This image shows one of the first views from NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (early morning hours Aug. 6 EDT). It was taken through a “fisheye” wide-angle lens on one of the rover’s Hazard-Avoidance cameras. These engineering cameras are located at the rover’s base. As planned, the early images are lower resolution. Larger color images are expected later in the week when the rover’s mast, carrying high-resolution cameras, is deployed. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“After flying more than eight months and 350 million miles since launch, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is now right on target to fly through the eye of the needle that is our target at the top of the Mars atmosphere,” said Mission Manager Arthur Amador of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity Rover is scheduled to land on Mars in less than 13 hours, close to Gale Crater at about 05:31 UTC on August 6, 2012 (for those needing a detailed timeline with time in both EST and UTC, here you go). If you haven’t seen the Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror video, you should:
“Geology defines the way you drive the tunnel,” Mukherjee said. The bedrock below Second Avenue and for much of the rest of Manhattan is schist — a hard, gray black rock shot through with sheets of glittery mica. Some 500 million years ago, Manhattan was a continental coastline that collided with a group of volcanic islands known as the Taconic arc. That crash crumpled layers of mud, sand and lava into schist, lending it an inconsistent structure and complicating tunneling: in some places, the schist holds firmly together, creating self-supporting arches; in others, it’s broken and prone to shattering, forcing workers to reinforce the tunnel as they go to keep it from falling.
The first time New York confronted its bedrock to build a subway, in 1900, the method was “cut and cover”: nearly 8,000 laborers given to gambling, fighting and swearing were hired to pickax and dynamite their way through streets and utility lines for two miles. Their efforts were quick — they finished in four years — but their blasts smashed windows and terrorized carriage horses. Tunnels collapsed, killing workers and swallowing storefronts.
Halfway through the fourth inning of every home game, four giant-headed mascots — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt — are shown “racing” through the District on the video scoreboard. A door in center field opens, and the contest turns live, with the Racing Presidents usually dashing along the right field wall, turning at the corner and sprinting to a finish line behind first base.
It’s not just that Teddy has lost every single race since the competition began in 2006 — 496 straight after Friday’s doubleheader, according to the official record lovingly kept on a fan blog, Let Teddy Win. The magic is in how he usually loses.
After a close call at first base was argued by Cubs skipper Brian Harper, Dye, who was at the computer controls for the music clips used during the game, played the brief audio clip. It followed a controversial call by base umpire Ramon Hernandez in the top of the eighth inning. Seneca responded by ejecting Dye and ordering the stadium’s public-address sound system shut down for the rest of the game.
Seneca pointed to the press box and bellowed: “You’re gone! No more music!” Verbal announcements over the sound system for such things as batters coming to the plate or pitching changes also weren’t allowed.
I’ve been trying to use the flip-dot system by Alfa-Zeta for the last three years, so it is nice that they have begun creating pre-assembled units. Below is a piece of art entitled Delete by lab binaer located in the Public Library of Augsburg forecourt:
A snap-shot of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia serves as basis for this artwork. The unique copy of the constantly growing online knowledge is stored on a memory in the column surrounded by security glass. There are only two connections to the outside world: Visually the display shows a tiny part of the millions of words. Physically an alluring button wants to be pushed. But whoever pushes the button will notice that he has deleted one character permanently.
Aerial View of air rights development, historic station and train shed as seen from the east with a view looking down H Street. Image courtesy of Akridge/SBA.
The plan comes essentially from the conjunction of two separate issues. One is that way back in 2002, Akridge paid a considerable amount of money for the right to build a platform over a lot of these Union Station tracks. Atop the platform will sit a bunch of buildings, as well as a reconnection of the currently disrupted street grid. That will include a renovation of the existing H Street Bridge, which is currently quite old and in need of some form of replacement.
The money for all this work is separate from the Master Plan proposal and would all come from Akridge. But once this is done, it will become practically impossible to ever move the Union Station tracks.
Amtrak/MARC/VRE’s contention, however, is that moving the tracks would be highly desirable. Why? Because they want to make the platforms wider. Why do they want to do that? For starters, they say the existing 18 foot platforms aren’t compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act and National Fire Protection Association guidelines for safety. New train stations are normally constructed with platforms in the 25-30 foot width range. The practical transportation capacity issue here is that the current platforms are allegedly too narrow to let passengers be getting on/off of the tracks on both sides of the platform simultaneously. Wider platforms allow for simultaneous boarding allow for greater capacity.
Queues of departing Amtrak passengers form a halfhour before boarding begins and routinely extend into the public concourse, blocking flows. Additionally, the tracks and platforms do not comply with modern design standards, including the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the emergency egress standards of life safety codes. The mixing of train servicing activities with passengers – both concentrated at the same end of the platforms – creates circulation bottlenecks that will worsen as passenger volumes increase.
The project’s goals are to increase capacity and reconnect the station with the surrounding neighborhood. Done correctly, and you get Grand Central Terminal, poorly and you get Penn Station. The estimated $7 billion (2012 dollars) is steep for what seems to be a project designed to allow a private developer to maximize profits and to increase capacity. I don’t see why the developer can’t chip in some of the cost of the overall project, as they are the ones who will reap the single biggest reward.
The biggest problem with this project is that for $7 billion you don’t get any additional capacity and speed between city pairs (DC-Baltimore, DC-Philadelphia, DC-NYC) isn’t increased at all. If I was king, I would spend that money on upgrading the Northeast Corridor in order to increase the overall train speed, including improving regional and commuter rail. This is also the problem withe Penn Station renovation plans: they are undoubtably very pretty, but ultimately less useful than making trains go fast.
Union Station Master Plan roof shedUnion Station Master Plan lower concourse planUnion Station Master Plan track planUnion Station Master Plan roof planUnion Station Master Plan section aUnion Station Master Plan section b
OpenPlans, a company which builds open source civic infrastructure, collaborating with the public sector to create technology for more efficient, responsive, and inclusive government, has launched a kickstarter drive to create a Transit App for iOS 6 and Beyond:
With the announcement of iOS version 6, Apple has dropped Google Maps and with it, previously built-in support for travel directions via public transit.
With your support, OpenTripPlanner Mobile, an open source application developed by OpenPlans will put transit back on the iPhone. Initially, we will offer coverage for almost all transit systems in North America (see coverage details below).
The app will also add new features that Google Maps didn’t have, allowing users to combine walking, bikes, bike-share and transit together, finding the fastest and most efficient trips regardless of mode of transportation.
Transit App will is now supporting any transit agency in North America that provides open data in the GTFS format. Hundreds of transit agencies already offer this data – check out the current coverage map.
“We seem to have plunged into another power failure, and the reasons why are not at all clear,” said Gopal K. Saxena, the chief executive of BSES, an electric company that services South Delhi, in a telephone interview. It may take a long time to restore power to north India, he said, because the eastern grid has also failed, and alternate power sources in Bhutan and the Indian state of Sikkim flow into the east first.
Funny thing about the photo in this article: this could be any day, regardless of the power cut. We have power in Mumbai, but who knows if we will keep it on or if the Indian grid will cascade.
