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Voyager 1 Thrusters Fired Up After 37 Years of Deep Sleep By AKALib Friday Dec 01, 2017 · 7:08 PM EST 14 Comments (14 New) 44 Credit: NASA RSS REBLOGGED BY SciTech Recommended TAGS Recommended Science Space Voyager Share this article After 37 years of deep sleep, a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft, were successfully fired up on Wednesday, Nov 29. They will help augment the primary thrusters which are getting old and weak. The thrusters are used periodically to reorient the spacecraft and re-point its antenna to Earth, now 21 billion km away. Voyager 1, launched in September 5, 1977, now flying in interstellar space, relies on thrusters that are fired for short millisecond periods to subtly rotate the spacecraft and point its communications antenna at Earth. Since 2014, NASA engineers had noticed that Voyager’s "attitude control thrusters" have been degrading and losing efficiency. The Voyager team assembled a group of propulsion experts to study the problem. The solution that came up with was to use the four Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) thrusters, which were originally used for orientation control when Voyager flew by planets and moons during the first few years of its mission. The TCM thrusters are identical in size and functionality to the attitude control thrusters, and are located on the back side of the spacecraft. The TCM thrusters were last used on November 8, 1980, when Voyager 1 flew by Saturn. Back then, the TCM thrusters were used in a more continuous firing mode; they had never been used in the pulse mode necessary for its new role. On Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, Voyager engineers sent instructions to fire up the four TCM thrusters. It took 19 hours and 35 minutes for the signal to reach Voyager 1 and another 19 hours and 35 minutes for the response to arrive. The received signals indicated that everything went according to plan — after 37 years of deep sleep in cold dark space, the thrusters worked perfectly! Kudos to the designers of the spacecraft and the mission team, who pored through decades-old data and outdated assembler language software to figure out and implement the solution. The plan going forward is to switch to the TCM thrusters in January. To make the change, Voyager has to turn on one heater per thruster, which requires power -- a limited resource for the aging mission. When there is no longer enough power to operate the heaters, the team will switch back to the attitude control thrusters. The thruster test went so well, the team will likely do a similar test on the TCM thrusters for Voyager 2, the twin spacecraft of Voyager 1. The attitude control thrusters currently used for Voyager 2 are not yet as degraded as Voyager 1's. More details at www.nasa.gov/... Voyager 1 Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, to study the outer Solar System. Its twin Voyager 2 was launched 16 days earlier. The Voyager 1 mission included flybys of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's large moon, Titan. It completed its primary mission with the flyby of Saturn on November 20, 1980. It is now pursuing an extended mission to explore the regions and boundaries of the outer heliosphere. The mission is expected to continue until around 2025 when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough electric power to operate its scientific instruments. A few vital statistics - Parameter Value Distance 141 AU (2.11×1010 km) from Sun A AU = Earth-Sun distance = 150 million km Speed 38,026 mph 520 million km per year Communications Delay (one-way) 19 hours and 35 minutes Launch Date September 5, 1977 Power 3 radioisotope thermoelectric generators 470 W at launch time Plutonium-238 left = 72.76%. Will decline to 56.5% by 2050. Here is a diagram of Voyager 1 and its instruments - voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/... Voyager 1 is in "Interstellar space" and Voyager 2 is currently in the "Heliosheath" -- the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. See voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/… for some more fun facts of Voyager. Here is an animation showing the trajectory of the two Voyager spacecraft - The Golden Record Each Voyager spacecraft carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc intended for any intelligent life forms out there. The disc carries encoded photographs, music, sounds and greetings in 55 languages.See diagram below for the record cover. voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/... See voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/… for a fascinating description of the images and the playback instructions encoded in them. An excerpt is shown below - In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary arithmetic is the correct time of one rotation of the record, 3.6 seconds, expressed in time units of 0,70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom. The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in. Below this drawing is a side view of the record and stylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record - about an hour. Voyager 1 and 2 both carry this record. There are ten more on display at various NASA institutions. Even Carl Sagan, who chaired the committee that created the record, did not get a copy. The record was never made available to the general public. Now we can get a copy (for $98), thanks to a Kickstarter-funded reissue of the Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition, issued as a 3 LP box set. Also, available as a 2 CD set at lightintheattic.net/… for $50. Both versions come with a hardcover illustrated book. Ozma Records. Here is video containing decoded information from the record - https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/1/1720285/-Voyager-1-Thrusters-Fired-Up-After-37-Years-of-Deep-Sleep

