The Mars Helicopter and its CO2 Insulation

This video isn't about homebrew ham gear, but nonetheless I found it very interesting.  Of particular interest is the bit about their need to find a very low-weight insulator to protect the instruments from the cold of the Martian night.  Aerogel would have been too heavy.  So they just filled the instrument chamber with Carbon Dioxide.  That was their insulator. Think about that, especially those of you who still deny CO2's ability to heat up the atmosphere.  

There is a lot of great stuff on Veritasium's YouTube  channel:  

https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium

Mending vs. Ending -- The Fight Against Planned Obsolescence

https://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto

We don't get a lot of mail from Darwin, Australia, so the message coming in from Phil VK8MC immediately got our attention.  When I looked into the details I realized that it was very SolderSmoke-relevant.  The Guardian article that Phil cited even mentions hobbyists tinkering with electronic devices in their sheds (that would be us!).    Phil points to the connection between our repair efforts and the struggle to save the planet: "It's not just a hobby, it's an ethical position which contributes to the well being of the planet. A higher calling indeed!" 

Here is the article Phil pointed us to:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/17/ending-over-mending-planned-obsolescence-is-killing-the-planet?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_ProtonMail

The poster above (which hangs above my workbench) is from https://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto. 

The Terrible Collapse of the Arecibo Dish: Climate Change, Hurricane Maria, and Funding Cuts. Also: China's New Dish

From https://www.thewrap.com/watch-crazy-footage-of-the-arecibo-observatory-collapse-goldeneye-video/  :

"Alas, over the 2010s it was battered by a series of severe, climate change-linked tropical storms and hurricanes, culminating in terrible damage inflicted by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Unfortunately the 2016 election led to a government unwilling to fund repairs. Though new sources of funding were cobbled together late in 2018, in late Nov. 2020 it was determined there was no way to safely repair the telescope and the National Science Foundation announced it would be decommissioned.

The decommissioning was supposed to proceed after NSF determined the safest possible method, but physics had other plans. So it is that on Dec. 4, the whole thing up and collapsed with almost no warning."

More info (from NSF): 

https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/arecibo/index.jsp

Here is a good 2017 article that discusses the electronic and mechanical arrangements at Arecibo, and the budget cuts it was facing.  The article seems to almost predict the collapse: 

https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/arecibo-funding-cuts-threaten-future-of-giant-radio-telescope

Here is a comment from someone who worked there and heard the collapse: 

Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it, told the Associated Press news agency of the moment the telescope collapsed on Tuesday.

"It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was," he said. "I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control... I don't have words to express it. It's a very deep, terrible feeling."  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55147973?fbclid=IwAR3RuwzTfJmqInrOOFB-nctknDzyB_VSr_qdNrjg9LbbxUnAbynKBv9stPQ

Here is an interesting WIKIpedia article on China's FAST dish, with comparisons to Arecibo: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Spherical_Telescope#:~:text=The%20Five%2Dhundred%2Dmeter%20Aperture,County%2C%20Guizhou%2C%20southwest%20China.

Comparison of the Arecibo Telescope (top) and FAST (bottom) dishes at the same scale

Adios Arecibo

Our Editorial on the U.S. Election

In our last podcast we took a few minutes to share with our listeners our views on the U.S. election and who we think they should vote for.  Here is the text of what we said.   We stand by every word.

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Just days before a very important U.S. election we feel obligated to express our opinion and to let our listeners in the U.S. know who we think they should support.

Some of you will think this is inappropriate -- we disagree.  Several of the long-running and more recent themes of SolderSmoke are wrapped up in this election:

SolderSmoke is all about global community, the International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards.  Trump just rejects the idea of global community. He is all about building walls, imposing travel bans, rejecting refugees, circling the wagons, and blaming our problems on foreigners.  This is one of the reasons we oppose him.

SolderSmoke is all about Science and Technology. Trump is anti-science.  He is a climate change denier. That's another reason we oppose him.

Speaking of science, since the onset of the pandemic we have been urging SolderSmoke listeners to protect themselves, their families, and their communities by following the advice of doctors and scientists.  We urge them to socially distance, and to wear masks. We even invented an acronym in support of this -- SITS – “Stay In The Shack.”  Incredibly, Trump has been pushing in the opposite direction:  He ridicules the use of masks.  He calls our leading doctors "idiots."  He stages super-spreader events at his rallies and at the White House. Look, more than 200,000 Americans have been killed by this thing.  I know five people who have buried close relatives.  Yet Trump STILL treats this virus as some sort of political hoax.  This is one of the many reasons we oppose him.

We are both military veterans.  We have both been offended by the way Trump -- who is a draft dodger himself -- has disparaged those who have gone into harm's way for the United States.  We remember what he said about John McCain.  His scorn for veterans and service members is another reason we oppose him. 

There are many other reasons to oppose Trump, but those are the ones we feel are most relevant to SolderSmoke. 

Election day is Tuesday.  PLEASE, for the good of the country and the world, get out there and vote against Trump. Wear your mask and stay safe as you do so, but get out and vote.  Especially if you are living in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Texas, or Omaha, Nebraska, please help vote Trump out of office and please urge your friends and relatives to do the same.