In 1983, the Lisa was supposed to be a barnburner. Apple’s brand-new computer had a cutting edge GUI, a mouse, and power far beyond the 8-bit machines that came before. It looked like nothing else on the market, and had a price tag to match—retailing at $9,995, or the equivalent of over $30,000 today.
It held so much promise. And yet, come 1989, Apple was burying almost 3,000 examples in a landfill. What went wrong?
Continue reading “Why Apple Dumped 2,700 Computers In A Landfill In 1989”
So far in the “Field Guide” series, we’ve mainly looked at critical infrastructure systems that, while often blending into the scenery, are easily observable once you know where to look. From the substations, transmission lines, and local distribution systems that make up the electrical grid to cell towers and even weigh stations, most of what we’ve covered so far are mega-scale engineering projects that are critical to modern life, each of which you can get a good look at while you’re tooling down the road in a car.
This time around, though, we’re going to switch things up a bit and discuss a less-obvious but vitally important infrastructure system: the cold chain. While you might never have heard the term, you’ve certainly seen most of the major components at one time or another, and if you’ve ever enjoyed fresh fruit in the dead of winter or microwaved a frozen burrito for dinner, you’ve taken advantage of a globe-spanning system that makes sure environmentally sensitive products can be safely stored and transported.
Continue reading “A Field Guide To The North American Cold Chain”
If you grew up in the middle of the Cold War, you probably remember hearing about the Distant Early Warning line between duck-and-cover drills. The United States and Canada built the DEW line radar stations throughout the Arctic to detect potential attacks from the other side of the globe.
MIT’s Lincoln Lab proposed the DEW Line in 1952, and the plan was ambitious. In order to spot bombers crossing over the Arctic circle in time, it required radar twice as powerful as the best radar of the day. It also needed communications systems that were 99 percent reliable, even in the face of terrestrial and solar weather.
In the end, there were 33 stations built from Alaska to Greenland in an astonishing 32 months. Keep in mind that these stations were located in a very inhospitable environment, where temperatures reached down to -60 °F (-51 °C). Operators kept the stations running 24/7 for 36 years, from 1957 to 1993.
The DEW line wasn’t the only radar early-warning system that the US and Canada had in place, only the most ambitious. The Pinetree Line was first activated in 1951. However, its simple radar was prone to jamming and couldn’t pick up things close to the ground. It was also too close to main cities along the border to offer them much protection. Even so, the 33 major stations, along with six smaller stations, did better than expected. Continue reading “The DEW Line Remembered”
After the fire and fury of liftoff, when a spacecraft is sailing silently through space, you could be forgiven for thinking the hard part of the mission is over. After all, riding what’s essentially a domesticated explosion up and out of Earth’s gravity well very nearly pushes physics and current material science to the breaking point.
But in reality, getting into space is just the first on a long list of nearly impossible things that need to go right for a successful mission. While scientific experiments performed aboard the International Space Station and other crewed vehicles have the benefit of human supervision, the vast majority of satellites, probes, and rovers must be able to operate in total isolation. With nobody nearby to flick the power switch off and on again, such craft need to be designed with multiple layers of redundant systems and safe modes if they’re to have any hope of surviving even the most mundane system failure.
That said, nobody can predict the future. Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, there will always be edge cases or abnormal scenarios that don’t get accounted for. With proper planning and a pinch of luck, the majority of missions are able to skirt these scenarios and complete their missions without serious incident.
Unfortunately, Lunar Trailblazer isn’t one of those missions. Things started well enough — the February 26th launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 went perfectly, and the rocket’s second stage gave the vehicle the push it needed to reach the Moon. The small 210 kg (460 lb) lunar probe then separated from the booster and transmitted an initial status message that was received by the Caltech mission controllers in Pasadena, California which indicated it was free-flying and powering up its systems.
But since then, nothing has gone to plan.
There’s something ominous about robots taking over jobs that humans are suited to do. Maybe you don’t want a job turning a wrench or pushing a broom, but someone does. But then there are the jobs no one wants to do or physically can’t do. Robots fighting fires, disarming bombs, or cleaning up nuclear reactors is something most people will support. But can you climb through a water pipe from the inside? No? There are robots that are available from several commercial companies and others from university researchers from multiple continents.
If you think about it, it makes sense. For years, companies that deal with pipes would shoot large slugs, or “pigs”, through the pipeline to scrape them clean. Eventually, they festooned some pigs with sensors, and thus was born the smart pig. But now that it is possible to make tiny robots, why not send them inside the pipe to inspect and repair?
There are a lot of benefits to writing for Hackaday, but hands down one of the best is getting paid to fall down fascinating rabbit holes. These often — but not always — delightful journeys generally start with chance comments by readers, conversations with fellow writers, or just the random largesse of The Algorithm. Once steered in the right direction, a few mouse clicks are all it takes for the properly prepared mind to lose a few hours chasing down an interesting tale.
I’d like to say that’s exactly how this article came to be, but to be honest, I have no idea where I first heard about the prison camp lathe. I only know that I had a link to a PDF of an article written in 1949, and that was enough to get me going. It was probably a thread I shouldn’t have tugged on, but I’m glad I did because it unraveled into a story not only of mechanical engineering chops winning the day under difficult circumstances, but also of how ingenuity and determination can come together to make the unbearable a little less trying, and how social engineering is an important a skill if you want to survive the unsurvivable.
Continue reading “Hacking When It Counts: DIY Prosthetics And The Prison Camp Lathe”
There’s interesting news out of Wyoming, where a coal mine was opened this week. But the fact that it’s the first new coal mine in 50 years isn’t the big news — it’s the mine’s abundance of rare earth elements that’s grabbing the headlines. As we’ve pointed out before, rare earth elements aren’t actually all that rare, they’re just widely distributed through the Earth’s crust, making them difficult to recover. But there are places where the concentration of rare earth metals like neodymium, dysprosium, scandium, and terbium is slightly higher than normal, making recovery a little less of a challenge. The Brook Mine outside of Sheridan, Wyoming is one such place, at least according to a Preliminary Economic Assessment performed by Ramaco Resources, the mining company that’s developing the deposit.
The PEA states that up to 1,200 tons of rare earth oxides will be produced a year, mainly from the “carbonaceous claystones and shales located above and below the coal seams.” That sounds like good news to us for a couple of reasons. First, clays and shales are relatively soft rocks, making it less energy- and time-intensive to recover massive amounts of raw material than it would be for harder rock types. But the fact that the rare earth elements aren’t locked inside the coal is what’s really exciting. If the REEs were in the coal itself, that would present something similar to the “gasoline problem” we’ve discussed before. Crude oil is a mixture of different hydrocarbons, so if you need one fraction, like diesel, but not another, like gasoline, perhaps because you’ve switched to electric vehicles, tough luck — the refining process still produces as much gasoline as the crude contains. In this case, it seems like the coal trapped between the REE-bearing layers is the primary economic driver for the mine, but if in the future the coal isn’t needed, the REEs could perhaps be harvested and the coal simply left behind to be buried in the ground whence it came.