At least it did not fall off the edge of the galaxy. I hope my thruster works after 37 years of deep sleep. Best regards, RA1

I have been told by a local that it's a bad place, in bad conditions, with a old crowd and no GPs (of course). Don't go.

Kkkkkk. I live here for big chunks of Northern Hemisphere winters. My descriptive notes, for Rio as a city, would be appreciably different from yours posted here. I would stick to the 2.5 sauna clubs we know unless you are curious to see how the 'other side' lives.

Great inside dirt. ‘I’ve Got a Crook Running My Campaign’ Donald Trump, Paul Manafort and me. By COREY LEWANDOWSKI December 04, 2017 The following is an excerpt from Let Trump Be Trump by Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, to be published on December 3. We were somewhere over New Jersey, on our way to an event in Delaware, on the Trump helicopter when all hell broke loose. On board were Mr. Trump, the campaign’s press secretary Hope Hicks, security chief Keith Schiller, one Secret Service agent and me. Paul Manafort had been part of the campaign for a few weeks, his job to secure enough delegates to push Trump over the top at the Republican National Convention. When the boss originally asked me to set up a meeting for him with Manafort, I had to think for a second before the name made sense. It was Tom Barrack, the CEO of the investment firm Colony Capital and a friend of the boss’s for 30 years, who recommended Manafort. I made the call, and a dinner was set up for the following week at Mar-a-Lago. The first thing the boss said when he met Paul was, “Wow, you’re a good-looking guy,” the same words he’d said when he first met me. Manafort, who was older than me by about 30 years, had had some work done to secure his youthful appearance. Manafort had made strategic alliances with members of the Trump family. In April, weeks before the convention, he flew to Florida to meet with members of the Republican National Committee. There, he told them that everything Trump had said up to that point was a ruse—and he was going to show them the real Donald Trump from now on. Paul Manafort was going to change Donald Trump. While were in the air, heading for Delaware, somebody—I think it was Ann Coulter—tweeted out a quote from Manafort saying that Trump shouldn’t be on television anymore, that he shouldn’t do the Sunday shows. And from now on Manafort would do all shows. Because he’s the fucking expert, right? Not Trump, who had already turned the whole primary race on its head. So, we were in the helicopter and Hope said to Trump: “I turned down all the Sunday show requests.” “What?!” the boss screamed. “Without asking me?” “Yes, sir,” Hope said, “Paul said he doesn’t want you on TV.” Trump went fucking ballistic. We were still over the New York metropolitan area, where you can get cell service if you fly at a low altitude. “Lower it!” Trump yelled to the pilot. “I have to make a call.” He got Manafort on the phone, “Did you say I shouldn’t be on TV on Sunday??” Manafort could barely hear him because of the helicopter motor. But Trump said, “I’ll go on TV anytime I goddamn fucking want and you won’t say another fucking word about me! Tone it down? I wanna turn it up! I don’t wanna tone anything down! I played along with your delegate charts, but I have had enough.” We landed the whirlybird at the heliport and got into the car. I was in the back of the car, with Trump next to me on the passenger’s side. He got Paul on the phone and completely decimated him again verbally. Ripped his fucking head off. I wish I’d recorded it, because it was one of the greatest takedowns in the history of the world. “You’re a political pro? Let me tell you something. I’m a pro at life. I’ve been around a time or two. I know guys like you, with your hair and your skin…” I had worked for Trump for 15 months, and he had never spoken to me like that. He had ripped my face off, sure, but never for disrespecting him. I never pretended to be smarter than the boss, because I’m not. But Manafort did, and he isn’t. Though I felt vindicated, the feeling didn’t last long. I immediately got a phone call from Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, telling me that I wasn’t a team player and that I’d