Thursday, August 29, 2019

Summer of Space on my local PBS station ... rewarding and surprising

PBS and other broadcast organizations have been running a lot of space-related content in recognition of Apollo 11's 50th anniversary this last month.

The first one of these I watched was the documentary movie Apollo 11, which was terrific:


Then, PBS showed us a tour of the solar system and somewhat beyond:


And I found Wikipedia entries for a lot of the Apollo astronauts, and they're still alive:


  • Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11), age 89
  • Frank Borman (Apollo 8), age 91
  • Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and 13), age 91
  • William Anders (Apollo 8), age 85
  • Michael Collins (Apollo 11), age 88
  • Fred Haise (Apollo 13), age 85
  • Thomas P. Stafford (Apollo 9), age 88
  • Ken Mattingly (Apollo 16), age 83

And Neil Armstrong might still be here if not for an allegedly botched medical procedure that was said to have shortened his life. Overall quite a long-lived crew for a bunch of test pilot/astronauts, including the 3 who survived Apollo 13!

Most recently I watched an episode of the American Experience Chasing the Moon. It was also excellent, including recounting the darkest moment of the Apollo program, the Apollo 1 fire.

I'm not sure what's next (in real life or on video!) but this summer has certainly been fun ...


Saturday, August 10, 2019

Solar cheaper than oil/gas ... since 2016!

Much to my surprise ... it turns out that oil and gas have been more expensive than
solar power ... since 2016!



Take a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU

This implies a trade, for that, see my other blog.

Happy solar!