For 10 days in May of 1973, the world waited as NASA worked hard to prepare a fix to the damaged Skylab space station. Based on the information available, they knew what kind of damage had happened to the station during launch, but without being up there to see it, no one knew quite for …
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Category:Technology
Saving Skylab – Keeping The Station Alive
When the United States first space station, Skylab, was launched on May 14th, 1973, it suffered major damage – the micro meteoroid shield intended to protect the station from space debris and the heat of the Sun was torn off, causing temperatures in the station to rise far beyond what the vehicle was designed for. …
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The Computer Chronicles – Memory Management (1990)
Today we take for granted just how Memory (in a sense, raw working space) systems are being shipped with, or how much is available to a custom machine builder. 8, 16, 32, even 64 gigabytes of RAM are easily available in most any system you could buy or build today. Just a decade ago, 4 …
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How The Skylab 63 Second Anomaly Crippled A Space Station
When Skylab launched on May 14th, 1973 things looked good from the ground. The Saturn V 1st stage ignited, and like the Apollo launches before it, the vehicle began its flight – Americas first space station was off to what looked like a perfect beginning to its mission. After about 50 seconds or so the …
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Bits And Bytes – Series Review
Over the past year I took some time to cover every episode of the 1983 Canadian TV series “Bits and Bytes.” This was a television program designed to give its viewers some insight into the then-new home computer scene, covering basic principles of computing, showing some things you can do with various computers of the …
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The Computer Chronicles – Portable Computers (1985)
Computers first and foremost are tools to do work. Sometimes, you need to do work “on the go” and if your work involves a computer, you would need a computer that can be just as “on the go” as your work needs – a “portable computer.” Most of the computers in the world today are …
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United Launch Alliance Atlas V Launch Highlights – NASA InSight
You didn’t think we would have a high profile Atlas V launch without me sharing the launch highlights video, did you? Of course not. While there wasn’t too much to see with this mornings launch, it still put on quite a show for what we could see, especially some footage taken above the clouds from …
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NASA InSight Successfully Launches On Its Mission To Mars
NASA’s InSight Mars lander successfully launched this morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. As expected, the weather was quite a mess – very foggy – and once the Atlas V RD-180 engine ignited there wasn’t too much more than steam and an orange glow to be seen in the launch video. Of course, …
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No One Cares What You Think Is A “Better Idea”
Earlier today I was watching an older video on YouTube by “8-Bit Guy” regarding what you could do with a 1st generation Apple TV. The video was from 2014, so it’s of course dated, but still, it’s interesting to see what one can do with an old 1st generation Apple TV (I personally have a …
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Bits And Bytes – Program 12: What Next?
This is it – the final episode of the 1983 TV Ontario series “Bits and Bytes.” It’s been 11 episodes introducing the basic concepts of computer usage in 1983. This is an interesting one – it focuses on the future of computing, both logistically and practically. Things like people sitting for far too long at …
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The Leonard Nimoy “Magnavision” LaserDisc Promotional Video
Those of you who are fans of vintage technology will certainly have at least heard of LaserDisc, a video format very similar yet oh so different to CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, and the like – formats we well know today. In fact, LaserDisc was the predecessor to optical disc formats. Yep, they all got their start …
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The Chernobyl Disaster – Calls To The Pripyat Fire Dispatch
Today marks 32 years since the explosion at Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in the Ukraine. While there isn’t too much to say today that I haven’t said in many previous articles on the disaster, I do have a few things to share. EDIT 6/13/2019: Wow, this entry is getting rather popular. …
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28 Years Ago, The Launch Of The Hubble Space Telescope
Today marks an amazing 28 years since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the premier tools in our study of the origins of the universe. Orbiting the Earth well above the light altering effects of the bulk of the atmosphere, Hubble was placed in a unique position to spend days, weeks, months, …
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Disc Manufacturing, Inc. Compact Disc Production Plant Tour – Circa 1995
Here’s a pretty awesome video I found a little while back and just now am getting to covering – a tour of the Disc Manufacturing Inc. compact disc production plant, showing the process by which CD’s were actually made in their facilities per customer requests. The video is of course a promotional one designed to …
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The Beginning Of The End Of 32 Bit Application Support In MacOS
A few days ago, users of MacOS High Sierra version 10.13.4 (the current release version as of this writing) have started being met with a message upon running a 32 bit application, explaining that the application “is not optimized for your Mac” and states that the developer should update the application to improve compatibility. This …
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