@kimholder This may interest you re my post last night. satobs.org/seesat/Jul-2016/0119.html

@Cam_Aust you think it could have been the deorbiting centaur?

@PearsonArtPhoto looks like it works :)

@kimholder I do not think I am as knowledgeable as yourself on these matters, however another keen watcher of rocketry seems to think this could be so, yes.

this isn't my area, if i could be said to have an area at all. i'm not that knowledgeable, i'm just going on a feel of the distances involved and how much light would be shed by these burns

so, a reentry burn shedding 600 m/s of speed might last a minute or so on an empty Centaur...

@PearsonArtPhoto Took a look. How much power can humans put in a canister. Extraordinary!

i was surprised how black the smoke got

that doesn't seem right...

@kimholder the thing is, from what I understand, is that the blowdown is not actually burning the fuel, its effectively a fuel dump. And that would fit with what I saw.

Clearly you are in part an intuitive thinker kim.

ah - so a cloud of propellant droplets picking up light from somewhere? hm...

@Cam_Aust oh, i lean on that heavily...

that does seem to me like the most likely explanation so far

if you could post it under your question, maybe we could get some more expert input on that, but it seems like a sound hypothesis

post it as an answer, i mean

@kimholder Cool. I have been able to predict earthquakes using that intuitive sense with my mind having spent a long time before observing and slowly building a kind of working dynamic model. Officially I am told this is just a statistical illusion but, well I have notched up several predictions, including Chile, Tohoku (Japan), Napa Valley area, new Zealand, Adelaide (tiny). Its a build in capacity of the human mind, one of its ways of thinking.

hmm good suggestion. perhaps I should do that. See what others think.

Yes, just propellant, light by moonlight I imagine as it was close to midnight, which means what I was watching had to be in earths shadow at the time.

what was your sense of 'not right' with the black smoke in the Falcon 9 test firing.

well, animals certainly can predict them. some people say no, but it seems like they are genuinely reacting to me.

@Cam_Aust oh, during a launch the smoke is much lighter. black smoke is usually a sign that the propellant isn't burning very efficiently.

more soot

Ah OK, that makes sense. I imagine the forward motion when in actual flight may assist with a more complete burn than when stationary as a test run. Good point.

yeah, maybe that is the explanation.

Or they don't know what they are doing. No scratch that!

(chuckle)

:)

Re animals and quakes. yes, I observed horses used for riding for the disabled in the middle of Sydney (Australia being very geological stable continent.) early 1980's restless all day. I waited till others commented independently to make sure it was not just my "perception" error. They did eventually. Earthquake or tremor was the only explanation. Made my prediction, told I was an idiot.

4.8 mag tremble about 100 km struck early hours of the morning shaking the entire Sydney basin. Bed pans rattling in the overnight shift. When I walked in to my shift the next morning no one walked within 3 meters of me in case I was an alien - predicting earthquakes is not human apparently.

in the olden days you could've been shaman :)

Or witch and burned. Hey times have not changed much, just the way you get fried!

So hows things in your part of the world?

If you do not mind a brief chat.

heheh. i'm in central mexico.

Ah a quake zone.

same old same old. teachers striking endlessly, blockading major roads almost weekly...

I am obviously in Australia. Rural and remote area though, not in a city.

yes, there have been a few quakes in my time here

@Cam_Aust one of the hot, dry areas?

OK really. .. people not happy with their gov'tns. (nope, up in the mountains, where the soul can breath a little easier - I am above 1000m here. Australia is about the flattest continent on earth so pretty hard to live at any significant altitude here.)

australian mountains? (checking google earth)

near the east coast?

no just hills really. Big old volcanic plateau known as the Northern Tablelands, mostly all above 1000m, inland from the coast (eg Coffs Harbour), this region being part of the Great Dividing range. Put in Armidale, NSW, and look from their north to Glen Innes as another town. I am in that area.

ah, ok. i see it.

So the coast (Pacific Ocean) about 2 to 3 hours drive from here. Western plains again about 2 to 3 hours drive, and desert (far west towards central Australia) about 6 hours drive.

well, we live among low mountains in the central plateau of Mexico. 2000 m elevation.

Weird, up here is only about 3 hours drive from the southern border of Queensland - you know sunshine, great barrier reef, one of the great tourist destinations of the world - yet due to altitude, we can get occasional snow falls in Winter, and overnight temps down to -6 to -14˚ C

30 degrees south, yeah, i can see that, at that elevation

Oh cool. So your even higher. Do you like living where you are, re altitude, or would you prefer to be close to sea level. I find it better higher though I can not exactly explain why. Could be past genetic memory for all I know.

