after an early launch on a calm, clear and sunny morning. This one flew to 501 feet on a “C” engine and pulled 9.4 Gs at peak acceleration, softly landing less than 20 feet from the pad.
Estes Red Max model rocket with a tethered altimeter (black object near nose cone) and Nomex chute protector (orange fabric attached to shock cord).
Still frame from the upward-looking GoPro at the pad.
when you can launch a camera on a rocket?! I’m anticipating that the Castle Valley Town Council will prohibit such activities in three…two…one…
Self portrait microseconds after launch.
A view towards the snowy La Sal Mountains, plus Round Mountain and Adobe Mesa, caught at apogee.
UPDATE: Added this wide view taken on descent under parachute. That’s me and my shadow in the driveway, next to the launch pad.
of several model rockets this afternoon, with a digital flight recorder onboard. The rocket engines have gotten a lot bigger, and the gadgets have gotten a lot cooler, since I was a kid. Fun beyond words.
Red Max launching on a C6-5 engine.
Red Nova lift-off on a D12-5 engine.
Arcas soaring on a E12-6 engine, achieving more than 1,600 feet in altitude at apogee!
Flight data as recorded by a Jolly Logic digital altimeter. Data is the new bacon.
of a model rocket, my first in 55 years, went off with a satisfying woooooosh! Just as I remembered it as a fledgling rocketeer in my youth. Priceless.
Second launch of the day, on a C6-5 rocket engine, lofting it to more than 1,000 feet in altitude. Recovery was by parachute, landing 305 feet away from the launch site.
A third launch, on Boxing Day. Woooooooooooooooosh!
of the largest rocket ever launched, brought to humanity by SpaceX early this morning from south Texas. (Images below from the SpaceX webcast on X.)
Propellant loading underway of the Super Heavy Booster and Starship 25 with super-chilled liquid oxygen and liquid methane.
Successful liftoff! All 33 Raptor engines ignited with the capability of lifting 150 tons into Earth orbit.
Excellent slow-motion high resolution video of the launch: NASASpaceflight.
was in use by the operators of the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company in the early 1900s to guard against rockfalls spilling onto the tracks and causing an accident. A series of electrified wires were strung along the more unstable sections of the rock cuts in the columnar basalts that are prone to toppling. Should the circuit be cut it would potentially indicate that a rock had severed the wire. Some relics of this system remain along the paved trail in the form of standing poles, some with insulators. The line was abandoned by the railroad in 1987 and eventually incorporated into the Columbia Plateau State Park Trail.
Location of a recent rockfall onto the paved trail. The vertical spacing of the insulators suggests a series of parallel wires, strung pole to pole, along the length of a cut.
has enabled a faster and more reliable connection to the Internet from my rural residence in eastern Washington. I can highly recommend T-Mobile’s 5G Wi-Fi Gateway device if it is available in your area, where I am enjoying two orders of magnitude increase in both upload and download speeds over my previous provider. And at only $50/month (with no contract and no data caps) it’s half the cost of my previously lousy service. Zoom zoom!
Typical results of a speed test with the new T-Mobile 5G device on my home network.
is the latest gadget I’ve acquired in service of my feathered friends. If the Sun is up, the fountain is spouting!
is greatly assisted with DStretch software, allowing researchers to peer through centuries of weathering, fading and vandalism. The program uses a method called decorrelation stretch, which was originally used by NASA to improve remote sensing images of Mars, but DStretch optimizes it for rock art.
Image of a vandalized (chalked) pictograph in Black Dragon Canyon, Utah, taken under ordinary daylight (shaded) conditions.
The false color images below are screenshots from DStretch on my Samsung smartphone, illustrating several of the filters available in the software that are designed to highlight hidden details.
Learn more: DStretch website.
has long been misinterpreted as a depiction of a flying phantasm, however, it actually consists of several individual pictographs as revealed by recent studies utilizing photographic and x-ray fluorescence techniques.
Screenshot of DStretch image of the Black Dragon pictograph captured on my Samsung smartphone that uses a decorrelation algorithm to reveal hidden details. Once the bias of the chalked outline on the pictograph is removed, separate elements are easily recognizable.
on the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project where nearly 80% of contaminated tailings and soils have been removed since 2009, relocated about 30 miles to the north at a disposal site near Crescent Junction, Utah. Here are the numbers and a project overview.
and this beast still has a new Deere smell. A brand spanking new road grader sits ready and able to keep the Castleton Road open through the coming winter. Here’s some heavy equipment porn:
by rail from Montana, heading west, providing fuel for electric vehicles and e-bikes.
Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Rail Road coal train above Fish Lake Trail.
humans first landed on the Moon, with Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first men to walk on another body in the solar system. It was only 66 years from Kitty Hawk to Tranquility Base, and now, sadly, 50 years since man last walked on the Moon with Apollo 17.
Apollo 11 Hasselblad photo AS11-40-5875 showing astronaut Buzz Aldrin at Tranquility Base.
in a star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula, among the first images released by NASA from the newly commissioned James Webb Space Telescope. Breathtaking.
Image by NASA/JWST.
Comparative image of same region from the Hubble Space Telescope (NASA).
this 6,000 gallon tanker truck is loaded, locked and ready to rock. Let’s hope it’s not needed this fire season but it’s ready to go, positioned at the Castle Valley Fire Station 1 on the Castleton Road.
is increasingly being used in the area, and here’s my neighbor’s new garage being built with Nudura insulated concrete forms.
Easy and fast: Unfold the Styrofoam forms, snap the segments together, add rebar and fill with concrete.
on outdoor gear that is used in rough and rugged environments. Here’s the screen of my Garmin Fenix 6X Pro watch after a tumble several days ago. Gulp. Then I realized I had put a screen protector on the three year old device when first purchased. The Gorilla Glass used in the watch screen is entirely unscratched. Brilliant.
in Nevada and Utah includes the most remote and loneliest part of the western US, and all the rivers are internally drained, that is, have no outlet to the oceans.
Endless mountain ranges, endless empty valleys.
There’s copper in them thar hills: Variegated mine dump at Ruth, Nevada.
contributes approximately 30 percent of Iceland’s electricity, the other 70 percent coming from hydropower. This is the Krafla facility, rated at 60 megawatts.
One wonderful benefit of a nearby power plant are the hot pools for soaking. Our group spent two hours relaxing here in the therapeutic waters.