thrown Manafort under the bus. After his call with the boss, Paul had called Jared and complained about me. I believed the family thought I wasn’t a team player and that I was trying to sabotage Paul’s relationship with their father. They didn’t realize it was the other way around: He was trying to sabotage me. I knew right then that my job had an expiration date. *** Four months later, it was August 14, a Sunday night, and Trump Tower was relatively empty. It was Steve Bannon’s first day on the Trump campaign, so he made his way to the fourteenth floor and found a desk. Just as he was settling in, his phone rang. It was Manafort, who had become the Trump campaign manager, replacing me. Earlier that day, Bannon had first met the candidate and his campaign manager at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Manafort had appeared dressed in boat shoes, white capri pants with string ties and a blue blazer complete with a crest on the breast pocket. Thurston Howell III, Bannon thought. Now he was asking if they could meet. “Sure, where are you?” Steve asked. “Trump Tower,” Manafort said. Well, that’s convenient, Steve thought. “I’m in 43G,” he said. The apartment, like all the apartments in Trump Tower, was beautiful, with a drop-dead view. Manafort wanted Steve to look at a transcript of a story, yet another one, that a New York Times reporter had sent to him. Bannon read the first three paragraphs and then looked up him. “Twelve-point-seven-million-dollar payment from Ukraine?” “How much of this is true?” Bannon asked. “It’s all lies,” Manafort said. “My lawyers are fighting it.” “When are they going to run it?” Bannon asked. “They’re threatening to publish tomorrow.” “Does Trump know about this?” “What’s to know? It’s all lies.” “But if it’s in the paper someone has to give Trump a heads-up, because if it’s in the paper, it’s reality.” “It was a long time ago,” he added. “I had expenses.” Bannon knew what he had in his hand. It was an explosive, Page One story. And even if the story wasn’t true, it was in the fucking New York Times. At the very least it would leave a mark. Just as Steve had thought, the story ran the next day, August 15, on Page One, above the fold. “I’ve got a crook running my campaign,” Trump said when he read it. *** Trump told Bannon to fire Manafort right away. Steve argued that firing his campaign chairman would cause a shitstorm of bad press. Instead, he argued that Trump should take away his authority and give him a new title, which is what happened. When the campaign announced the new team, Bannon had the title of campaign CEO, Kellyanne Conway was the campaign manager and Manafort remained the title of campaign chairman. The kill shot for Paul came on Thursday August 18, when Trump was about to go onstage at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. A friend showed him a printout of an AP story written by Jeff Horwitz and Chad Day. Based on emails that the AP had obtained, the story described Manafort running “a covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party, attempting to sway American public opinion in favor of the country’s pro-Russian government.” It also said that Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, had “never disclosed their work as foreign agents as required under federal law.” “Tell Jared to fire him,” Trump said. The next morning at a breakfast meeting in Trump Tower, Jared asked Manafort to resign. At first, Paul balked. He was worried about the perception of being forced out of the campaign right after the Ukraine stories broke. “It will make me look guilty,” he said. Jared told him there wasn’t much that could be done. A press release was going out in 60 seconds. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/04/paul-manafort-and-me-216004

It feels so good when something works right.

Just two small comments: 1. You don't have to be shirtless at 117. So if you prefer the non-smoking area but feel it's too cold there, you can just put on your shirt. 2. They play straight porns at 117 because a lot of the GPs are straight. In addition, I believe, in Brazil, most gays feel better pretending to be heterosexul macho men, so they usually clam to be top only.

It aint OVER till the Fat Pig sings......

