2017-02-12

Notes.

Noah here. Honored to fill in for Spencer.

Space.

• A side booster for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy was spotted going to their McGregor, TX test facility. Demo flight is expected later this year.
• In the meantime, SpaceX is also scheduled to fly an International Space Station resupply mission on Saturday. They just completed a static test fire on their newly refurbished launch pad.
• The Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane might be coming in for a landing.

Automated wheeled things.

• Ford is investing $1 billion over the next five years in Argo AI, a local-to-me startup developing autonomous vehicle technologies.
• GM spent a billion dollars of their own money on self-driving car startup Cruise Automation last year, and just released new video of their technology navigating San Francisco.
• Boston Dynamics let slip a sneak peak of a new and terrifying wheeled robot.

The infrastructure of New York City.

• The New Yorker had a great, in-depth piece about the history and context of the recently opened (and well received) Second Avenue Subway. Complaints and breakdowns are up throughout the system, however.
• The New York Times has been running a series called New York 101 focusing on different pieces of NYC's infrastructure. Most recently, How New York City Gets Its Electricity.
• It takes a lot of work to keep New York City clean.

Life at the South Pole.

• The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was looking for a machinist to spend the winter at the last minute.
• This tour of the station made me think it would be a pretty nice place to spend some time, but maybe not six months of darkness.
• Every year, the "winterover" crew at the station is in charge of designing and making a marker for the geographic south pole. The 2017 marker was recently unveiled.

Tangents.

• You can do amazing things with mason's line. Also, literal explanations of blacksmith idioms.
• Great explanations of high speed steel and carbide tooling for metal lathes.

And.

NASA uses pressure sensitive paint in wind tunnel testing