The transition

I'm quite the space nut and the endless attacks on the moon landings is entertaining and wholesome.
Everything must be challenged.
I knew a preacher whose day job was as a furniture mover. He asserted that NASA shot the moon videos in that huge building 5 on the Johnston Space Center. It is a movie studio, he said. I had to work as a mover after I graduated into the 1973 post-VietNam recession. That or live with my parents and work retail.
I installed and tested equipment in building 5 of JSC from 1976-1979. Building 5 is full of computers, tape recorders, digital processors, display consoles, and 36 button telephones (which I tested modifications to). There were about 6 IBM 360 mainframes on the main floor, fed by 10 or so interdata minicomputers that my employer installed and programmed. A whole room full of telephone equipment to receive & transmit 4 T1 lines to remote ground stations and decommutate them to digital streams. Vast breaker panels & busbars to power all that stuff. Feeds from two AC lines and a set of AC from 6 diesel generators the size of locomotives. Huge air-conditioners to cool all that stuff. I saw no big soundstages or film cameras.
 
I knew a preacher whose day job was as a furniture mover. He asserted that NASA shot the moon videos in that huge building 5 on the Johnston Space Center. It is a movie studio, he said. I had to work as a mover after I graduated into the 1973 post-VietNam recession. That or live with my parents and work retail.
I installed and tested equipment in building 5 of JSC from 1976-1979. Building 5 is full of computers, tape recorders, digital processors, display consoles, and 36 button telephones (which I tested modifications to). There were about 6 IBM 360 mainframes on the main floor, fed by 10 or so interdata minicomputers that my employer installed and programmed. A whole room full of telephone equipment to receive & transmit 4 T1 lines to remote ground stations and decommutate them to digital streams. Vast breaker panels & busbars to power all that stuff. Feeds from two AC lines and a set of AC from 6 diesel generators the size of locomotives. Huge air-conditioners to cool all that stuff. I saw no big soundstages or film cameras.

So you're saying the moon landing was all high tech digital imagery rather than a video hoax? Can we quote you on that :)
 
So you're saying the moon landing was all high tech digital imagery rather than a video hoax? Can we quote you on that :)
That kind of idiocy is the same as the storefront preacher. Lander module on moon was visible on telescopes from earth. Equipment in JSC building 5 processed data from the rockets and lander for display on video consoles viewed by NASA employees. These were visible on national television. Also audio and video from the astronauts was heard and broadcast.
 
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That kind of idiocy is the same as the storefront preacher. Lander module on moon was visible on telescopes from earth. Equipment in JSC building 5 processed data from the rockets and lander for display on video consoles viewed by NASA employees. These were visible on national television. Also audio and video from the astronauts was heard and broadcast.

WOW, that's some pretty high tech digital technology for the era - makes you wonder if there was some sort of time travel thing going on, or perhaps mass demonic intervention?

Ummm....I'm assuming you saw the wink emoji? No need to notify the local psych team....
 
I knew a preacher whose day job was as a furniture mover. He asserted that NASA shot the moon videos in that huge building 5 on the Johnston Space Center. It is a movie studio, he said. I had to work as a mover after I graduated into the 1973 post-VietNam recession. That or live with my parents and work retail.
I installed and tested equipment in building 5 of JSC from 1976-1979. Building 5 is full of computers, tape recorders, digital processors, display consoles, and 36 button telephones (which I tested modifications to). There were about 6 IBM 360 mainframes on the main floor, fed by 10 or so interdata minicomputers that my employer installed and programmed. A whole room full of telephone equipment to receive & transmit 4 T1 lines to remote ground stations and decommutate them to digital streams. Vast breaker panels & busbars to power all that stuff. Feeds from two AC lines and a set of AC from 6 diesel generators the size of locomotives. Huge air-conditioners to cool all that stuff. I saw no big soundstages or film cameras.
I took a tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building in about 1965. I remember the tour guide saying that it actually had its own weather indoors-- sometimes it would kinda rain in there when it was dry outside due to condensation.

That was a very large construction project for such an elaborate... er, hoax. There are photos of me standing in front of a Saturn 5, though I wasn't that close to it. I'll have to dig those out, I've been thinking about them. I was about eight or nine, maybe it was '66.

Of course, I was quite a ways-- miles, probably-- from the rocket, so it could have been mock up made out of aluminum or even a billboard...

Yeah, no. Even at eight years old, I knew that was quite real.
 