Today I learned to use the metro, I got burned by too much Sun, and I walked so much I have band-aids on my feet tonight!My escort for the day, Felipe, didn’t turn up. I met him last night at Pointe and he had given me his WhatsApp, so later in the evening we had arranged for him to be my guide for today on WhatsApp. I told him to meet me at my hotel at 9am. He whatsapped me at 11:30 am! Lol, I was already up in Santa Teresa without him. If they can’t wake up in the morning, they can’t be my guide/escort/translator etc. So he missed out on a full day of escorting me, for which I would have been very generous. I realised though, that I understand people when they talk to me, really quite often. The context is always quite obvious, and there are so many words that are just plain modified “Latin”, so since I know other Latin languages, I just guess right. So all on my own, I took the funicular train called the bonde all the way up to Santa Teresa. Then I looked for a nice restaurant with a view. After entering several of them, which weren’t quite up to my standard, I walked all the way up to Aprazivel. Very expensive for Rio. The food was good, but the view over the city was supremely beautiful.During my search up there in Santa Teresa, I noticed a side street “Candido Mendes”. That made me realise that the street where clube 117 is, actually come up all the way up here in the heart of Santa Theresa! So instead of taking a taxi, I walked it all the way down to arrive at club 117 at 3:50 pm. That is far too early, there was nobody of major interest for 2 hours.About Club 117: It is so much nicer in terms of facilities, and the suites are huge! Even the locker rooms are better, there are also public showers where everyone can checkout the merchandise etc. My only problem is that the “restaurant area” is very cold. Come on guys, I’m not wearing anything except a towel! So no one is using it. Instead, there is a smoker’s restaurant at the back, kind of hidden, much warmer, with loads more guys, but you have to stand the smell of smoke. Interesting that they choose straight porn on the tv rooms in both saunas. Surely that isn’t the best porn they can show to a bunch of gay guys?At 4:50 pm, nearly all the guys are bearded here. This doesn’t look like a good night for me. I found one smooth-chin guy that is average and probably 35 yo, that my oldest hire ever! He was good in bed though, a real power bottom. Interestingly he left right after I fucked him. Then I tried Bruno, who was a little chubby, but making me really horny with so much good kissing I couldn’t say no. These 2 hires were kind of a mistake, because all the hot guys arrived afterwards.So next I tried Pablo who is sooooo my type. His face is amazing to me. In college, I fell in love with guys who looked like him.He gives really good head, and he did that while confidently sitting on my face, and yes, he was right to be confident, it was delicious!Unfortunately, I embarrassed myself then, I was hard but not quite enough to fuck him. It sucks to be old, not enough stamina for 8 fucks in two days, are you kidding me?The most embarrassing is that I had insisted to him that I was the top! Anyway, I liked his dick a lot, which is on the smaller size but very hard, so I could ride him and I finished very happy that way.After that I decided not to embarrass myself anymore and I spent time with a guy fondling me, kissing me, letting me do the same to him, and teaching me Portuguese. We ordered food and he spend a good hour with me so I gave him R100. It was Rodrigo, a 29 yo.There is a super hot black guy, such a cute smile, if only I was horny enough I would have hired him today. We talked about it and I will get him on Tuesday. I have kissed so many guys tonight! They all want to entice you to hire them, and so if you look at them even just once,they will ask your name, tell you theirs, ask if you are top or bottom, and then put their tongue down your throat to try to convince you.Overall very impressed by the place, but wish the guys there could shave those beards. I know it is the fashion, but not for me. Tomorrow, I am using taxis! No more walking in the sun. And in the evening, back at Pointe 202, since both Meo Mundo and Club 117 are closed.

No the price has been that for a long time! I always expect the guy(s) to cum and I have never had them refuse and I psy $100.R but I will say that after going there for almost 17 years they know what I expect and they also know there will be repeat business if they are good... and i know that many of them enjoy the more then one boy in the room and now probably 90% of the time that is the case!

God he's dumb

Enjoy the break. And, thanks for letting know you weren't banned.

yes. but that's obvious bullshit

Yep. That's why either dead or in hiding.

Yep. But he's still leaving a millionaire and the girl is just not