How Astronomers Used the First Concorde Prototype To Chase a Total Eclipse (vice.com) 55
tedlistens writes: On Wednesday, a solar eclipse gave people across a swath of Indonesia and the South Pacific the chance to see a generous 4 minutes and 9 seconds of totality: the awe-inspiring sight of the moon completely covering the sun, turning day into night and offering a rare glimpse of the corona, the gas swirling in the Sun's outer atmosphere. But in 1972, a small group of astronomers from around the globe sought a way for seeing a longer eclipse than ever before: a prototype Concorde, capable of chasing the eclipse for a whopping 74 minutes across the Sahara Desert, at twice the speed of sound.
1972!? (Score:1)
Is this a new Slashdot record for "old news?"
Re: (Score:1)
No, it works on the binary system.
A article is posted:
the same day as the event
the next day
4 days after the event
8 days
16 days
32 days
and so on...
Re: 1972!? (Score:1)
Did anyone else notice the messed up geography? Author says the Atlantic is east of Tenerife, and that the shadow traveled westward from South America to the coast of Africa.
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Well, to the east of Tenerife is water, which could be called the Atlantic ocean, and if you fly west in a aircraft like the concorde, you would eventually get to the coast of Africa...
SOFIA (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:SOFIA (Score:5, Interesting)
SOFIA is a magnificent instrument and a crazy aircraft with fantastic capabilities, but the 747 it's based in can't keep up with an eclipse. The thing that has always impressed me with SOFIA is how they manage to open a door that large, at speed, without the aerodynamic forces ripping the aircraft apart. The Engineers who built that have some serious chops.
Re:SOFIA (Score:5, Interesting)
A Boeing 747 held together when this happened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A Boeing 737 held together when this happened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The engineering in an airliner is magnificent.
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I'd say the current tech is good enough for it.
Re: Keeping up with the times (Score:1)
That might give a clear view of Earth, but it won't beat the length of time given by the Concorde. LEO would be going too fast, considering you would be going behind the Earth every 45 minutes.
Concorde (Score:1)
Rod Stewart would travel from London to NY on the Concorde, EVERY WEEK, just to have his hair styled.
Re:Concorde (Score:4, Funny)
Rod Stewart would travel from London to NY on the Concorde, EVERY WEEK, just to have his hair styled.
Seriously dude, who didn't?
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I've seen him. I really don't want to know what he would have looked like if he didn't if that's the result of some expert hair stylist.
Re:Concorde (Score:4, Funny)
You don't need to consume 350,000+ L of kerosene every week for a hair cut.
Especially when the result is looking like an aged lesbian
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Well, it seems rather wasteful to use the Concorde, ever week, to have your hair styled. There's plenty of great stylists in London. You don't need to consume 350,000+ L of kerosene every week for a hair cut.
He didn't, that is a gross exaggeration, especially since he didn't fly all by himself. The Concorde got about 16 passenger-miles per gallon of jet fuel, so it wasn't that inefficient. Since it's 3460 miles from London to NY, that equates to about 1640 liters round trip.
What this reinforced for me... (Score:3)
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The Shara Desert is where the Morocco government is building out a 585-megawatt, half-million solar panel power plant that covers 6,178 acres.
Concentrated solar power plants use the Sun's energy to heat water and produce steam that spins energy-generating turbines. The system at Ouarzazate uses 12-meter-tall parabolic mirrors to focus energy onto a fluid-filled pipeline. The pipeline's hot fluid—393 degrees Celsius (739 degrees Fahrenheit)—is the heat source used to warm the water and make steam. The plant doesn't stop delivering energy at nighttime or when clouds obscure the sun; heat from the fluid can be stored in a tank of molten salts.
http://gizmodo.com/watch-a-massive-solar-power-plant-take-shape-in-the-sah-1752261396 [gizmodo.com]
74m at that speed is just 3000km (Score:2)
Re:74m at that speed is just 3000km (Score:4)
This is begging for a "your mom" joke.
