugged probes ever built, and that they actually made it down, survived as long as they did, and sent data back was incredible, showing that, with the right groups of designers, and a lot of ingenuity, that nearly anything is possible.
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