SO you must have a significant UV exposure re skin etc.

i would prefer to live lower down. much lower down, really. i have weak lungs and i think it affects me.

it doesn't take long for me to burn where my skin is light. i don't spend much time in the sun though, really.

my husband has a construction company. we want to move, but he needs more cash in the bank.

it is taking time. thus Mexican politics is a major drag.

there was a snowfall on the mountain peaks last year. happens once every couple of decades.

I have fair skin, and in a personal project and collecting data, it turns out i was getting a significant vit d deficiency over winter. Since taking some Vit D things have improved in a few areas I did not expect. Turns out the body has Vit D receptors in almost every organ and throughout the immune system cell populations, so its a key thing recently discovered. Fits with what I was putting together. I now make sure I get a bit of a sunbake every so often as well. I am mostly indoors as well.

hm. i have been letting that slide... and it has been a while since we had liver. i used to make sure we had it at least once every couple of weeks.

OK construction, and time to get enough to build a new life elsewhere.. Yet it takes time.

i am canadian. even after 14 years, i find mexico pretty crazy.

You get about a month of Vit D, like full body saturation, in about 10 mins of full body exposure. Any food source is trivial re Vit D input in comparison.

yeah, i should really do that. i used to. i just get caught up in what i am doing and don't take the time.

i'll do that today :)

Well many Australians are scratching our heads over hear at what is happening at our senior political and govt levels. Even those who vote for the current side that is government. Its seems to have become disconnected to real response and representing our values in ways that has many concerned and we can not explain why.

It is why I mention it. It may help with the lung thing. Not make it right, just tweak it the right direction a little.

yep. i have been coughing a little. hasn't really gone away in over 2 months now.

Recent studies have found something like 30% of the US population is Vit D deficient. Inside, in cars, at work in an office with artificial lighting. Just not getting enough sunlight and direct skin exposure,

the way people win elections has maybe changed in a lot of places. The lobbyists have learned better how to use the system, professional politicians have too.

Trump - he says it all.

It is one of those other issues I have speculated and pushed over past years. Could I and people be Vit D deficient. Doctors - no way. 2 decades of coming back to the same observation, told same thing over and over again. Then someone does a study and actually checks the Vit D levels in the modern human western population and hey presto - OMG there are lots of people Vit D deficient. So its a recent passion of mine!

you might like the work of Weston Price. i have to stick to a careful diet in order to control a fatigue problem. His work was the only thing i found convincing, because it is based purely on observation and statistical study.

Yes, here too. The level of real transparency has diminished. We have massive concentrated media ownership here. There is so little actual investigative journalism. So elections and how people vote is being forced on the individual voter level to - follow my footy team emotional rara mentality, as there really is no other means to form your view.

CFS, CFIDS?

ah yes, concentration of media control. that too.

no, it doesn't fit that. closest i've ever found is idiopathic hypersomnia. which isn't really a diagnosis at all, it is just a set of symptoms that specialists have filed under that tag.

it is sometimes considered a subset of narcolepsy.

OK. interesting. I have three members with the first. All exposed to chemicals, then got the flue - ended up with post viral malaise or CFS - ongoing for years.

gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html

lookin up now.

OK interesting. Ahead of his time in his angle of pursuit on things. (From quick scan.) I'l book mark it.

there may be spots where he gets too enthusiastic and overstates things, but i found it a fascinating read. parts of it are very eye opening.

The number of health issues here has explode over the last 20 years. Issues once rare are now almost standard. The luxury of modern comfortable civilization comes at a cost.

and a diet modeled on what he says has made my condition an occasional nuisance instead of debilitating.

Yep, people with a pioneering views often do have their excess moments - to be looked out for. Its an easy trap. " When your holding a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. " Which can apply to intellectual ideas as well as a physical hammer.

OK excellent. That is a good thing to hear. These difficulties can be long and difficult journeys, and ones we often travel pretty much on our own. (Clearly I have some insight and experience of my own.)

If you find the vit d and sunbake makes a difference, and were online here. let me know I would be interested.

@Cam_Aust :) there are a lot of variants. i do think our modern diet is a real problem.

yeah, i am here almost every day. it is hard for me to track improvements back to one particular thing, but in this case, that might happen.

so, do please add an answer to your question. if you don't, i will :]

and i should probably work now :P

I understand. there is a whole raft of multi factorial, hard to pin down, aberrations in health - so a cascade of issues more like bodies with disrupted internal ecosystems than a single disease process or cause.

yep. diabetes epidemic... things have gotten weird.

OK, if I do not, please do. Thanks for the chat. Valued my end. Cheeers.

Cheers :)

Hey, Pete Klupar was in the house a while ago :)))

I know I've seen a better one.

Towards the end testing on the ground seems to have darker exhaust than the real flight.

@kimholder Always nice when we get famous people here.

Now, if we can only get Elon to answer a question...

jpl.nasa.gov/news/…

jpl.nasa.gov/news/…

Some interesting JPL news items from this week.