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according to google:
which is about 2/3rd the distance across America.
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Big it is. If you ever find yourself there standing next to a huge pile of shovels it is time to run for your life. The real work begins when the cement arrives!
God, I miss the Concorde (Score:2)
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I'm wondering why anyone would pine for a pension plan, after all these years of seeing how governments and corporations hung pensioners out to dry. It seems immoral to promise them (since you won't be alive, or at least not in a position, to keep the promise) and naive to work with the expectation of receiving one (I will gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today).
Re: (Score:3)
Thank you for that ! yes pensions that go directly to the people needing them right now are much more efficient than "capitalized pensions" which means that people who have no real idea what they are doing are allowed to slice some money out of you pot every year as "management fees", and when you retire the people who are working now do not feel that they have any reason to give you something since you had the opportunity to "save" well minus whatever the corporations or the banks feel fit to slice off, an
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There are still companies that value ideas.
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There is no need to ever save for retirement. That entire idea is an artificial construct pushed by individualism and of course financial interests to have even more liquidity in the market. Remember that while traders can make money on a rising market, they *always* make money on volume, so the more money in the market the better they do. In addition to this, by having the entire population's "future" invested in the market, our attitudes towards financial reforms, political and social ideals, and decision
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Simple, provide basic pension funds to all retirees from current tax revenue. Period. It's actually that simple.
Never trust a smiling cat, or a politician who promises to pay you tomorrow for work done today.
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obviously it sucks if you live in a country of rat fuckers
Your faith in your fellow countrymen is refreshing, but naive. There is no way to ensure that future generations will not throw you under the bus.
I'm a high income socialist
I don't have any problem with your socialist ideology. But I do think that future promises need to be backed up with money. To do otherwise is to shift costs - this is both irresponsible and burdensome to future generations. Putting your kids in debt is not generally a moral thing to do - though I can think of some exceptions like infrastructure spending, where th
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socialist
So then, you'll be flying on the Concordski [wikipedia.org].
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Who do you think built them?
Re:Hey, where is the (Score:5, Funny)
Yes they had special little flaps to hide the E whenever they flew over english speaking countries...
and by the way I have a bridge to sell you ....
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As you have an E at the end of have, leave, niece, and Greece, which you do not speak in English, you just might manage with Concorde.You should get used to such things. The English language inherited half of its vocabulary from the French with lots of Es.
Isaac Asimov (Score:2)
Isaac Asimov wrote about following the eclipse in an airplane in a mystery / sci-fi story, The Backward Look. This was published in Casebook of the Black Widowers in 1980, and maybe in some magazines before then.
The story itself isn't one of Asimov's best; there's a convoluted story-within-the-story that features the eclipse chasing. But that mental image has stuck with me over the years. Never knew what it was based on, until now.
Nice geography lesson (Score:2)
At precisely 10:08 am on the morning of June 30, the four twin-spool Olympus 593 engines under the Concorde’s sweeping white wings powered up to full afterburner and launched “001” down the runway of Tenerife’s Las Palmas airport. Thousands of miles to the east, the shadow of the moon was already racing across the Atlantic at over 1,200 mph, as the eclipse shadow sped westward from South America toward the African coast.
I didn't realize that Africa was westward from South America. I mean, I guess it is if you go the long way, but I don't think that's what happened here.
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At precisely 10:08 am on the morning of June 30, the four twin-spool Olympus 593 engines under the Concorde’s sweeping white wings powered up to full afterburner and launched “001” down the runway of Tenerife’s Las Palmas airport. Thousands of miles to the east, the shadow of the moon was already racing across the Atlantic at over 1,200 mph, as the eclipse shadow sped westward from South America toward the African coast.
I didn't realize that Africa was westward from South America. I mean, I guess it is if you go the long way, but I don't think that's what happened here.
It's not a geography lesson. It's an astronomy lesson! The path of the moon's shadow is travelling westward.
The most impressive thing (Score:3, Insightful)