My space science (weather class) asst professor had a base pass to Canaveral for the Apollo 14 launch. I drove over to Florida, met him at his motel, and rode on base in the back of his station wagon. Very loud event, and I saw the Saturn V rocket go up into the sky.
 
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I studied the Luddites years ago. They were trying to protect themselves, their jobs, their families. Doesn't seem to apply to today's "haters " ... personal transportation isn't under threat, and what powers the cars and trucks is irrelevant
I've read that the Luddites didn't object to the new tech, they just wanted a piece of the improved production and profit. Of course the mill owners said "Forget it."
 
Indeed. We saw that happening with the actors / writers strike regarding A.I. scraping "content " ... automatic plagiarizing.
 
A.I. ( especially self driving cars and trucks) is another huge part of the transition that we aren't really ready for, but is happening now. Think about the amount of battery power needed for an A.I. based city to run for three or four days of no grid power . :eek:
 
A.I. ( especially self driving cars and trucks) is another huge part of the transition that we aren't really ready for, but is happening now. Think about the amount of battery power needed for an A.I. based city to run for three or four days of no grid power . :eek:
Current "AI" tech is dreadfully inefficient. They train inefficiently, they discover very inefficient representations of their training data, and their run-time costs are ridiculously inefficient for how much actual work they are doing.

They are nowhere near human capabilities, and in spite of what the hype-mongers and fear-mongers are spraying all over the interwebs, there is no clear path from what we have today to any system with capabilities comparable to humans. Bluntly there is complex emergent behavior in bumblebees that neural networks cannot adequately model.

None of that is to say that there aren't useful and valuable applications. And underneath the hype at the very high end there are lighter weight open source models that give roughly ninety percent of the performance with less than one percent of the footprint (in terms of training cost, memory, and power consumption). My own research and experimentation indicates that footprint reductions of a factor of a million are indeed possible -- and that shouldn't be surprising because bumblebees don't consume that much power.
 
And as far as the economics of the EV transition, Ford doesn't seem impressed ... almost a $50,000 loss per vehicle...
 
A.I. ( especially self driving cars and trucks) is another huge part of the transition that we aren't really ready for, but is happening now. Think about the amount of battery power needed for an A.I. based city to run for three or four days of no grid power . :eek:
1mw chargers for semi trucks.
There are 4m of them in the US.
Do the math.
 
Solar or wind plus battery storage is like the new plastic ... soon enough to be found everywhere ...
and most of that power will end up wasted, just like most of today's power is wasted on trivial uses. See @Mr. Coffee post above about A.I., but energy waste is everywhere in the cities, and growing ethanol on our farmland .. another big waste. Bah.
 
I've heard of farmers over here that overbuilt arrays expecting to sell excess to rhe grid getting less money than expected and turning to bitcoin mining to make up the shortfall. Yeah, that helps the climate...
 
I havent got a degree, but I do have an HND in electronic principles and 20 years experience installing telephone exchanges, 100 thousand amp busbars, 1000 amp explosive fuses, mechanical, reed and digital telecoms tech.

Ive also been a solar and wind amateur enthusiast for 50 years.

Theres no magic, solar and wind makes the power it does, but the reality of its limitations is being ignored for political agenda.

We can build a turbine and solar grid, but only with central control of usage, sharing consumer battery tech and rationing of consumption.

This still leaves 80% fossil use and 90% during the long winters.

We would need another planet to provide first world consumption to 8 billion humans using wind and solar.
 
they are going to raise corn no matter what,so i guess it would be better better utilized as motor fuel than the people killing corn sweetner.
Exactly. But "they" are not interested in raising that labor intensive organic sweet corn for people ... especially if there are subsidies available for ethanol.
 
I havent got a degree, but I do have an HND in electronic principles and 20 years experience installing telephone exchanges, 100 thousand amp busbars, 1000 amp explosive fuses, mechanical, reed and digital telecoms tech.

Ive also been a solar and wind amateur enthusiast for 50 years.

Theres no magic, solar and wind makes the power it does, but the reality of its limitations is being ignored for political agenda.

We can build a turbine and solar grid, but only with central control of usage, sharing consumer battery tech and rationing of consumption.

This still leaves 80% fossil use and 90% during the long winters.

We would need another planet to provide first world consumption to 8 billion humans using wind and solar.
Indeed. I am also a solar enthusiast, but the first thing you need to do in any home PV install is cut consumption first. That's true for the whole society.
 
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