FlatFootFox
The Hard Fork podcast had a pretty good episode recently where they interviewed one of the engineers on the project. They’d troubleshooted the spacecraft enough in the past that they weren’t starting from square one, but it still sounded pretty difficult.
Modern satellites are protected by various means of encryption, but there’s an enthusiast community that tracks down and communicates with very old unencrypted zombie satellites. There’s even been an NGO which managed to fire rockets on an abandoned NASA/ESA probe (with their approval.)
The Voyagers benefits primarily from the lack of groups with an adequate deep space network to communicate with it. Their communication standards are otherwise completely open and well documented.
I still cannot believe NASA managed to re-establish a connection with Voyager 1.
That scene from The Martian where JPL had a hardware copy of Pathfinder on Earth? That’s not apocryphal. NASA keeps a lot of engineering models around for a variety of purposes including this sort of hardware troubleshooting.
It’s a practice they started after Voyager. They shot that patch off into space based off of old documentation, blueprints, and internal memos.
Just got my Ambient Twilight silent choc switches in! These switches feel incredible. I’d been running tape/floss modded Red Pros up until now. Their sound is similar depending on how well you did the mod, but they always felt disappointingly mushy. The Twilights are even quieter and have a nice satisfying linear feel. They’re definitely quiet enough to start bringing to the office more regularly.
The keyboard’s a variant to last year’s TypeBoy. A pair of modded Game Boy Advance cartridges house a custom PCB, XAIO BLE, shift register, and Sharp Memory Display. (When you don’t accidentally crack one during installation. Whoops.) The Mark II trades the staggered column setup for an ortholinear layout with an offset mod row. The new shape helps channel the handheld vibes a bit better. I went with a PCB stack this time for the case. Partially to try something new, partially to hide the bright Pro Red switches. I’ll have to let the Twilights shine a bit more on the next revision.
Human Diplomat: *Laughs at joke.*
Vulcan Diplomat (To Himself): This is great. I’m going to get a good grade in Party, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.
https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/737885534519738368/
Captain Archer and Commander Shran also rank up there.
It’s a soup made with chicken broth, shredded chicken, tomatoes, onion, garlic, herbs, spices, and semi-submerged crispy corn products. They’re some authentic Mexican versions, and some incredibly TexMex versions. The black beans and corn put this firmly in the yeehaw territory, but it’s at least got some freshly toasted pasilla chiles and fried corn tortillas.
https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/chicken-tortilla-soup/
Thanks for the nudge, meant to post this earlier!
“This video is about James Somerton.”
Any of Nelix’s cooking with Leola root. No matter how far Voyager traveled, it was the proper noun space vegetable they always had on hand.