A few weeks ago we ran a story (item three) about a piece of space jetsam that tried to return to Earth peacefully, only to find a Florida family’s roof rudely in the way. A 700 gram bottle of Inconel was all that was left of the 2360 kg battery that was thrown overboard from the ISS in 2021, the rest likely turning into air pollution just as NASA planned. But the surviving piece was the “Golden BB”, which was able to break through the roof and do significant damage. At the time it happened, the Otero family was just looking to NASA to cover the cost of the repairs, but now they’re looking for a little more consideration. The lawsuit, filed by their attorney, is seeking $80,000 to cover repair costs and compensation for the “stress and impact” of the event. It also appears to set a precedent, as the Outer Space Liability Convention, an agreement to which the US is a party, would require the space agency to pay damages if debris causes damage in another country. Oteros thinks the SLC should apply to US real estate as well, and while we see their point, we’d advise them not to hold their breath. We suppose something like this had to happen eventually, and somehow we’re not surprised to see “Florida Man” in the headlines.
There was a bit of a stir this week surrounding the release of a study regarding the safety of autonomous vehicles relative to their manned counterparts. The headlines of the articles related to this were very varied and amusing, ranging from autonomous vehicles only able to drive in straight lines to AVs being safer than human-driven cars with a dot. As always, you have to read behind the headlines to get an idea of ​​what’s really going on, or maybe even bravely read the primary literature. From our reading of the abstract, the story appears to be more nuanced. According to a crash analysis involving 35,000 human-driven vehicles and 2,100 vehicles with some level of automation, AVs with SAE Level 4 automation suffered fewer crashes overall than vehicles without any automation. Importantly, crashes involving Level 4 vehicles are likely to occur when the vehicle is turning just before the crash or in low visibility conditions such as dawn or dusk. The study also compares Level 4 automation with Level 2, which features driver assistance features such as lane keeping and adaptive cruise control, and finds that Level 2 actually outperforms Level 4 in clear driving conditions, but loses in rainy conditions and nearly on every other ride. situation.
There’s a strange story coming out of New York regarding a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enforcement action that seems a little shady. It refers to the General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) repeater system used by the GMRS alliance in New York State. GMRS is something of a “ham radio lite” system – no testing required for a license, you just pay a fee – that uses the UHF band. Repeaters are allowed, but only under certain rules, and that seems to be where the club went wrong. The repeater system they used was an interconnected system that connected geographically distant repeaters stretching from the far western part of the state near Buffalo to Utica. That link appears to have caused FCC problems, and understandably so, as it appears to be against the GMRS section 95 rules. But it’s the notification method that seems silly here, as the repeater manager was contacted by email. This is not typical behavior for the FCC, who usually send enforcement notices via certified snail mail, or simply go completely paperless and knock on your door. People seem to think it’s all fake news, and it may be, but the email could just have been an informal warning that preceded a formal announcement. Either way, it’s bad news for GMRS fans in upstate New York who used the system to keep in touch on Interstate 90, a long and lonely stretch of road we know all too well.
Third time’s the charm? We will see when the sunspot region AR3723 (nee AR3697 nee AR3664) will make the third flyby of the Sun in history, potentially putting Earth in the crosshairs once again. The region made quite a splash on its first flyby of the sun’s disk in May with a series of X-class flares that produced stunning auroras across nearly all of North America. Passage number two saw the renamed area pass more or less quietly, although it did set off an M-class flare on June 23 that caused radio blackouts in most of the North Atlantic basin. When AR3723 peeks out from behind the eastern part of the Sun, it will be a much scaled-down version of its former Carrington-level glory, and will probably get a few labels from fragmentation while it hung on its backside. But it could still pack a punch, and while there isn’t much juice left in this particular area, the Sun seems to have plenty of surprises in store for the balance of Solar Cycle 25.
Someone made a tick box version of Conway’s Game of Life which is very cool and you should check it out.
Finally, we do an unexpected amount of DIY auto repair these days, which means we spend a lot of time trolling for parts. Here’s something we didn’t expect a national retailer to offer, but would love to find a use for. If it ever comes back in stock, we can pick one up.