What's the scoop with Mars InSight's mired mole? It's digging again, thanks to trowel trickery There was good news for Martian miners this week as NASA's stuck mole began making progress into the red planet's soil once more. The multinational instrument, a key part of the payload of NASA's InSight spacecraft, had been stuck at the 30cm mark out of a hoped-for 5m after hammering began in February. Boffins used the lander …
Team America: World Police isn't invading anywhere successfully anytime soon. Before we can even consider doing so we have to make America great again. Great like we haven't been since November 8th, 2016. Given how far we've fallen in less than three short years it is hard to ever see being great again.
You got the wrong date. November 8th 2016 is the date at which the USA stopped being a democracy and became a pathetic joke. The only one who can be genuinely happy about that is Dubya, because everyone's forgotten him now.
Yet I disagree with your conclusion. Yes, the USA has fallen far, far below what the Founding Fathers had wished for, but the American people are good people, and some of them are trying their damnedest to turn the ship around and head back to calm waters. In the end, I'm sure they will prevail.
The only question is how many generations will be wasted in the meantime.
Being in IT, I consider the Trump administration to just be one big DR test of how well the founding fathers crafted the checks and balances in our political and governing systems. Since we've managed to avert WWIII thus far, there hasn't been a coup, and the economy is not in the toilet yet, I think the wisdom of our forefathers holds true. Many other countries would likely be experiencing civil war by now. (of course we've been there, done that too) However, like any DR situation, that UPS battery or generator power isn't going to last forever, so I HOPE that people do a bit better with their choices in the next election..
We have a family friend who used to work for IBM here in Blighty back in mainframe days. He was called in somewhere to a non functional machine and asked if they had tried giving it a kick and shamefacedly they said they had. Knowing the likely cause he told them they hadn't done it in the right place. Drew and X on the right spot, gave it a reasonable thump and the machine whirred into life again.
It wasn't quite back in the days when bugs were named due to the tendency of moths to get in and get roasted onto switches, but not far past that point. Back when Babbage's Difference Engine could still be viewed as a credible precursor to the uninitiated. Try telling the Yoof that.
There's a fun article in the Graun today about getting today's teens to try and operate past tech, like a rotary dial phone. Back in the early '90s they were replacing the rotary phones in the dept with push button jobs and I scored a genuine phone for the kids to play with. Won plaudits from the missus for that one.
For some reason this strikes my funnybone. Cleese, Idle, and a pantomime horse surveying a patch of oaks with oversized binoculars: "The mole is not out of the woods yet." Followed by an explosion. Peter Sellers as the Inspector: "Ze mewl ees not owut of ze woods yecht." Straight: "You said 'mewl""... Sellers, wistfully: "... Yes, I did."
Robots digging holes on Mars, photographing Pluto, shooting asteroids at close range, sniffing comet gas. What an age we live in.
Lots of plot lines in books about PITA martian dust and lack of friction (though many from back in the day before better knowledge around the dust being almost like a "puddle" (property wise) on the surface) I expected the mole to have some way to "grip" while in the hole as even if soil was hard dust likely to get blown into the hole as dust-storms common on Mars
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