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Posts tagged Technology

Hot rod to Pluto launches successfully

NASA launched the New Horizons probe today on an express ride to the Solar System’s last outpost, Pluto.

While most recent interplanetary probes have taken the slow and easy way to their destinations, taking long, looping trips around way-station planets, New Horizons is taking the Metroliner approach — short and fast.

The probe’s launch vehicle, an Atlas 5 rocket, will accelerate the Pluto probe to almost 16 km/s (36,000 mph), quick enough to pass the moon’s orbit (384,000 km or 240,000 miles) in just nine hours. In contrast, the Apollo missions, with a top speed of 11 km/s (25,000 mph) took a week to reach the moon.

New Horizons will reach its icy, remote destination, 30 times farther from the sun than the earth is, in 2015, just nine years from now. That’s about 500,000,000,000 km/year!

Artist's conception of Pluto and Charon Pluto remains the last known planet in the solar system to be visited by an interplanetary probe. Its physical properties resemble a comet’s more than the rest of the planets, leading some astronomers to say it should no longer be classifed as a planet. IMHO, it’s a planet, so I’m going to call it that.

For more details about New Horizon, visit the official NASA website $Astronomy: A Beginner\'s Guide to the Universe, Fourth Edition$ .

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January 19th, 2006 | Tags: Technology | Category: Astronomy | Leave a comment

The resurgence of Ma Bell

Now is it just me, or does it seem like the Bell Telephone Company is slowly reassembling itself?

Back in the day, kids, there was only one phone company in the USA. It manufactured its own equipment, which you rented from it. It also handled long distance traffic through an associated company, AT&T. In the 1980s, the US government broke up Ma Bell into separate parts: seven Baby Bells (like BellSouth), AT&T and Western Electric. The research and development branch, Bell Labs, also got pulled away from Ma Bell.

Since then, the splintered parts of the Bell monopoly seems to be magnetically attracting themselves into larger and larger units, as Baby Bells buy up cellular companies, AT&T reconfigures itself several times over, buying up cable companies and cellular companies, and Baby Bells merge. So I wonder, will we once again see a bigger, more powerful Ma Bell, controlling land lines, cellular traffic, cable TV, broadband internet and long distance, too?

If you’re worried, like me, that Bell is getting too big again, protest with your wallet and switch to a different carrier. I am using Voice Over Internet Protocol now over my cable broadband connection and paying just $25 a month for unlimited local and long distance calls. For more details, check out this site, which just happens to be one of mine.

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